As we approach Canada Day, I find myself thinking about my 80 year old father, Gerry, and about words he once wrote describing his arrival in this country. His story is personal. But it is also deeply Canadian and, in an important way, deeply Jewish.

My father began simply:

Canada is a country of immigrants from all over the world. I expect that everyone’s immigration story is unique. Mine had before, during and after components. I was just 10 years old. Coming to Canada was the pivotal moment of my life.

There is something powerful in the phrase the pivotal moment of my life. It was not simply a move from one country to another, but it was a turning point and a moment when the future opened in a new direction.

He left behind postwar London, still marked by the scars of war. He wrote of a close Jewish family nearby, with cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. But there was also food rationing and limited opportunity. Then came the dream of Canada, carried first in stories:

People were already leaving England for more opportunities. Friends of my parents had moved to a strange-sounding place called Toronto and they regaled us with tales of their success.

How many immigrant journeys begin that way? A rumor of possibility. A letter. A place with an unfamiliar name that slowly begins to sound like hope.

Then came the crossing. In June 1956, my family left Liverpool aboard the Empress of........

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