Over the last six months, residents of Whitby, Ont., have discovered multiple Nazi swastikas around town, including carved into the walls of their main library’s washroom and burned with chemicals onto a popular soccer field. Police are investigating, but no one’s been caught.
The antisemitic incidents have shocked the local Jewish community of 1,000 families, members of which say, by and large, that most people feel relatively safe in Whitby. They’re also grateful for the latest support from the mayor, town council, Durham regional police and local faith groups.
In response to the events, last week, the Town of Whitby voted to ask Ottawa to ban the Nazi swastika, also pledging to develop better internal protocols to handle future hate symbols when discovered. The town’s motions have had a domino effect, and politicians in neighbouring communities are taking notice. Durham Region councillors will consider the same swastika ban on Feb. 12, while Pickering will consider it at the end of the month.
On today’s episode of The CJN Daily, we hear from Rabbi Tzali Borenstein, spiritual leader of Chabad of Durham; Whitby town councillor Chris Leahy, who brought the original motions forward; Whitby Mayor Elizabeth Roy; and professor Tessa Troughton, whose child has witnessed Nazi salutes at her local high school, including students mimicking Elon Musk.
Transcripts
Note: Transcripts are AI-generated and may contain minor errors.
Ellin Bessner: And she joins me now from Oshawa. Welcome to The CJN Daily.
Tessa Troughton: Hi. Thank you very much.
Ellin Bessner: Longtime listener, right? First time being on the show.
Tessa Troughton: Longtime listener. And I do email you when I have things that I need to get off my chest about what it’s like to be a Jew in the Durham region.
Ellin Bessner: Well, I’m so glad you did because you’ve twigged me onto this story about the town of Whitby having a council meeting just a few days ago where they approved a motion to study what to do about hate in their community, as well as to support a ban on swastikas, which B’nai Brith has been calling for on kind of a national level. But what’s come to a head?
Tessa Troughton: Well, I’d say, like, my daughter experienced an incident in her high school probably about two weeks ago. So that layered onto the three incidents of swastikas in public places in Whitby. Plus, we had our synagogue in Oshawa egged, and previously we had some graffiti posted there which may or may not have been anti-Semitic. It’s unclear. And we had a break-in. So, you know, it’s just sort of like a convergence of events. And I felt it was important to speak up.
Ellin Bessner: All right, well, let’s break down all those things for me. Speak to me a little bit about what happened to your daughter, first of all.
Tessa Troughton: Oh, you know, these things never happen. You know, like the context is sort of the political situation in the United States and things that the children or the teens might have seen on the Internet about that. But some boys were doing the Nazi salute in class, and it was a few of them, I think at least four. And she told us about this. My husband approached the principal. He emailed the principal with his grave concerns and said this is not the first time. In fact, if I recount correctly, this is the fourth time that my child has experienced this in, you know, 10 years in the school system that there have been kids who are interested in Nazi gestures, let’s say. Yeah. And sometimes accompanied by words. So I was pretty ticked off by that.
Ellin Bessner: What grade is this?
Tessa Troughton: This is high school. This is grade 10. But it happened as early as grade three years ago. So seven years ago. Grade four happened a couple of times.
Ellin Bessner: Is she the only Jewish child in her class?
Tessa Troughton: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ellin Bessner: Or what about in the school?
Tessa Troughton: Probably, as far as I know. And I’ve been able to successfully advocate for my daughter’s safety in the school. And I’ve also registered everything that has happened on the B’nai Brith website. And I’ve spoken to principals and informed them. Oh, I just want you to know that these incidents are registered on the B’nai Brith hate website that your school is named there. And I’ve leveraged in that manner. It’s been successful. Overall, I think there’s a huge lack of education. I think there has been goodwill in my daughter’s school board, which is not DDSB. I don’t want to name the board, but I think there has been goodwill from the administration, but there’s just a monstrous lack of education of the children, the teachers, and the administrators.
Ellin Bessner: Wait, you mentioned what was going on in the United States two weeks ago. So you’re talking about Elon Musk’s.
Tessa Troughton: Yeah, yeah, the gesture.
Ellin Bessner: And so they weren’t doing it at her, it was just, they were doing them and she saw it. It wasn’t an attack on her or was it, as far as you know?
Tessa Troughton: I don’t think it was. Although afterwards she was approached by some kids and told that she was a snitch because the boys were consequenced and they had to do a special project and spend the whole day with the principal and do a project on the Holocaust and all this kind of thing. But education shouldn’t be happening backwards; it should be happening forwards, and it should be happening in advance, and I mean clearly in advance of grade three. Somehow, I don’t know how that could be possible.
Ellin Bessner: Aside from that incident, you said earlier there was your synagogue was egged. Was this after October 7th?
Tessa Troughton: Yeah, yeah, this is a couple weeks ago. Our synagogue was egged. They partially egged it and then the front doors and then they left us the carton of eggs. So I don’t even know how to interpret this. Last year there was some graffiti that was drawn on the side of the shul and, you know, some of us think it was anti-Semitic, others don’t think it was anti-Semitic. I have the photo of it, you know, there’s a dollar sign and, you know, this kind of thing. So, you know, you have to interpret that the way you interpret it. I think it was probably anti-Semitic. We also had a break-in in the past month and, you know, we talked about it as a board and overall believed that that was anti-Semitic because we think it was an unhoused person who, you know, managed to break in and sleep there for a while. They stole all the laptops that the children use in their Hebrew program, and it’s just been a very frustrating time, and everything that’s happening in Whitby, I’m glad that we’re being proactive. I’m ecstatic that the mayor of Whitby has been supportive. I think this legislation about making the swastika a hate symbol, it will be very useful. And so school boards and the town of Whitby are approaching this. Well, DDSB, I know, is approaching it, and the town of Whitby is approaching it. I really want to see what the city of Oshawa can do about this because, you know, Oshawa, Whitby, like it’s basically the same thing. We’re right next to each other, and I haven’t heard a peep from Oshawa about it.
Ellin Bessner: Why do you think that this is all happening and nobody knows about it? Whereas if a sign, for example, not a little sign, a sign in Toronto has like a sticker put on, it’s front-page news, I feel like this is going on in smaller communities just a few minutes drive east of Toronto. But this is the first we’re hearing about this stuff.
Tessa Troughton: You know, I think everybody is terribly busy, terribly busy with their work and their kids’ hockey games and their very, very busy lives. And I think nobody wants to deal with it and nobody wants to, you know, start emailing journalists and registering things on the neighborhood. I think it’s just everybody’s just, you know, just trying to survive the Canadian winter, which is hard enough. But yeah, we’re very close to Toronto, and we tend to quite often be overlooked. Right. There are various Jewish communities here, various little, you know, clusters. And we all have our different flavors, and because of that, we stick, you know, with the place where we feel comfortable. We don’t necessarily all get together and start, you know, raising hell.
Ellin Bessner: Right, there’s the Chabad, there’s the Orthodox, there’s the conservative. Actually, I don’t even know if there is a conservative.
Tessa Troughton: Beth Zion is conservative, egalitarian. Right, right, yeah. And you got Jackson, there’s a reform. Yeah, we got egged, we got graffitied.
Ellin Bessner: So what do you want governments to do? Like, there’s Whitby, there’s Durham region, there’s Oshawa, Pickering, they’re all sort of Clarington.
Tessa Troughton: Yeah.
Ellin Bessner: Whitby was the first one in the area to say yes. The municipality voted on it, yes, to move forward. Is this the answer, do you think, or are there other things that need to be done?
Tessa Troughton: I think it’s a really good step in the right direction. And I think as Jews, it’s incumbent upon us to really keep an eye on the process and make sure that there’s follow-through. Make sure that we’re not just ticking the box here and, you know, make sure that it really gets these procedures for what to do. Make sure that it becomes integrated into, you know, the city website, the region website, that kind of thing, so people know what to do because people don’t know what to do. We don’t know if we’re going to move our synagogue to a safer place or get out of this, you know, rough and ready area. We don’t know. But we really just have to stand up for ourselves. Like, it just takes time. It takes time and everybody is terribly busy with all the things that we do, and, you know, this is like having a part-time job, you know, dealing with all this stuff. You know, as Jews, we need to stand up and be counted, and we need to, you know, get together as much as possible. A lot of people like to just do their own thing and sort of jet in, jet out for holidays or go to Toronto for holidays. But we really need the moral support and to stand together.
Ellin Bessner: Thanks so much for coming on our show, and now you get to listen to yourself next time.
Tessa Troughton: My pleasure.
Ellin Bessner: Ellin, it was really nice to meet you. Thanks.
Tessa Troughton: Lovely to meet you. My pleasure.
Show Notes
What we talked about:
- Read the motions passed by Whitby Town Council on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025, to a) support the call to ban the swastika, and b) to develop a protocol to react better to cases of antisemitism when municipal staff discover it.
- Learn more about B’nai Brith Canada’s campaign to ban the display of the Nazi swastika by modifying the criminal code.
- Hear more from Durham District school trustee Emma Cunningham about antisemitism in Whitby, on The CJN Daily’s political panel, from Dec. 2024.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
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