Catherine Lazoff was nine years old when her family packed all their belongings and moved from the Montreal suburb of Montreal-West to what is now the suburb of Trois-Rivières Ouest, after her father purchased a dry-cleaning plant in the city halfway between Montreal and Quebec City.
“It felt like a different world,” the 71-year-old retired teacher told The CJN. “I had to learn French really quick.” It took six months to become bilingual as she spoke English at home, English and French in school, French in the street, hearing her mom’s Yiddish and reciting Shabbat prayers in Hebrew.
And now she is among a growing number of Jewish residents buoyed by the recent arrival of Chabad.
The city of some 140,000 residents holds special mention in Canadian history as the first stop for Canadian Jewry, notably the home of Aaron Hart, the 18th-century London-born merchant and landowner who made his mark on New France, on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River. But it was Hart’s son Ezekiel who cemented the family name deeper into Canadian consciousness.
Born in 1770, Ezekiel Hart was the first Jew elected to political office in Canada in 1807, repeated in 1808. He could never sit in Lower Canada’s Legislative Assembly as a Jew, however, because of the oath required, and blocked by assembly members and London, in spite of popular support. His children campaigned against the injustice, resulting in the granting of political rights to Jews in Lower Canada in 1832.
None of that was on Lazoff’s mind as one of only two Jewish kids in the English Protestant school she attended. “My brother was the other.” She did not make her first Jewish friend until her 30s, when she had already begun teaching in the very same school.
“We tried our best to keep holidays, something my mother insisted, having been observant in her life and heavily involved in her synagogue in Montreal.” But she also remembers “feeling something was missing, a lack of Judaism.” While hers seemed the only home with Shabbat candles on Friday nights, “it felt important to us, but still limited.”
She doesn’t know for sure how many other Jews were in town but estimates around 50 families. “There were others for sure, but they were hard to find because many families moved here for business, and when their kids came of age moved back to Montreal or Quebec City so their children wouldn’t intermarry.” But she stayed, and married, fully integrated while raising two daughters and teaching children with severe learning disabilities.
“There were between 30 and 40 Jewish families in the 1950s,” Rabbi Aaron Spiro told The CJN. In 2021, he and his wife Amanda embarked on the Montreal Torah Center’s L’Chaim Project to reach out to Jews in outlying Quebec areas.
According to Statistics Canada, there were between 35 and 105 Jews in Trois-Rivières depending on question posed (ethnicity or religion, respectively, according to data collected in 2011). “We know the original Jews to come to Canada were here, and there’s a big university, medical school and hospital, so we thought there must be some Jews here,” Rabbi Spiro said with a laugh. “But I didn’t have high expectations.”
“It was mid-pandemic, and we were all home on Zoom, social distancing, so we can imagine that there were people out there feeling really isolated.” His first volley was a Facebook post asking very simply: “Are you Jewish? Do you live in Trois-Rivières?” People started responding, and word got out.
The couple and their three kids traveled to Trois-Rivières to meet with whoever responded. “The first time we met two families in the park, brought bagels, danish, and we got to know each other.” Subsequent visits included new meetups, installing mezuzahs, hearing stories and answering questions. “After about six months we had put up more than 20 mezuzahs and decided we’re going to rent a hotel and do a Shabbaton.”
Canada’s Historic Trois-Rivières Gets Its First Rabbi in 70 Years!
— Chabad.org (@Chabad) November 28, 2024
Rabbi Aaron and Amanda Spiro arrive to serve Canada’s oldest Jewish community: https://t.co/utOfREejfX pic.twitter.com/bGY6OiN0Eo
They cooked and catered, shlepping up food for 30 people. “It wasn’t easy,” he said, traveling with their children, koshering a hotel room (later an Airbnb), and spending a weekend as the couple also operates a business full-time in Montreal. Lazoff was particularly appreciative. “To do Shabbat with fellow Jews, say prayers and hear Hebrew spoken was a blessing.”
Sam Falk is no stranger to travel. The 47-year-old high school English teacher travels from La Tuque— population 12,000—two hours north of Trois-Rivières, for Shabbat and holidays. The Portland, Ore., native has lived in Montreal, Israel, up in Hudson Bay, and for the last four years has called La Tuque home. “My son connected with Rabbi Spiro last year in the city and I myself grew up with Chabad in Portland, so it’s very familiar to me.”
Falk was observant for many years and compared Chabad to “that cousin we love… We have a bit of a falling out, go a couple of years without seeing each other, but meet again at a family event and it’s a love story. It’s family.” He still maintains customs, but says “I’ve never been so distant from my Judaism.”
He ran into a couple of Jews in the region, a Russian pharmacist who joined him for Passover, and last year while busing through Shawinigan he saw a house with a huge Israeli flag in the window. “I’d been depressed, most of my friends are in Israel and their kids are in the army, and I see a huge Israeli flag. I was like, ‘Hell yeah!’ Lo and behold, this guy came from Egypt in the 1950s.” The two met up, yes, at a Chabad event. “I felt overjoyed. It was amazing.”
That’s the point, said Rabbi Spiro. “We found that hardly anybody knew that there were other Jews around. That’s what we do, create community. Wherever you are, wherever you’re at, we come together.”
Community was exactly what Alexia Ptito was searching for. The 45-year-old Trois-Rivières native moved to Montreal as a child, “where we weren’t very observant, but did the big holidays.” She returned years later as an adult with her husband and raised her children, and the psychologist “lost touch completely” with her faith.
Hardest for her was her children growing up “not seeing my Jewish Moroccan family” and an older son who regretted not having a bar mitzvah. “It broke my heart. I had no idea where to start. We’re not so far from Montreal, but really far when trying to build community. No synagogue, no bookstores, no access to rabbis,” she said. “We couldn’t find matzah.”
Through a common friend in Montreal, Ptito met up with Amanda Spiro, who told her Chabad was in town. “We went for our first Shabbat in a decade, all of us, and fell in love with the place.”
That “place” was Chabad Trois-Rivières’ new permanent home, a spacious downtown condominium overlooking the river, donated last spring by a benefactor with local business interests. A 15-minute walk from Ptito’s home, for her “it was especially important that my kids could see how I grew up, and it was amazing: right away, we were part of a family, of a community.”
Ptito confided to Amanda Spiro that her 15-and 17-year-old sons wanted a bar mitzvah. “I asked her if it was too late and she responded, ‘We can do it tomorrow!’” The next day, her boys, Mannek and Mael, put on tefillin for the first time and began to learn with Rabbi Spiro.
At a more formal event on March 1, they read from a Torah brought in by Rabbi Spiro, along with two dozen guests from Montreal’s Torah Center eager to celebrate with them. “A lot of people showed up” laughs Ptito. “I can’t even describe it, it was community. Right there. These people rented hotel rooms, because they were coming for Shabbat. There was an energy I’ve rarely seen.”
Last Rosh Hashanah, Falk and his father visiting from Portland joined him, his wife and kids, and they all went down to Trois-Rivières. He was equally delighted. “There was a minyan! Both days. I even read as baal korei.”
When the Spiros came knocking at Lazoff’s door, it was a sweet sound. “I fell in love with them. They had my heart, and I knew something good was going to happen. It was my mother’s dream that a synagogue be built near the water, because she was once so active in Jewish life, and it was hard to be in a city with no synagogue.”
Retired for 11 years, she makes the short trip to the Chabad house from her residence when able, especially joyful when her daughter visits with her. “I wasn’t able to do it with my mother (who passed in 2004) but I can do it with my daughter.”
“Meeting the Ptitos and the bar mitzvah boys was so wonderful,” she told The CJN, and put the boot to the notion that none of the Trois-Rivières Jews knew each other, when she realized she dated their grandfather long ago. “It was hysterical! It really is a small world, and it all makes me feel like a Jew again.”
Lazoff, whose own grandparents emigrated to Canada from Poland in 1901, said she “never really lost it, but it just gives me back more pride in being Jewish and regaining that atmosphere of Judaism. It’s brought me a lot of blessings. When Aaron does his prayers, hearing Hebrew brings tears to my eyes.”
To date, the Spiros, neither of whom grew up religious, have staged Shabbatons, bar mitzvahs, brought a mobile pop-up sukkah, held Purim parties, Shabbat lunches, public menorah lightings “and the first communal seders in Trois-Rivières since the 1950s at least, if not earlier.” They are bringing books, planning a women’s retreat, keeping up regular Shabbat events and more.
They officially inaugurated the Chabad House with a printing of the Tanya (the seminal work of Chabad philosophy) in September 2024, and welcomed some 100 celebrants, including Trois-Rivières mayor Jean Lamarche and a host of provincial and federal politicians.
Inauguration of the Chabad House in Trois Rivières and the printing of the Tanya in presence of @LucBerthold @@jerlevi @CPC_HQ @PierrePaulHus @SenatorHousakos @PierrePoilievre pic.twitter.com/323pIiAZw2
— Agop T. Evereklian 🇨🇦 (@AgopEvereklian) September 22, 2024
Chabad’s arrival in Trois-Rivières is an important development for the city, Lamarche told The CJN. “It allows our citizens to live their faith and traditions in the very heart of the community.” The initiative not only strengthens the city’s social fabric said Lamarche, “it also pays tribute to our history, highlighting the deep connection to the Trois-Rivières Jewish community… Together, we continue to build a community where every culture and tradition belongs.”
Ptito concurs. “It was really getting back to who I was. Faith to me was always more about family than God, but tradition is very important too. So that’s something I really wanted to give my kids. It kind of ended when my grandmother died, she kept us all together, but it was something I talked about with my kids, a lot. I was very sad we didn’t have it.”
Now a mother of four and foster mom to three, her dinner table has nine places. “It’s my way to create a feeling of community, having lots of kids around the table. And this is how I honour my grandmother. Surprisingly, we’re all now more open to the concept of God than we were, because you know, there are no coincidences.”
Falk teaches in a French high school, far from the hotbeds of academia where antisemitism and antipathy towards Israel—and the west—have converged, especially since the Oct. 7 attacks. “Here, it’s more like brainless idiocy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m kind of tired of brainless idiocy, but it’s not the virulent stuff you would see at Concordia.”
For Rabbi Spiro, who is of course, visibly Jewish, there is no issue. “I get interested looks when I walk around,” he said, “but Chabad, we’re unabashedly Jewish. The Rebbe taught us that we can have an influence. Just walk around proud, smile at everyone, and you never know what kind of an impact you’ll have. Every step, when you’re in your place, where you’ve been sent, everything you do is part of the mission.”
For decades, Trois-Rivières had no active Jewish community—until Rabbi Aaron Spiro posted a simple Facebook ad: “Are you Jewish? Do you live in Trois-Rivières?” The response sparked a revival.
— Chabad Lubavitch HQ (@Lubavitch) February 3, 2025
With the support of the Montreal Torah Center’s L’Chaim Project, the Spiros are now… pic.twitter.com/GEGXfji7GM
Falk relishes the Shabbatons as a balm for his distance, geographic and spiritual. “There are times that culturally, it can be a little isolating.” And he’s mindful that for most people around him, he is their “first Jew,” and might actually affect perceptions. “Yeah, they’re going to think all Jews are like Mr. Sam, the goofball Deadhead, until they take their Sec 4 trip to New York City!”
The Jewish cemetery was relocated to Montreal decades ago, but Lazoff says she has her own wish, that one day, there will again be a Jewish cemetery in Trois-Rivières. “Hopefully (Aaron) will see to it, so that they don’t have to bring me to Montreal. I could be buried right here in Trois-Rivières. At home.”
Indeed, says Ptito. For her boys, discovering this part of their heritage “was really like what it should be, the importance of the moment, and this passage towards manhood. We felt like we had come home.”
