in a 2009 interview. “He didn’t want to keep the damn cottage, so he sold it.” Wolf wanted no part of a community that wanted no part of him, and he never bought another cottage for the rest of his life. “Part of it was the emotional damage caused by the whole event. A summer home is something you want in life as a pleas- ure,” Ron says. “His neighbours didn’t just go to one court. They continued their fight on why they should have a right to exclude Jews and people of colour. They were vehement.” Instead, the Wolfs became snowbirds, flying down to Daytona Beach, Fla., every year for the winter and frequenting their favour- ite London restaurants during the summer, choosing locales for their kind-hearted proprietors over their expert cuisine. Bernard remained a pillar of the Jewish community, its defacto leader, for decades. In the 1950s, he was the first Jew appointed by the city of London to the University of Western Ontario’s senate, where he served as a member for nine years. When he and Bessie cele- brated their 70th wedding anniversary, even the Prime Minister wrote to congratulate them.
about more than a cottage, more than a beach association so determined to hold onto its racist values that it would stand behind those values at every level of court in the country. “This came at a time where anti-Semitism wasn’t just rampant, it was part of Canadian culture,” says former Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber. “There were limits on how many Jews could study at universities. There were bans on Jews on beaches. There were clubs that were specifically anti-Semitic. Jews were attacked in the streets.” Outside of court, public opinion was starting to turn. Ontario Premier Leslie Frost decided to take a stand against the appeals court decision and, in March 1950, passed a law declaring re- strictive covenants illegal going forward. That didn’t help Bernard, though. His lawyers knew, based on the lower courts’ responses, that arguing that racial discrimination was contrary to a civilized society likely wasn’t going to work. Instead, they shifted their stance. The covenant was unenforceable, they argued, because
the language was too vague. How Jewish was too Jewish to be excluded? How could you know for sure if someone was Jewish at all? And what would happen if a gentile man married to a Jewish woman bought one of the properties and then died? Kenneth Morden, the high-powered lawyer hired to argue on behalf of the cottagers, had no answer. He claimed that people had the right to associate freely with whomever
Congratulatory telegrams poured in from across Canada and the U.S. as guests feasted on matzoh ball soup, roasted chicken, and knishes.
Today, Beach O’Pines is home to more than 100 cottages and several Jewish families. Michelle Adelman, who remembers the jarring sign on the old Lakeview Casino, owns a cottage there now. “Growing up, my father was the only Jew within a huge radius of this place,” she says. “I don’t think he even knew there were any Jews who had cottages.” He’d be horrified to know that she and her husband bought a cottage there, years after he died. As a child in Grand Bend, Michelle had spent so much time trying to go unnoticed, attending church and singing in the choir, do-
they choose. The uncertainty argument resonated with the seven legal minds adjudicating the case, who, in their written judgment, gingerly sidestepped condemning the covenant’s racism. Instead, they deter- mined the language was so unclear that it rendered the contracts unenforceable. The decision came down six-to-one for Bernard and Annie, a clear victory, which meant the sale of the Noble cottage could finally go through. When Richmond got the call that the court had ruled in their favour, he ran down the street from his office and burst through the doors of Artistic Ladies Wear, yelling, “We won! We won!” “It was one of the first times that a minority group won in court,” Farber says. And while the judges didn’t rule on discrimination specifically, making the decision a tainted one for many who’d worked to see it through, it would set in motion a cascading effect that would include the creation of the Ontario Human Rights Commission in 1961. “It started to move the needle toward a major philosophical change in the country,” Ron Wolf says. And it turned Bernard into a hero. A few weeks later, London’s Jewish Community Council held a dinner in Bernard’s honour. Crown Royal was poured out and congratulatory telegrams poured in from across Canada and the U.S. as guests feasted on matzoh ball soup, roasted chicken, and knishes. Everyone toasted to a man who’d become a pillar of the community. But Bernard and Bessie never set foot in the Noble cottage again. After the telegrams and the victory celebrations quieted, Bernard received an offer from another Beach O’Pines resident and sold the cottage. “He was a man of principle,” said Alec Rich- mond, a cousin of Ted Richmond’s and another lawyer at the firm,
ing her best to fit into the fabric of the place. What attracted her to Beach O’Pines is that it’s left to thrive in its natural state, though, she adds wryly, the new buildings tend toward the grandiose. Still, the stretch of beachfront along Lake Huron has kept its wild, wind- swept quality. “It’s beautiful, it’s not manicured,” she says. “I liked the idea of us trying to live with that rather than cutting it down and making it something else.” For Bernard Wolf, the case remained a source of great pride right up until his death in 1987. “Sometimes when you win a case, you look back twenty years later and think it was kind of hollow,” says Ron Wolf. “What he won was a permanent change. It was the be- ginning of the end of the ability to legally enforce racial or religious discrimination.” The process only served to further entrench the values of philanthropy and community that his principled great- uncle held dear. Across southern Ontario, performing arts centres, schools, and scientific research centres bear the Wolf name, large- ly thanks to Bernard’s nephew, Norton. “Norton took Bernard’s legacy and expanded it. That sense of be- ing part of a community, showing leadership in a community, and giving back to a community—those were all parts of our family’s evolution as it went through this,” Ron says. “I think the wonderful thing is, the family didn’t turn away from the community after that. We wanted to give back.” n
This article originally appeared in the Winter 2023-24 issue of Cottage Life .
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