Syrian refugees: Don't just welcome them, sponsor them

Colin Gravenor

    Glay Sperling came to Montreal from Europe after Hitler's jackbooted supporters rose to power. 

   Sperling, once in Montreal, became an accomplished photojournalist and taught for 33 years at Dawson College where he founded the cinema department and become friend and mentor to many.

  He inspired a scholarship and even generated a catchphrase on Urban Dictionary.

Glay Sperling

  So one minute Sperling was fearing for his life in Europe. The next he's thriving and sharing his many talents in Montreal.
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   How did this happen? 

   He was sponsored to Canada by a complete stranger. 

   Tony Oberleitner was another war refugee who had no ties to Canada before coming from Austria. 

   His life was threatened after he was deemed suspicious by Hitler's regime for his work alongside cutting-edge thinker Wilhelm Reich.

  Oberleitner was a tall, optimistic and delightful man who filled a room with generous laughter. His wife Eva was an equally sunny person. Both went on to achieve a bunch of good things as a Canadians, starting a solid family out west. 

  Neither would have been able to come to Canada had it not been for my father Colin Gravenor who was a stubborn opponent of Hitler's thugs.
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  Gravenor also freed Oscar Cahen from wartime internment.
  It started when he hired Torontonian Beatrice Shapiro at his PR firm.
  She informed him of the plight of a half-Jewish artist named Oscar Cahen who was being held in a camp near Sherbrooke Quebec.
  Gravenor arranged to hire Cahen in order to get him out of the camp. Cahen was released on Oct. 26, 1942.
   He moved to Toronto two years later and went on to become a top Canadian painter, before dying in a car crash at the age of 40.
   The story is recounted this biography by Jaleen Grove, as well as this one by Iris Nowell.
 
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   Gravenor led the Montreal branch of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League from his office in the Mount Royal Hotel. 

   In the 1940s he worked hard to help those oppressed by Nazis in any way he could, including by sponsoring strangers. 

   Decades later my father was honoured in an exhibit at the Vancouver Holocaust Museum.

  The museum organizers told me that the efforts my father made were extremely uncommon among Canadian non-Jews at the time.    

  Now Canada is being asked to welcome Syrian refugees, which has left many divided on the issue. 

  Some good people have expressed apprehensions about these newcomers to Canada.      

  During the Nazi years many Canadians were also apprehensive about allowing refugees into Canada.   

  Those opponents were many and even included some local Jews who organized at least one protest against the refugees. 

  My father was bitterly disappointed and dismayed by that protest and repeatedly described it to me with great irritation. 

   Those protesters were not necessarily bad people but they were undoubtedly misguided and misinformed.

New opportunity to become a hero

   Now there's a new group of people seeking refuge from their war-torn land and we are seeing the same popular hesitation.
   Those who oppose welcoming the refugees are not necessarily bad people.

   However Canada can and will absorb the Syrians without a hiccup. 

   Those refugees will have kids playing alongside your children in the snow and sitting next to them on the bus discussing their homework. 

  They will bring their wisdom, perseverance and noble survival skills to help make this country better.

   If you're a cynic like myself, there's an element of self-interest at play.

   Sponsor a refugee and they and their families will forever be grateful. Those my father helped would have given their left pinkies if he asked.

   My father never stopped loving newcomers and their enthusiasm for Canada.

   He would frequently advise me to stand outside places where foreigners convene just to watch the purpose and enthusiasm they carried with them. In the 70s he hired many boat people from Vietnam to help in his businesses. 

   So get involved and join the happy experience in helping out. 

   Here's a link to help you get involved in this latest opportunity to do the right thing.