Jews Need Not Apply

"I feel Canada must do her part in admitting some Jewish refugees. It is going to be difficult politically, and I may not be able to get the Cabinet to consent, but will fight for it as right and just, and Christian." Mackenzie King, 1938

A new biography of William Lyon Mackenzie King explores the man's personality, character traits, values and conscience, extending what much of the public already is aware of, with respect to this peculiar man who led Canada for 22 improbable years. Most famously, he was a necromancer, quietly communicating with his deceased mother over time and the borders between life and death.

The seances he took part in should have alarmed rational Canadians, but likely his predilection for them was unknown at the time of his Prime Ministership.

Far more palatable was his relationship with his succession of "Pats", little Irish terriers, his sprightly quadrapedal companions.

The Rt. Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King with his dog Pat I at Moorside Cottage

In 1931 he wrote: "...dear little soul, he is almost human. I sometimes think he is a comforter dear mother has sent to me, he is filled with her spirit of patience and tenderness and love".

But by the war years he had many other things to think about. Among them whether he would, on behalf of his country, extend compassion that came so easily to him for the welfare of a little Irish Terrier - to thousands of Jews desperate to escape Nazi Germany and the extermination program that the Third Reich had in store for them.

He was aware of the plight of German and European Jews, to a degree, but had no wish to 'create a problem' within Canada. "We must nevertheless seek to keep this part of the Continent free from unrest and from too great an intermixture of foreign strains of blood ... I fear we would have riots if we agreed to a policy that admitted numbers of Jews."

There was support in the English-language press to accept Jewish refugees, but French-Canadian newspapers revealed their heightened anti-Jewish immigration position. And despite that Canadian Jewish leaders pledged to cover all financial costs associated with bringing ten thousand German-Jewish immigrants to Canada, Mr. King informed the delegation that "as long as there were unemployed, we had to consider them first".

He did try, at his cabinet meetings to influence his colleagues: "...view the refugee problem from the way in which this nation will be judged in years to come, if we do not play our part, along with other democracies, in helping to meet one of humanity's ... needs. We would have to perform acts that were expressive of what we believed to be the conscience of the nation, and not what might be, at the moment, politically most expedient".

His words fell on deliberately deaf ears. "Quebec ministers strongly against admission", he himself wrote in his diary about the Cabinet discussions. And his trusted adviser, under-secretary of State, Norman Robertson said: "We don't want to take too many Jews. But, in the present circumstances particularly, we don't want to say so." So they did not and they did not also take 'too many Jews'.

Frederick Blair, the deputy minister of immigration said openly that the Jews on the St.Louis, desperately sailing from country to country in search of safe haven, among them hundreds of Jewish children, did not meet Canada's immigration regulations. No country could "open its doors wide enough to take in the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who want to leave Europe; the line must be drawn somewhere."

The St.Louis and its hapless passengers sailed back to Europe. Prime Minister Mackenzie King heeded the inflexible opposition expressed by French-Canadian Liberals who refused to allow Canada to absorb Jewish refugees. Between 1933 and 1945 Canada permitted fewer than 5,000 Jewish refugees to enter the country.

During that period 200,000 Jewish refugees were accepted in the United States, 70,000 in Britain, and 25,000 in China. Bolivia and Chile accepted 14,000 each.*

William Lyon Mackenzie King, A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny - Allan Levine