the impending Great Depression. Instead, he divided the land into 35 plots and sold them off as individual parcels to cottagers, many of whom lived across the lake in Michigan. A few years after the war, Bernard’s neighbour, Annie Noble, lost her husband. She began to look for a buyer for a summer home the couple had bought years before, feeling overwhelmed by her two properties. The Noble cottage, as it was known, was located in an exclusive, gated community called Beach O’Pines, a ten-minute drive from downtown Grand Bend and an hour from London. Bernard and his wife, Bessie, were excited at the idea of owning a cottage. “London really had two options close to the city: Port Stanley or Grand Bend,” says Ron Wolf.
Cartwright, and asked him to come aboard. Cartwright was one of the best legal minds in the country. Together, they argued for democracy, equality, and inclusivity—the right for anyone in Canada to live anywhere they wished. But on the bench that day was Justice Walter Schroeder, a judge known for his traditional views. Bernard and Annie faced a resounding loss in a judgment that made international news, from Johannesburg to Zur- ich to London to New York. Not only did Justice Schroeder enforce the covenant, he discredited the precedent. “The notion of any danger to public interests involved in the use of restricted covenants seems to me fanciful and unreal,” the judge wrote. The Globe and Mail ran an editorial supporting the decision. When the judge suggested Wolf buy a cottage somewhere else, Annie Noble’s lawyer, John Cartwright, responded: “I have been told he would have to walk a long way along Lake Huron before he could find a place to buy.” On the spot, Bernard and Annie’s lawyers decided to appeal. When the Ontario Court of Appeal unanimously upheld the decision in 1949, public backlash ensued. Jewish leaders denounced the shocking outcome. Bernard knew some of the world was with him, and some of the world wasn’t. “He had to fight the battle and some of the hate that came with it,” Ron says. “It was very emotionally wearing on him.” It wore on his wife too. Bessie was embarrassed by the attention and begged her husband to let it go. Richmond wrote to the Canadian Jewish Congress for guidance. Neither Annie nor Bernard wanted to continue the fight, which by then had dragged on for two years. Annie had decided she would only continue to allow the lawyers to use her name in the legal battle if, in addition to a guarantee that she’d receive the purchase price whether they won or lost, she also received rent and interest from Bernard for the time it took to resolve the case. Bernard, on principle, didn’t want to meet this new slate of demands. “Mr. Wolf, personally, would like to wash his hands of the whole matter but is willing to leave the final decision up to the Canadian Jewish Congress,” Richmond wrote to the Congress in July 1949. With only Bernard’s name on the docket, Richmond and Cart- wright were certain they’d lose. The congress agreed to pay Annie what she was asking so her name could remain on the case. The congress also agreed to fund the entire proceeding, escalating the case to the Supreme Court of Canada. By then, the fight was
“Grand Bend is really a perfect getaway.” The couple had no children, but they spent Sundays picnicking with their nieces, nephews, and cousins at Springbank Park in London. A cottage at Beach O’Pines would give their family somewhere to vacation for generations. “They wanted to have a place in the summer, to be able to get out of the city and enjoy a social life,” Ron says. Annie invited Bernard to tour the cottage, and he agreed to buy it for $6,800. Bernard hired his wife’s cousin, a recent law school grad named Ted Richmond, to draw up the offer for the sale. As Richmond pre- pared the contract, he discovered a clause in the deed that made him incensed. “The lands and premises herein described shall never be sold, assigned, transferred, leased, rented or in any manner whatsoever alienated to, and shall never be occupied or used in any manner whatsoever by any person of the Jewish, Hebrew, Semitic, Negro or coloured race or blood,” it read. The rule was written into the original deeds of sale from the Salter Co. in 1933, and because so few of the cottages at Beach O’Pines had changed hands in the intervening years, Annie Noble didn’t know that by even having Bernard as a guest at the cottage, she was in breach. Back then, racial segregation was imposed by private contracts, winks, and nods. Richmond called his client. He’d spoken to Noble’s lawyer, who had no issue with removing the covenant and wanted to go through with the sale. Richmond thought it would be a formality, he assured Bernard, to get it dismissed. He’d file the paperwork on behalf of Bernard and Annie straight away. When the Beach O’Pines Protective Association (BPPA), the cottager group that managed the Beach O’Pines area, heard about the proposed sale, they called an emergency meeting. Shortly after, the association offered Bernard the $6,800 asking price, plus a hefty profit, to not buy the cottage. They were adamant the restriction be upheld. But Bernard didn’t need money, and he was outraged at the cottagers’ determination not to accept Jews onto their beach. When he rejected the offer, 26 of the association’s 35 members voted to defend the covenant in court. To Richmond, the case’s outcome seemed obvious. He walked into the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto in June 1948 feeling confident. For one, there was legal precedent. In 1945, an Ontario court judge had already ruled that restrictive covenants were illegal. And two, he’d phoned the lawyer who’d won that case, John
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