Hate absolutely has a place in Canada. It is accepted by virtue of our collective indifference – by the way our leaders refuse to define it in precise terms. Hate has a place in Canada when the Prime Minister’s signature address on antisemitism clings desperately to anodyne generalities, lest the hate that fuels that antisemitism turn on him politically – or worse.
Hate has a place in Canada when two locations of the same Jewish bakery in Toronto, Kiva’s Bagel Bakery, are attacked with gunfire and vandalism in one weekend, and no one can remember how many similar incidents that amounts to since the war in Gaza first began. We lost count somewhere between the third shooting at a Jewish girls’ school and the 10th time a single Toronto synagogue was vandalized.