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Aedan O'Connor: I fled Toronto’s antisemitism for a life of Jewish pride in Miami

SWAT teams guarding synagogues, campus harassment and hate crimes showed me Canada’s cultural decline. In Florida, Jews are celebrated

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Sitting in a cafe in Miami, I check my phone. I see a friend has sent me a video of my childhood synagogue, Holy Blossom Temple, in Toronto, at Passover. That’s where I grew up, going to services, attending Hebrew school, and proudly chanting from the Torah as a Bat Mitzvah as a Jewish-Canadian girl. The video showed what, sadly, is necessary to celebrate Passover in Toronto — no fewer than eight police vehicles, including a K-9 unit and two SWAT teams.

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I am then interrupted, hearing a thick Cuban accent complimenting my necklace, an enormous Star of David, the Jewish star.

Aedan O'Connor: I fled Toronto’s antisemitism for a life of Jewish pride in Miami Back to video

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The juxtaposition of the two realities makes me see, in 2026, that was life in Toronto, and this is life in Miami. Moving to Florida was the best decision of my life.

I was born in 1996 in the seemingly idyllic Toronto. Being Jewish then was neither stigmatized nor venerated. My parents gave me an intentionally non-Jewish name to obscure my Judaism, as they hoped it would protect me if widespread antisemitism ever returned.

There were occasional incidents of bigotry, some uncomfortable comments about Jews made by members of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant family that married into my own. I once heard “Jew” used as a pejorative verb, and some of my friends told me about incidents where coins were thrown at them at school, evoking the hateful “money-hungry Jew” stereotype. But these were not frequent incidents. Perhaps through ignorance, I would have described antisemitism as a relative non-issue in Toronto, until my university days.

At Ryerson University (later changed to Toronto Metropolitan University or TMU), my friend led a motion at the Ryerson Student Union meeting to establish a Holocaust education week. The Student Union President, Obaid Ullah, led a protest walkout so the meeting would lose quorum, getting members of the Muslim Students’ Association and Students for Justice in Palestine to leave. Jewish students in the meeting were harassed, maligned and threatened into leaving. The quorum was lost, so the motion could not pass.

Armed with the confidence that outside the Canadian university milieu, people tended to support Holocaust education, I spent all that night reaching out to reporters and managed to help get the story out. A (now defunct) neo-Nazi online publication doxed my name and photo and said I ought to be made into a lampshade, evoking what was done with the skin of some Holocaust victims.

Ryerson University, perhaps mortified or perhaps anxious to maintain donor relations, quickly instituted the Holocaust education week and proclaimed their support of the Jewish community. But the student union president was not fired nor forced to resign.

Months later, it came out that one of Ryerson’s teaching assistants, Ayman Elkasrawy, who was also a part-time imam, preached ‘Death to Jews’ in his sermons. A friend and I printed out posters with his face and with his quotes, then plastered them around the school. Ryerson security took them down, asserting that they were too controversial. Fresh off Ryerson’s previous Jew-hatred scandal, Elkasrawy was promptly terminated by the university.

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The media attention given to these incidents and my role in bringing them forward, mixed with the fact that I was openly conservative on campus, made me a pariah. Privately, I received many appreciative and congratulatory messages, but very few on campus felt brave enough to stand up publicly. My experience showed me that the future in Toronto was radical “progressivism,” and so I wondered whether I wanted to make my life there.

Canadians like myself who leave make a multifaceted calculation. I no longer wanted to live in the increasing cultural malaise and economic uncertainty, and I was deeply concerned by the radical progressivism. To me, antisemitism is a symptom of these maladies. Envy is the root. Canadian culture has been steeped with tall poppy syndrome, where high achievers are castigated and cut down.

I suspect this has its roots in anti-American reactionism. It is hard for an entrepreneurial spirit to thrive in Canada. This sentiment was driven into overdrive with recent political changes in the United States. Americans seek to stop the malign elements of immigration, primarily those who are criminals, intent on destroying American values, or supportive of terrorism. Canada responded by welcoming millions per year, including those with views antithetical to a Western democracy, such as subscribers to Islamist ideology and hostility to Jews. I saw the trajectory Canada was on and left.

Ten years ago, my proclaiming that Canada would become inhospitable resulted in many labelling me as reactionary and hysterical. But those left behind in Canada deal with unaffordable housing and cost of living and increasing antisemitic hostilities. After the terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, the subsequent calculated campaign to target Jews blew open sentiments many wished to ignore. Suddenly, Jews were being harassed in their workplace, Jewish students were bullied in school, antisemitic hate crimes skyrocketed and so the Stars of David disappeared from necklaces or were tucked into shirts.

Some dismiss these incidents as anecdotal, only committed by radical leftists and Islamists. But it has become systemic. The DEI framework used in education, unions and offices places Jews by dint of being considered successful, as “oppressors,” which in the 21st-century is the term for the devil.

Proud Jews and Zionists (Zionism being an integral aspect of Judaism) would likely be branded as racist for expressing their creed in the Toronto District School Board. The increasing economic downturn in Canada has bred resentment — and Jews are the oldest scapegoat.

Unhappy people tend to hate success, and unhappy leftists made antisemitic bedfellows with some of our new arrivals. Canadian niceties and political correctness often mean tolerating disturbing cultural practices from politically favored groups. And now, Jews are under attack, with gunshots at synagogues, schools and restaurants. Since there is no Second Amendment in Canada to protect the right to bear arms, Jews are left defenseless.

When I first moved to Florida, few understood the decision. Now every time I go back, I am peppered with questions from Jews on how to follow in my footsteps.

Compare this to Florida, which economically and culturally flourishes thanks to good governance and wonderful people. Jews are celebrated here. After October 7, many non-Jewish friends in Florida reached out to express their condolences and support. Some fly Israeli flags or wear pins to express their allyship. The largest ethnic diaspora in Miami, Cuban-Americans, enjoys a warm relationship with the Jewish community. I have an extensive collection of Jewish and Zionist clothing and jewelry, which I often wear, and am frequently greeted with compliments from Jews and non-Jews alike.

As I am at the age where I am thinking about becoming a mother, I feel blessed to live where I can be a proud Jew and an unapologetic Zionist, and will be able to raise kids who are not merely tolerated for being Jewish but celebrated. And Jews from elsewhere in the States are now also flocking to Florida, particularly from New York City, which recently elected a mayor who has Islamist views.

Florida provides a culture of ingenuity, creativity and entrepreneurship. Historically, the Jewish response, when excluded, was to create our own space or invent something better. This led to the advent of Hollywood, hospitals like Mount Sinai in Toronto and the Jewish General in Montreal, universities and golf and country clubs.

In Florida’s welcoming environment, I drew on that history when I saw people with non-woke political views being cancelled from ticketing platforms, I created and founded Partea to combat that problem. My company has been able to develop and thrive, and I have nothing but gratitude for Miami, Florida, and the United States.

Canada lost my entrepreneurial spirit and the jobs I create. Antisemitism is not merely a disease in and of itself, but a symptom of a sick society. Every Jew I know in Toronto has an exit plan. If Toronto does not get healthy, Jews will continue to leave, and Canada will be worse off for it.

Aedan O’Connor is the founder of Partea, the American patriotic event listing and ticketing platform. She is a proud Jew and an unapologetic Zionist based in Miami.

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