You Can’t Avoid Racism By Moving To Canada

By Vanessa Chiasson

For decades, the man who operated a small convenience store by a bend in the road in my Cape Breton Island home town in Nova Scotia was casually called “Jimmy the Jew.” The store he ran was a nondescript white building with unparalleled views of the grey Atlantic and maintained a stock of potato chips that was varied, plentiful, and consistent — no small consideration for a child with discretionary junk food income. It was an ordinary store run by an ordinary man — a man who wasn’t Jewish.

I doubt if Jimmy had ever met a Jewish person in his life. Cape Breton’s once-thriving Jewish community, located several hours away in the city of Sydney and its surrounding communities, peaked with 400-plus families in the 1940s but had sharply dwindled due to migration. But Jimmy was rumored to be miserly with his money — an accusation that doesn’t mesh with my recollections of a friendly shopkeeper — and the offensive nickname endured.

As an 8-year-old, I had never met a Jew either — but that didn’t stop my peers from labeling me. It wasn’t so much an honorary title as it was an accusation. For the crime of not sharing your chips, your candy, your cookies, you’d be thrown a swift “You’re such a Jew.” Stingy. Cheap. Cheater. Jew.