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A while back, Jonathan Edelstein suggested that bloggers should get together to celebrate a new holiday called Arrival Day. This holiday is intended to serve as a celebration of the Jewish experience--immigrant and settled--in America. I don't see anything wrong per se with extending this to Canada, or to Prince Edward Island; certainly it's a borrowed holiday, but then so is Remembrance Day.
The problem in writing an Arrival Day posting from the perspective of a Prince Edward Islander, I suppose, is that there are so few Jews on the Island. I've linked to Bram Eistenthal's article for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency before, but it deserves another link simply because the realities it describes are quite true: There are very few Jews on Prince Edward Island.
( Read the article here, too. )
Growing up, I was exceptionally private. I don't think that my experiences were too far out of whack from those of many other Islanders, though; I don't think that I'm particularly exceptional when I say that I met my first Jews when I was in my teens (the Simeone family, from Montréal, who like me and my father were involved in Scouts Canada). Things quickly changed as I grew up--I first met Jonathan via a mailing list in 1997 and more recently I've made some Jewish friends via Livejournal. On the Island, I've become acquainted with Dr. Henry Srebrnik through UPEI, and I know author J.J. Steinfeld thanks to my work at the library. Still, it's safe to say that the Island remains as Eisenstein described it, a friendly place for Jews.
Prince Edward Island has never developed into a very multicultural society on the central Canadian or American models: The great early 20th century wave of immigration from southern and central Europe entirely bypassed the Island, and the late 20th century wave of Asian, Caribbean, and African immigration transforming Canada's major cities has only begun to arrive here. In his Black Islanders Jim Hornby reveals a disturbing amount of violence and hatred directed against the Island's now-assimilated African-Canadian population in the 19th century, while in the 20th century non-white and Jewish tourists seem to have been kept out of North Shore hotels. In the end, though, prejudice was less important than the reality that Prince Edward Island has long been a major exporter of population, initially to New England and more recently to North America generally. With low living standards, an undiversified agricultural economy, and a great distance between the Island and major immigrant-receiving areas even elsewhere in the Maritimes, there was not much opportunity for Jewish immigration. Although the Island's Jewish community has grown and strengthened in recent years thanks to economic growth, the Island segment of the Jewish diaspora isn't likely to grow much.
Prince Edward Island is home, however, to a substantial Lebanese community. David Weale's entertaining monograph A Stream Out of Lebanon explores the history of the Lebanese community on the Island, demonstrating how individual Maronite Christian emigrants ended up making their way to the Island, becoming a model mercantile minority between their door-to-door peddling of mail-order goods and their corner stores (many still open today). Ironically enough, many Islanders seem to have good-naturedly confused Lebanese with Jews, since, after all, both were eastern Mediterranean peoples living in lands closely associated with the Bible. There was some prejudice directed towards Lebanese; in the 1980s in the Island's Legislative Assembly, the Lebanese-Canadian legislator Joseph Ghiz was called a "black boy" by another, anonymous legislator. But then, Ghiz also went on to become Premier of the Island for two terms. I don't think things would have been different for Ghiz if his ancestors were Jewish instead of Lebanese; but then, that's a counterfactual that can never be answered.
The problem in writing an Arrival Day posting from the perspective of a Prince Edward Islander, I suppose, is that there are so few Jews on the Island. I've linked to Bram Eistenthal's article for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency before, but it deserves another link simply because the realities it describes are quite true: There are very few Jews on Prince Edward Island.
( Read the article here, too. )
Growing up, I was exceptionally private. I don't think that my experiences were too far out of whack from those of many other Islanders, though; I don't think that I'm particularly exceptional when I say that I met my first Jews when I was in my teens (the Simeone family, from Montréal, who like me and my father were involved in Scouts Canada). Things quickly changed as I grew up--I first met Jonathan via a mailing list in 1997 and more recently I've made some Jewish friends via Livejournal. On the Island, I've become acquainted with Dr. Henry Srebrnik through UPEI, and I know author J.J. Steinfeld thanks to my work at the library. Still, it's safe to say that the Island remains as Eisenstein described it, a friendly place for Jews.
Prince Edward Island has never developed into a very multicultural society on the central Canadian or American models: The great early 20th century wave of immigration from southern and central Europe entirely bypassed the Island, and the late 20th century wave of Asian, Caribbean, and African immigration transforming Canada's major cities has only begun to arrive here. In his Black Islanders Jim Hornby reveals a disturbing amount of violence and hatred directed against the Island's now-assimilated African-Canadian population in the 19th century, while in the 20th century non-white and Jewish tourists seem to have been kept out of North Shore hotels. In the end, though, prejudice was less important than the reality that Prince Edward Island has long been a major exporter of population, initially to New England and more recently to North America generally. With low living standards, an undiversified agricultural economy, and a great distance between the Island and major immigrant-receiving areas even elsewhere in the Maritimes, there was not much opportunity for Jewish immigration. Although the Island's Jewish community has grown and strengthened in recent years thanks to economic growth, the Island segment of the Jewish diaspora isn't likely to grow much.
Prince Edward Island is home, however, to a substantial Lebanese community. David Weale's entertaining monograph A Stream Out of Lebanon explores the history of the Lebanese community on the Island, demonstrating how individual Maronite Christian emigrants ended up making their way to the Island, becoming a model mercantile minority between their door-to-door peddling of mail-order goods and their corner stores (many still open today). Ironically enough, many Islanders seem to have good-naturedly confused Lebanese with Jews, since, after all, both were eastern Mediterranean peoples living in lands closely associated with the Bible. There was some prejudice directed towards Lebanese; in the 1980s in the Island's Legislative Assembly, the Lebanese-Canadian legislator Joseph Ghiz was called a "black boy" by another, anonymous legislator. But then, Ghiz also went on to become Premier of the Island for two terms. I don't think things would have been different for Ghiz if his ancestors were Jewish instead of Lebanese; but then, that's a counterfactual that can never be answered.
