Tilda Roll usually carries a can of coyote repellent with her when she walks around her neighbourhood in Vaughan, Ont. But ever since she was the target of an antisemitic incident while leaving her synagogue after Shabbat services on Jan. 6, 2024, the lawyer says she is less afraid of coyotes—and more concerned with running into the antisemitic attacker again, since he lives nearby.
At the time, police quickly located the suspect, and charged him with a couple of assaults—spitting on Roll and her husband, hurling Nazi threats at them and making the Heil Hitler salute—and breach of probation. After a three-day trial this March, the man was convicted, but was not held in custody.
Earlier this week, on May 13, an Ontario judge sentenced Kenneth Gobin, 35, to a year in prison, with two more years of probation tacked on due to his lengthy criminal record.
With the man now off the streets, Roll says she can finally begin to process what happened, including how anxious and angry the incident made her. On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, Tilda Roll explains how she hopes her court fight will encourage Jewish Canadians to fight back against rampant antisemitism.
Transcript
Ellin Bessner: That’s the voice of Kenneth Gobin, a Thornhill man who was just convicted of two counts of assault and of breaching his existing probation for an earlier crime. The sound is from the Rebel News interview he gave after he left the courthouse in Newmarket on Tuesday. This week, an Ontario court judge sentenced Gobin to a full year in prison and two more years of probation tacked on after for barreling up onto the sidewalk near the Chabad Flamingo Synagogue last year on his e-bike. Worshippers were walking home from Sabbath services. He spat on some of them, yelled that Hitler should have finished the job, and rode away, making a Heil Hitler salute. The sentence was longer than what’s been given in similar hate-motivated cases lately, but the judge explained that despite the attacker’s obvious mental health challenges, he has a long criminal history dating back to when he was a teenager and started getting involved in carjacking, robbery, assaults, and has been in and out of prison. Also, the judge said he showed no remorse at the trial, saying that the Jews hate him and he was just trying to ride his bike. The judge called it a disgusting and despicable act of assault physically, but also morally, because it traumatized not just the direct victims, whom you’ll hear from soon, but demeaned the whole Jewish community. Words, the judge said, can inflict serious injuries. The judge said, quote, all this hatred against Jews has to stop. One of the victims, Tilda Roll, could have continued walking home from shul that day, 16 months ago, and not called the police. She didn’t even have her phone with her that day because it was the Sabbath. But Roll decided she had a duty to protect herself, her community, and to pursue justice.
Tilda Roll: I want Israel to know that the Diaspora is, you know, we’re going to stand up for Israel for what we believe is, you know, is necessary. And, you know, they’re fighting in Gaza and we’re fighting in Vaughan, but we’re all still fighting the same cause.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Friday, May 16, 2025. Welcome to The CJN Daily, a podcast of The Canadian Jewish News, made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation. Tilda Roll says she was surprised at how emotional the trial was for her, ever since the attack on January 26, 2020, at the synagogue in Thornhill, where she was walking home with her husband Malcolm and another couple. But the veteran family law lawyer and mediator felt she needed to try to send a message to the Jewish community and to show Israel that Jews are fighting for themselves against hate. It’s now been a few days since her attacker was handcuffed in the courtroom and sent to prison for a year. Roll is beginning to share her experiences that she says have overtaken her family life after having spent the past 16 months since it happened being anxious and angry and walking around her neighbourhood looking out not only for coyotes but also in case the attacker came around again, because he wasn’t held in custody after his conviction, not until the sentence came down. Tilda Roll joins me now from her office.
Tilda Roll: Thank you for having me.
Ellin Bessner: Well, thank you for being here. Our audience, I’m sure, is keen to know your reaction to the sentencing. How does that sit with you? Are you satisfied with that sentence?
Tilda Roll: I am satisfied. I initially thought, with the fact that there were aggravating factors—the hate crime, the fact that there was no remorse, his lengthy criminal record, his presentation. I was hopeful that the sentence would be between 12 and 18 months. So I would say it certainly met my expectation. What was more, I would say more welcome, and I read the judgement after I heard it, was the obiter comments made by the judge about how this type of behaviour impacts the Jewish community. A recognition and validation that the community is essentially under fire. A recognition that hate doesn’t have a place in the city of Vaughan and the province of Ontario. And essentially a recognition that the community has a right to consequences, and they have a right to feel safe and practise their religion, which is really the takeaway message for the community, that if the community rallies and the community speaks out about bad behaviour, the community in turn will feel safer if people like Mr. Gobin understand that there are going to be consequences for these kinds of crimes. So I looked at it more from a community perspective. I had said individually I was always concerned about my safety. I mean, he is my neighbour. You know, he lives in my neighbourhood, so I have seen him on occasion, which causes me great anxiety. And I’m not generally an anxious person, but, you know, there’s that factor and the idea of walking around and Vaughan, you know, I need to have my phone and a safety plan. You know, those aren’t normal reactions when you’re leaving your house.
Ellin Bessner: No. I mean, just to be facetious, but not like the big danger used to be before October 7th. Coyotes.
Tilda Roll: Yeah. So I’ve been more careful and more mindful, especially on Shabbat. But I think this sends a much-needed message to the community that someone in authority is listening. We need that, because at the moment, it appears for sure, since the election and onwards, that that message is missing.
Ellin Bessner: The election of the federal.
Tilda Roll: The federal election. Right. I mean, we were hopeful. We were hoping that, you know, we are still hopeful that the community’s needs, the Jewish community’s needs are being prioritised by all levels of government and authority. I live in the city of Vaughan. We have a very friendly city council and mayor.
Ellin Bessner: Bubble legislation is sort of in the region.
Tilda Roll: Yes. So.
Ellin Bessner: Right.
Tilda Roll: So the mayor has made it clear that that’s a priority. It was tested. It worked. Part of what I was trying to do is to set a. Hopefully. Hopefully to set a precedent so that other authorities will take hate crimes seriously.
Ellin Bessner: Why not just go home and try to put this behind you? Why go through the whole ordeal? You’re a lawyer, so you know what’s involved because you weren’t injured, like, thank God. Right, but.
Tilda Roll: So when I was attacked by Mr. Gobin, it wasn’t just a physical attack. Yes, I mean, I didn’t have a bruise at the end of the day, but when you’re spat on by someone, when someone actually shares without consent their bodily fluids and the way he did so made me so angry, his attempt to try to dehumanise me or to essentially, I felt like it had to be addressed by me in a fashion that was public and in a fashion that sent a message to other people that the Jewish people have a right. Any community that’s under attack, but in particular, the community I’m in, the Jewish community has a right to fight back and has a right to make sure that there’s a deterrence. So I wanted this to be a bigger message. Speaker A: I had the capacity to do that just because of my skill set, and I had willing community partners. I had three other people that had witnessed what had occurred, as well as very supportive neighbors. So the pieces fell into place. It is true that it’s work to be able to pursue justice. You have to be, you know, fairly strong-minded about it. I was happy that we were able to go to trial. I was happy to testify. I was going to do what it took in order to get this judgment received by the community so that the Jewish community understood that when you do this type of advocacy, there is going to be a positive result. Now look, I mean, I understand that.
Ellin Bessner: Other cases, not always. Half the time, the charges are always dropped lately, right?
Tilda Roll: Not just dropped, but managed differently. But I think the judge really understood and validated how the spit and the comments insulted our community. I think he validated that the hate and the ongoing anti-Semitic rhetoric that is happening daily in Toronto and elsewhere is something that just is going to have to be very tightly managed by the authorities. I was looking for that message to happen. I’m happy it happened. I mean, you never know what’s going to happen, like you said. But we were very tight in what we were going to do. We were prepared, we insisted that this case go to trial. We were heard by the Crown, the AG, and whoever the other partners were. In my victim impact statement, which I actually have, I talked about being disrespected in my own neighborhood. I talked about the fact that as a Canadian Jew, the message has to be received not just by Jewish people, but all Canadians that have this kind of diversity. I say that we live in a country that supports people’s cultural differences. Your actions were offensive to me as a Canadian Jew. And then I state in the victim impact statement, I’m angrier today than I was the day of the assault. I am angrier because for the last year I have seen on the streets of Toronto, and essentially in the schools, public schools and universities, the anti-Semitic hate. The students and other people using social activism essentially to mask what I consider to be anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic activities. There does not seem to be an abatement. I have three kids who want to start their families here. I am doing this almost as a legacy project because I want them to understand that the place that we chose to live for now is going to be a place that is safe to raise their families and, God willing, my grandchildren. So the messaging was almost as much for the community as it was for them.
Ellin Bessner: You said for now.
Tilda Roll: I did say for now. I mean, it’s true. And the community impact statements talked about the community leaving, going elsewhere, in particular Israel. But the truth is, everywhere you go, there are going to be issues. We’re fairly established in Vaughan. I’m like, I was born in Ontario, I studied here, I got called to the bar here, I got married here, etc. My roots are here. So, for me to get up and leave and move to Israel or any other place that may, in fact, sound a little safer—I know people are going to South Florida and Texas—I think that’s an unrealistic expectation for myself and for most of the people who live and work in the city of Vaughan or Toronto. I have no plans to leave. I’m hoping that the idea of seeing something and saying something is going to be a message that people receive because, you know, it’s easy to just sort of condemn it and move on. That’s just not my style. I’m not a bystander, and I don’t think we can afford to be bystanders anymore. So if people want to be on the sidelines because they’re uncomfortable, I think they should think again because it’s really not getting us anywhere. I think we have to be much more proactive in our messaging.
Ellin Bessner: Tilde, you’re the one who’s speaking, but there were two assault charges, one against you and the other one was your…
Tilda Roll: My spouse, yes. Malcolm. Malcolm Wall was also assaulted. The other two persons, Annie Trojman, who’s a very active community member, and Richard Amar, also very active community member, both in the community and members of Chabad Flamingo, which is a synagogue that I go to.
Ellin Bessner: The initial shock when this guy drives up with his e-bike—was he delivering food, like a DoorDash type of guy, or was…?
Tilda Roll: No, no, he was essentially riding. My observations were, and he’s apparently ridden in the community before, both on a bike and in a car. I’ve never met this individual, but he was known to others. He lives with his parents on a street that is in Vaughan on my side on the west side. He was riding his bike, and he saw us. It was the Sabbath around 1 o’clock or so. He mounted the sidewalk, and it looked like he was going to hit us, so we had to jump out of the way. He wasn’t just riding his bike. We didn’t get in the middle of his sort of route. We didn’t kick his tires. There was no provocation. He made a choice, and we actually thought—at least I can say I thought—that he was just sort of someone who was inconsiderate and maybe just looking to provoke us a little. He rode away from us. But then I saw him ride back, and that’s when I knew I thought he was looking for a fight. The males were already upset about what had happened, and the reason why I was hit along with my husband with the spit—I was closest to him. I was trying to de-escalate it because I did not want there to be an altercation between the males. I know I speak like a lawyer. I’m trying to…
Ellin Bessner: You do. It’s okay. Our listeners will have heard that before.
Tilda Roll: And he just stayed on his bike, but he just said things that I just—I’ve not heard them said to me or anyone at all. I mean, the last time I heard these kinds of statements were like in Germany during the war: Hitler should have killed you. And he was right. You should all burn in ovens. I mean, it was just… and then, Heil Hitler. And I thought to myself, are you kidding me? And so when he rode off, by this time, there was a commotion. We don’t have cell phones on Shabbat, on the Sabbath. So, you know, someone was calling 911 to have the police come. Someone drove to follow him. They knew who he was. There was another person who had stopped his car to assist us. So the community was super helpful. And then when, you know, YRP came and took our statements, they immediately went and arrested him. Actually, one of the police officers, I think, was Israeli and was quite upset about it.
Ellin Bessner: Was he during the whole procedure or was he on arrest?
Tilda Roll: He violated probation. I think he was arrested.
Ellin Bessner: I can’t… 2007 for carjacking a high school teacher in Mississauga. Sentenced to three years in prison. He was considered a repeat violent offender. So this…, ask you as we end off this guy, has obviously escalated from a teenage carjacker to this. Been in prison before many times. So what is going on?
Tilda Roll: It’s a problem.
Ellin Bessner: And now what’s going to happen? You know, he’s got a year in jail. So what? He broke his probation last time.
Tilda Roll: These are bigger questions than we can answer today. I will say that he’s definitely on someone’s radar. When the year is over and he’s back in the community, I’m assuming, you know, he’ll have to have checks with his parole officer, etc. But you’re right. Yeah.
Ellin Bessner: He also was arrested right after you.
Tilda Roll: I know.
Ellin Bessner: Incident the month later for posing as a fake canvasser for Sick Kids Hospital.
Tilda Roll: I know he’s certainly a very scary individual, which we didn’t know at the time. I’ve never met this guy, so I didn’t realize that, you know, had I known about his background, I. I don’t know if I would have ran home. This could have escalated into something very, very, very bad. So I’m actually thankful that none of us were hu. This could have been a catastrophe.
Ellin Bessner: Is it helping you at all with your anxiety, with your, you know, you told another journalist that since January 6th, it’s kind of your small-scale October 7th, which of course we can’t compare. And I know, no, you didn’t want to, but this changed your life and I’m wondering if this is helpful at all now.
Tilda Roll: I think it’s going to take time for me to process. I was really emotional and I’m not. I’m not generally an emotional person, but when I, when I did the victim impact statement, boy, was I upset. I mean, and I really. I was really emotional and I. I was surprised at how emotional I was. I’ve really suppressed it, both personally and professionally because I just need to move forward. So I’m going to take some time and think about it. I’m a talker, so it helps me to communicate how I’m feeling. And so I’m hopeful within a couple of months I’ll be able to sort of put this behind me. But at the same time, I’m so happy today. I had a lot of community contact and other people who said to me, you know, thank you and, you know, this is great and thank you for standing up for the community. And that’s really great messaging for me because really, at the end of the day, I really had the community in mind. That was really my, you know, number one thought, how can I help our community? How can I protect our community? How can I make sure that our kids understand that, you know, we have our best interests? It really affected our lives for about 16 months. And I said to my husband, who has been just, you know, wonderful and very supportive, that whatever happens, we are going to follow this through. So we did it. The community knows about it. And I’m happy to say May 13th was a good day for the city of On.
Ellin Bessner: Appreciate you taking the time to come on the CJN Daily. Thank you very much.
Tilda Roll: A pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much.
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of the CJN Daily. I highly recommend you read the judge’s sentence. It’s so strongly worded, I’ve put the link for you in our show notes. Meanwhile, York Regional Police report that Jews were the target of 71% of all the hate crimes motivated by religion last year. That’s 76 cases out of 107. Last summer, the City of Vaughan passed a bylaw to ban loud and violent protesters from coming within 100 metres of a place of worship or school or community centre. Although this case was not that. And Oakville has just passed one too. A bubble law, as we call it, keeping protests 50 metres away. The City of Toronto is now releasing a draft of its own, so-called bubble bylaw. It’ll go before council next week for a vote. In some ways, it’s weaker than Vaughan’s and Oakville’s. The distance is just 20 metres away from the station street and it doesn’t cover community centres, only schools and synagogues and daycare centres. And it wouldn’t be automatic. People have to apply for it to go into effect, and the bubble zone would last only six months. The bylaw would start on July 2, although already Cupid unions from the U of T and a large number of groups are threatening to sue. Our show’s produced by Zachary Judah Kauffman and Andrea Varsany. Our executive producer is Michael Fraiman, and the music is by Dov Beckley-Levine. We’ll be off Monday for the Victoria Day holiday and unless something big happens, we’re back as usual after that. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Related links
- Why Jews are still the target of the most religious-based hate crimes in Toronto in 2024, in The CJN.
- A Quebec man who posted swastikas in his town was found guilty and fined $7,000, in The CJN.
- Read the judge’s sentencing report sending Kenneth Gobin to prison for 12 months for two counts of assault and one of breach of probation.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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