Remarks by
The Honourable Anita Neville, P.C., O.M.
Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba
JEWISH HERITAGE MONTH
Manitoba Legislative Building Rotunda
Tuesday, May 20, 2025, 5:00 p.m.
(please check against delivery)
Friends and fellow Manitobans, representatives of government and faith, welcome to this celebration of Jewish Heritage Month.
We are gathered this evening in the heart of Treaty One land and the heartland of the Red River Metis, in a province born through a coming-together of peoples.
As Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba, I acknowledge that this province includes the treaty and ancestral lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Dakota and Dene nations and the Red River Metis, as well as northern lands that are and were home to the Inuit.
I am honoured to serve in a province committed to truth, reconciliation and collaboration among all of those who call this place home.
As Manitoba’s first Jewish Lieutenant Governor, I feel honoured to join you today to mark Jewish Heritage Month.
And at a time when antisemitic incidents have been rising in Canada and elsewhere, we have a responsibility to speak about the long Jewish contribution to life in Canada and especially here in the province we love and serve.
There’s a long Jewish history in Canada dating to well before Confederation. The first synagogue was built in Montreal in 1768 and an influx of Jewish immigrants arrived during the American Revolutionary War as part of the United Empire Loyalists.
Canada’s Jewish history includes moments we can be proud of – such as the election in 1807 of the first Jew to public office in the British Empire, an act that led to Britain’s Emancipation Act.
And it contains moments of shame that have moved our nation to be better – such as the infamous refusal to accept a ship filled with Jewish immigrants from Europe in 1939, leading to their return to Europe and many of their deaths in the Holocaust.
The contributions of individual Jews – as artists and scientists, entrepreneurs and philanthropists, healers and teachers, activists and leaders – could keep this gathering going all day.
One contribution I’ll mention is the role of Jews in advocating for equality, fairness and opportunity for all – through human rights legislation and education.
Canadian Jews worked for generations to build an open, tolerant society that would not just accept but celebrate differences. One result is the list of official months in our national calendar that since 2018 has included Jewish Heritage Month.
Today, we acknowledge generations of Jewish contributions on this day of recognition and celebration. And we celebrate a spirit of understanding and openness that unites Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
Thank you. Merci. Meegwich. Shalom
