Friends with Benefits: Leon Koerner and Frederick Charles Blair, 1939-1959

Abstract

Due to the strict immigration measures developed and enforced by Frederick Charles Blair, director of the Immigration Branch 1936-1943, Canada had the poorest record for admittance of Jewish refugees during WWII. Blair’s letters to various government officials are quoted extensively in None Is Too Many, and have been perceived to reveal his intrinsic distaste for Jews. That Blair, like many among the Canadian elite, was an antisemite is hard to refute. And yet his relationship with Jewish-refugee and lumber-baron Leon Koerner begs closer examination of what it meant to be an antisemite in Canada during the WWII era. Hailing from an industrialist upper-middle-class Jewish family from Czechoslovakia, Koerner was able to use his expertise in the forest industry to persuade the upper echelons of the Canadian government to ignore his Jewish origins and to allow himself and members of his extended family entry into Canada. Despite Blair’s negative predisposition towards Jews, from the time of Koerner’s arrival into Canada until Blair’s death in 1959, the two men maintained a friendly correspondence. This article elucidates the nuances of gentile antisemitism prevalent among members Canada’s elite by examining the relationship between F.C. Blair and Leon Koerner, as documented by letters dated 1939-1959.