Jews in Canada’s far North have received a government grant to document Jewish history in the Yukon.
The $55,000 grant from the Yukon territorial government will allow the Jewish Cultural Society of Yukon to research a small, Gold Rush-era Jewish cemetery in Dawson City and the influence wielded by the Jewish community there, CBC News reported last week.
The information will be used to create a mobile display that will travel across Canada, said Rick Karp, the society’s president.
“It’s going to travel everywhere and hopefully bring a lot more people up here, from a tourism perspective, into Yukon,” Karp told CBC. “It will point out to people that there was a Jewish influence in Canada beyond Montreal and Toronto and Winnipeg and the large cities.”
There were nearly 200 Jews in the Yukon during the Gold Rush, Karp told CBC. More recently, Canada’s 2001 census found 35 Jews in Yukon and 25 in the Northwest Territories. — jta