Salt Fish and Shmattes: A History of the Jews in Newfoundland and Labrador from 1770

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta. He is co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and
the Public, and editor of “Improved by Cult

Though there is “little documented proof of Jewish settlement in
Newfoundland prior to 1900,” Robin McGrath manages, with confidence,
to date her findings from 1770 and even suggests, with a little
tongue-in-cheek, that there might even have been a Jewish navigator
aboard the Matthew with John Cabot in 1497. For her thesis clearly is
that many of the early Jewish settlers in Newfoundland are difficult to
authenticate with any degree of certainty—so many of them were forced,
even before they left England, to change their religion and adopt more
anglicized names. “Most of the families had assimilated,” she
writes, “to the point where they no longer knew they had once been
Jewish.”

In spite of that assimilation, however, McGrath does an excellent job
of tracking down the possibilities of Jewishness, and when the lines are
more distinct—when the Perlins and Wilanskys and Riffs begin to make
their way in Newfoundland business—she covers the firmer ground in
fascinating detail. She is, of course, as her books of poems and novels
affirm, an excellent writer. But she is also a superb researcher, with a
gift for uncovering the most interesting aspects of people’s
lifestyles. This is a very worthwhile and eminently readable book.