Backgrounder -Jewish-Canadian Advisory Committee for the Community Historical Recognition Program

Three members were appointed to the newly established Jewish-Canadian Advisory Committee for the Community Historical Recognition Program. Biographies of each of the members are below.

Ms. Toni Silberman (Chair)
Toronto, Ontario

A well-known communal and public sector human rights advocate for decades, Toni Silberman has been a member of B’nai Brith since 1984, serving in a variety of leadership positions, including as Chair of the League for Human Rights and National Chair, Commission on Holocaust Education.

Trained as an educator and psychotherapist, Ms. Silberman has taught at the high school, community college and university levels. She was Co-ordinator of Special Programs with the Ontario Human Rights Commission from 1990 to 1997, and Executive Assistant to the Chief Commissioner and Director of Public Affairs from 1982 to 1990. Previously, she worked as a private management and research consultant in the areas of human and industrial relations. She has also served as Director of Seneca College’s TeleCollege and Part-time Learning programs.

Ms. Silberman has been involved in many community and professional organizations throughout her career, and has been the recipient of a number of awards and citations for her work. She has been on the Beth Torah Congregation’s Board of Trustees since 2004, and from 1983 to 2000, she was an Officer and member of the executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress-Ontario Region. Since 2006, Ms. Silberman has acted as a part-time Director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, where she chairs and participates in several committees.

Dr. Franklin Bialystok
Toronto, Ontario

Throughout his life and career, Dr. Franklin Bialystok has been an educator, researcher and community activist.

Currently, Dr. Bialystok is a professor at the University of Toronto. His fields of academic research are the Holocaust, the Canadian Jewish Community, and Polish Jews in the 20th Century.

From 1972 to 1987 he taught History for the Toronto Board of Education, while earning an M.A. from York University. From 1987 to 1988, Dr. Bialystok was a visiting scholar at Oxford University, and returned to formal studies at York in 1991, completing his Ph.D. in History in 1997.

Prior to his work at the University of Toronto, Dr. Bialystok taught at York University and the University of Waterloo. In 2001, he was the inaugural scholar-in-residence in Canadian Jewish Studies at Concordia University. Dr. Bialystok has lectured at academic conferences and universities in eight countries on four continents, and speaks in academic and community settings on a regular basis. His doctoral dissertation, Delayed Impact: The Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community, won the Tannenbaum Prize in Canadian Jewish History and was nominated for the Governor General’s Award in non-fiction. Dr. Bialystok is also the Vice-President of the Association of Canadian Jewish Studies.

Dr. Bialystok has been active in community affairs for more than thirty years. Currently, he is Chair of Canadian Jewish Congress-Ontario Region, and sits on the national executive of the CJC. He is a member and past chair of the Education Committee of the Toronto Holocaust Centre. Dr. Bialystok is a founding member and past chair of the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, for which he was awarded the Cavalier’s Cross of the Order of Poland.

In addition to his work in the Jewish community, Dr. Bialystok has chaired a committee of ‘Toronto Residents in Partnership’ that awarded youth and businesses for their anti-racist work. He sits on the advisory committee of Canadian Friends of Peace Now and has also worked in various capacities with the Hepatitis C Program Advisory Committee, the Canadian Liver Foundation and the Transplant Centre of the University Hospital Network.

Mr. David Demian
Langley, British Columbia

Mr. David Demian is the Director of Watchmen for the Nations, a Christian organization that seeks to promote dialogue, understanding, healing and reconciliation between cultural groups in Canada and around the world.

Mr. Demian was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, and trained as a medical doctor there. Demian came to Canada in 1988 and became active with Watchmen for the Nations, becoming the organization’s Director in 1998. Under his leadership, the group launched an initiative aimed at redressing the historical wrongs arising from anti-Semitic attitudes and immigration decisions in Canada during and around the time of the Second World War. This initiative led to an apology in 2000 from church and community leaders to the survivors of the M.S. St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish passengers from Germany who were unable to find refuge in North America on the eve of the Second World War.

In May 2001, Mr. Demian organized the Journey of Hope, a trip of over 500 Canadians who travelled to Israel to meet with the Chief Rabbi of Israel at Yad Vashem (the Holocaust memorial) and the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs at the Knesset. In these meetings, they expressed Canada’s regret over its past anti-Semitic policies and spoke about the commitment that Canada will be a leading nation to ensure that such actions are never repeated.

In addition to its work with the Jewish community, Watchmen for the Nations has also been involved in significant initiatives to promote healing and reconciliation between French and English Canadians and has worked to bring understanding and healing both among the First Peoples of Canada (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) as well as between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal citizens of our country.