Doctoral Colloquium (Music): Robin Elliott

Approximately 100 refugee musicians from Europe migrated to Canada between 1937 and 1950. The majority of these migrants were Jewish musicians who had suffered from persecution and life-threatening conditions in Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War. Up to 1947, the obstacles to Jewish immigration to Canada were among the most restrictive in the world. As a result, only a handful of Jewish musicians managed to find safe haven in Canada between 1937 and 1947. Towards the end of his final term in office, Prime Minister Mackenzie King finally opened the borders to displaced persons from refugee camps in Europe in 1947. Within the next seven years, over 165,000 displaced persons immigrated to Canada, including ca. 100 musicians. These men and women made transformative contributions to the musical life of Canada in many different areas, including but not limited to administration, composition, education, patronage, performance, and scholarship. The last members of this generation of musicians died within the past three years. This presentation will describe the efforts of an ongoing research project which is seeking to document the careers of these musicians and their varied contributions to Canada’s musical life, as a continuation of the work begun by the former McGill University professor Paul Helmer in his book Growing with Canada: The Émigré Tradition in Canadian Music (MQUP, 2009). We will look at five artefacts as examples of tangible cultural heritage left behind by this generation of musicians and consider how these physical objects document the ongoing impact of the activities of these refugees on the musical life of Canada.

Biography