Evil Done Endures

"Charlotte, who had earlier opposed the acceptance of European child refugees, most of whom were Jewish and whose evacuation was supported by the Canadian National Committee on Refugees under Cairine Wilson, new welcomed British youngsters." Dave Mullington, Charlotte: The Last Suffragette

Cairine Wilson was Canada's first female Senator. A feminist trail-blazer, one who has had public buildings named after her; in the suburbs of Ottawa, Orleans has an elementary school named after Cairine Wilson. From what Mr. Mullington wrote, we also know that Cairine Wilson felt it an imperative to save Jewish children from the death penalty imposed upon them by Nazi Germany.

Charlotte Whitton was an acerbic-tongued feminist determined to prove that a woman of strong will could contest a man for any kind of position of public trust, including becoming mayor of the capital city of Ottawa. She was, by all accounts, a formidable woman of firm will, and imbued with a conscience.

Her conscience failed her quite obviously when contemplating the possibility of being involved however remotely in a plan to rescue Jewish orphans from the death machine of the Third Reich. Children from Eastern Europe were to be left to their fate, for Ms. Whitton had no wish to further blemish the Canadian population by an introduction of Jewish refugees.

During the very same conflict when Britons devised a plan to remove their children from their island redoubt which had become a theatre of war against the German Fascist army intent on world domination - besides the obliteration of all Jewish European life - the indomitable Charlotte Whitton gave generously of her efforts to bring British children to Canada for safe-keeping.

Because Charlotte Whitton was secretary of the Canadian Welfare Council, her voice was an influential one: British children in, Jewish children most definitely not. Ms. Whitton viewed Jews and Jewish children as "undesirable" immigrants who would sully the bland perfection of Canada's British heritage.

By actively lobbying to deny Jewish children an escape route to life within Canada she consigned them to an early death, along with Jewish men and women, parents and grandparents. Her reputation did not suffer as a result of her mission to keep Jewish orphans out of Canada.

She was latterly awarded many civil honours, including the Order of Canada in 1967.

Like many of her generation in Europe and North America, Charlotte Whitton suffered the communicable disease popularly known as racism, and anti-Semitism. And now, once again, the organized Jewish community in Ottawa is doing lobbying of its own; to convince Ottawa city council that given her past record, the naming of a public building in her honour appears inappropriate.

In her defence, Ottawa's current mayor, Jim Watson, describes the woman as a complex personality; that the proposed naming of the new Archives and Library Building after her in no way condones the unfortunate part of her personality and history. That naming would simply represent a recognition of her importance as a colourful personality, a woman who broke gender barriers.

There are many even within the Jewish community who contend they do not believe she was anti-Semitic, citing the fact that she befriended some Jews, and that she was the recipient in 1964 of a Woman of the Year award from Toronto's B'nai Brith. Clearly, at that time her energetic striving to ensure that Jewish orphans were not permitted entry to Canada in the late 1930s was not generally known.

Back to the present: There are a number of representatives of groups prepared to speak against the proposal to honour her by naming the archives after her. One of whom is the past chair of the Ottawa Jewish Federation's Holocaust remembrance committee, a Holocaust survivor.

Vera Gara is prepared to appeal on behalf of those orphans who did not survive.