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WEEKS TO GO
Canadian treasures CANADA: NATURAL SOURCE OF PRIDE SINCE 1867 Léa Roback (1903–2000) SOCIAL ACTIVIST, PACIFIST AND TRADE UNION ORGANIZER
Quiz TEST YOUR CANADIAN KNOWLEDGE
QUESTION 1: Which 2011 film starring Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz is based on a 2006 book of the same name by Canadian author Sara Gruen? QUESTION 2: More than 50,000 Canadians were killed during the country’s worst epidemic. What was the illness?
where she earned a degree in literature. She had stints in New York, the USSR and eventually Berlin. It was in Germany that she first became involved in communism. Eventually, Léa returned to Montreal and became employed by Fred Rose, a politi- cian running for the Canadian Communist Party.
Montreal garment shops in the 1930s were rife with deplorable working conditions. Needle workers—pre- dominantly women—were subjected to environments that were unheated, unventilated, poorly lit, overcrowded and run by tyrannical and abusive overlords. Léa Roback, the Montreal social activist, was eager to step in when the International Ladies Gar- ment Workers Union needed help
Throughout her life, Léa was a champion for human rights. She was a suffragist,
QUESTION 3: Dr. Pierre Grondin performed Canada’s first heart transplant surgery in 1968 in which Canadian city?
trade union organizer and a pacifist. In the 1940s she was instrumental in unionizing RCA Victor and it was there that she helped win the first union contract for women. Likemany people, in the 1960s Léa was concerned about the use of nuclear weapons. She thereby became an in- tegral part of La Voix des Femmes, an organization con- cerned about the threat of nuclear war and campaigning for disarmament. She also lent her voice to protests against the VietnamWar and apartheid in South Africa. Until the end—she passed in 2000—Léa Roback was a voice for human rights. Her memory is perpetuated by the Léa Roback Foundation, which provides scholar- ships to socially committed women.
reaching the community of garment workers. Her abil- ity to communicate in three languages, French, English and Yiddish, was an indispensable asset in persuading and mobilizing the workers to take action. She helped unify the 5,000 tradespeople and lead them in a three- week long strike. A contract was ultimately won for the workers. Part of a large Jewish family, Léa herself came from a working class background. Her father was a tailor and the owner of a general store, which her mother helped him run. She was born in 1903 in Montreal to where she returned with her family in her early teens. She worked first as a dyer and then a cashier at a theatre, and eventu- ally earned enough tomake her way to Grenoble, France,
QUESTION 4: Which team in the Canadian Football League was formerly the Baltimore Stallions?
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
ART, LITERATURE AND ENTERTAINMENT
Where are we from? THE 52 LARGEST GROUPS IN CANADA’S MULTICULTURAL MOSAIC
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY
SPORTS AND LEISURE
infO Canada THE STORIES BEHIND OUR SYMBOLS
Canada’s Haitian community
Each year in February, Montreal gets a burst of carnival fever when it hosts Kanpe Karnaval, an annual celebration of Haitian culture that includes live music, dance and spicy creole cuisine. But the event is just one influ- ence of the substantial Haitian community that’s part of the patchwork of Canadian culture. Haitian-Canadians have infused our music, art, literary, sports and business sectors with vital colour and creativity.
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
Tree: Red Oak
The red oak (Quercus rubra) was designated as Prince Edward Island’s provincial tree in 1987. It once populated much of the island and was a source of material for settlers to build furniture, barrels and ships. Today the population of the red oak has greatly dwindled, but can still be found scattered throughout the province.
The most recent influx of Haitians into Canada occurred shortly after the devastating earthquake—7.0 on the Richter scale—that rattled their coun-
try in January 2010. After the catastrophic event, we opened our doors to thousands whose homes were destroyed in the episode. But Canada’s history of welcoming Haitians dates back to the 1960s. Haiti has long been subjected to economic and political hardships and it’s themost impoverished country in the western hemisphere. Over the de- cades, Canada has consequently offered both aide and refuge to the people of Haiti and today the Haitian-Canadian population consists of approximately 138,000 individuals. Ninety per cent of Haitian-Canadians reside in Quebec, and most of those in Montreal. Despite the climate, the province is well suited to the French-Catholic immigrants due to parallels of language and religion. Smaller groups of Haitians reside in Ontario and even fewer in BC and Alberta.
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The Journal Cornwall
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Wednesday, October 19, 2016
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