Out in the Open

When I was thirteen, I learned that my maternal grandfather was Jewish — and a concentration camp survivor.

My family was on a summer road trip to the East Coast. For my father, it was his first time in Halifax since he had arrived at the famed Pier 21 several decades before. By that point, I was keenly aware of how common his immigration story was, not just in our heavily Italian Canadian neighbourhood but in so many communities across Canada. I distinctly recall my mother making an offhand comment about arriving in Canada around the same time as my dad — 1959, to be exact — but in Saint John and by air instead of sea. I then realized that I knew comparatively little about her side of the family. Her father had a Polish surname, but he had died the year before I was born. My mother’s family were not Catholic, even though her mother, still living, was Italian. Rarer still, they observed no religion at all and conspicuously ignored Christmas while growing...