Hon. James S. Cowan (Leader of the Opposition):

Honourable senators, as a Nova Scotian and a Haligonian, I am particularly proud to speak in support of this bill. I congratulate the government for this initiative and in particular, acknowledge and applaud the key role that Senator Di Nino played in pushing it to this point.

To give a sense of what Pier 21 represents for countless Canadians, I will begin by quoting a passage from a September 1947 journal entry, made by a new arrival to our country, Leslie Mezei:

The big ship is ready to leave the harbour of Bremen. The ropes are slowly drawn up, the big muddy anchor is pulled up with a great roar. The ship slowly pulls away from the shore and everyone makes a big sigh.

As I look about I see many faces shining and they all tell a unique story. The boy on my right looks as if he never knew what food was, the girl beside him is wearing torn rags.

The ship is something like heaven to us, the eleven days of travel went by fast. They were the dawn of our new life.

After a brief check at the immigration office we were given a big reception. Smiling women greet us and overwhelm us with everything we desire. They tell us how good it will be for us.

After a couple of hours we are on a train. We feel a big freedom — nobody asks us for identification and we get everything we want. A day later we reach Montreal. The city looks alive because everything is lit with cars and people moving on the street. This is not anything like the dead city, Munchen. After a grand reception we are given our rooms in our temporary home at the Reception Centre. There we have a good, peaceful rest.

Leslie Mezei was one of 20 Jewish war orphans who arrived at Pier 21 on September 15, 1947, the first of 1,123 orphaned children, survivors of the Holocaust, who were brought to Canada after the war to start a new life.

Canada is so many things — a land of extraordinary geography, a nation founded on ideals and dreams — but above all, Canada is people, our Aboriginal peoples and the millions who have come here from all over the world to build this country.

We came for so many reasons; to escape persecution, poverty, famine and war; to join loved ones and reunite as a family; and for opportunity, for the promise of being able to build a life and a future in a new country.

There is a saying that when we save one life, we have saved an entire world. Canada is a nation of so many worlds, diverse and rich in heritages, and joined together in this great task of building a just and prosperous nation.

It is, therefore, absolutely right and fitting for us to create a National Museum of Immigration. As a proud Haligonian, who has seen so many new immigrants arrive there, it is with tremendous personal pride that I see this museum established at Pier 21.

Pier 21 opened in 1928. The first ship it welcomed was the Holland-American Steamship Nieuw Amsterdam, which brought 51 new immigrants on March 28, 1928.

Since that day, more than one million people have walked down the gangplank at Pier 21, to enter Canada for the first time. Ruth Goldbloom — who was appropriately described the other day by Michael Ignatieff, as "that force of nature" — has said that one in five Canadian families can claim some kind of association with Pier 21. That is how important it has been in Canadian history.

Pier 21 welcomed immigrants escaping the shadows of coming war in the 1930s. During the war years, the reception hall and examination room were turned into makeshift army barracks — at one point, an entire regiment was housed there. Some 500,000 Canadian soldiers passed through Pier 21 in those years.

The so-called "Guest Children" — some 3,000 British children sent by their parents to the safety of Canada — came through Pier 21. After the war, there were the refugees and displaced persons, people who no longer had a home country to return to.

There were the war brides. Booklets were distributed to the war brides, to help them adjust to their new lives in Canada. I am not sure how comforted they were by these booklets, though. One of the women later admitted to feeling a little unsettled upon being handed a booklet called, "How to Deliver Your Own Baby."

The building itself undoubtedly inspired a certain amount of trepidation among many who arrived. Let me read to you a brief description, from a book called Open Your Hearts:

At the waterfront in the south end of the city stood a large, two-storey immigration building with barred windows. Pier 21 was the first glimpse of the country for the immigrants who poured ashore over the years. Its resemblance to a prison on the outside was even more pronounced inside. Large wire cages lined the back wall of the huge dark hall, and were intended not for forcible confinement but to speed up processing. Disturbed by the impression they knew it made on already nervous immigrants, the Pier's staff had made many attempts over the years to have the cages removed, but with no success.

Colleagues, they finally succeeded, in the 1950s. Back to the book:

The front portion of the reception hall was not much more welcoming. A huge Union Jack looked down imperiously on the rows and rows of wooden benches lining the highly polished floors.

Pier 21's grimness was softened only by the groups of Halifax citizens who came to welcome the new immigrants as they came off the ships. The welcoming tradition was one of long standing, having begun in 1768 when a group of Scottish settlers formed the North British Society.

This tradition of volunteers meeting the new groups at the Pier became so entrenched that eventually a room was set aside for them, which became known as the Social Service Room. There was the Canadian Council of Immigration Women that established hostels at various ports, including Halifax. In 1925, a group of four Roman Catholic Sisters of Service arrived. They quickly became known for their facility with languages, and became the "go-to" people to help the newcomers. To give honourable senators a quick idea how necessary these skills were, on one occasion the 27,000-ton ocean liner, the Georgic, arrived in Halifax with passengers who collectively spoke 32 languages.

The Canadian Red Cross had volunteers running a large nursery round the clock, next to the Social Service Room. They organized and operated a club for war brides, to help them adjust to their new lives.

Unlike my friend Senator Di Nino, I did not arrive in Canada through Pier 21 but I spent time there with my mother, who was one of those Red Cross volunteers. Those memories are indelibly imprinted in my mind.

The YWCA was there, offering counselling and other services. Chaplains of all different denominations were there, providing spiritual services, yes, but also much more — socks, underwear, toiletries and whatever was needed.

Then there was Sadie Fineberg, who spent the better part of four decades at Pier 21, greeting newcomers, handing out a box of facial tissues, as she said, "to wipe the kids' noses" — and a loaf of bread, "in case they're hungry."

Whenever immigrants arrived without money and provisions, she would send for boxes of food from her husband's food service business. As a book about Pier 21's history describes, "The considerable amount of food that went with the immigrants was always donated, and Sadie herself never accepted a penny for her services." She was said to hold the record for the longest-running volunteer at Pier 21. She started as a representative of the Jewish Immigrant Aid Services, JIAS, and then in 1948 became Halifax's official representative at Pier 21.

This army of volunteers became known as "the People of the Pier." They knew, sometimes from personal experience, the fears that were mixed with the dreams of the new immigrants, and were determined to do whatever they could to make the entry to Canada welcoming and as easy as possible.

Colleagues, there is so much of our nation telescoped into that one, not very large building.

The Pier closed in March of 1971. Today, most immigrants arrive on airplanes, not ocean liners. The emotions of a new immigrant have not changed — but still, there is a vast difference between arriving at Pearson Airport and walking the gangplank onto Pier 21.

Transforming Pier 21 into a national museum of immigration has been a dream of some for many years. I mentioned Ruth Goldbloom earlier. In 1990, J.P. LeBlanc, a former federal public servant who was the founding President of the Pier 21 Society, invited Ruth Goldbloom to join the society's board of directors. At the time, Pier 21 was in a terrible state of disrepair. As Dr. Goldbloom described it, "It was a rat-and-pigeon infested building."

On June 17, 1995, at the conclusion of that year's G7 Summit hosted by Canada in Halifax, Prime Minister Chrétien announced a permanent summit legacy for Halifax: the reconstruction of the Pier 21 Centre. The federal government, through Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, together with the Province of Nova Scotia and the City of Halifax, committed $4.5 million. Ruth Goldbloom marshalled her considerable fundraising skills, a network of volunteers, and within two years raised the other $4.5 million needed.

Now, thanks to Ruth, along with John Oliver, Wadih Fares, Bob Moody and so many others, we are joining together to turn this centre into a national museum of immigration — a place where all Canadians, and others, can come and learn about their history. The records will be there so that anyone can trace their family's entry into Canada, at whatever port, from the 1920s on.

It is so easy to look back and see people and choices in the light of the years that followed, to see the later success and settlement in Canada as surely inevitable and expected. However, that moment of taking the chance to come to a new land — to leave behind family and histories, to start anew, to build something unknown — that is a moment unlike any other. Canada was built by generations of such men, women and children, and we will continue to grow and develop thanks to new waves of immigration from around the world. Our people truly are us.

Honourable senators, this is a unique opportunity for all of us to join together to support a project that celebrates the past, present, future and best of our great country.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear!

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Is there further debate?

Are honourable senators ready for the question?

Hon. Pierre De Bané: May I say a few words?

Honourable senators, I remember like it was yesterday when, 60 years ago, on a boat like the one described by my leader, I landed with my father and younger brother at Pier 21.

That was an experience so vivid in my heart that I remember it like it was yesterday. Sailing on a boat from the Middle East to arrive two weeks later in Halifax, and seeing the shore of this country, it is something I will never forget. My leader has expressed so eloquently the feelings of all immigrants who came to Canada through Pier 21. For me, it is very vivid. In the documents that I have collected over the years, this document from when we arrived is one of the most precious that I have. We were young children. I still remember what my father, who was a widower, told us. He said, "You know, my sons, entering Canada is more difficult than going to heaven."

For him, that was the ultimate achievement of his life. Every day, I thank God, I thank him and thank Canada for having transformed our lives. I wanted to bring my humble testimony to what my leader has said.

Hon. Roméo Antonius Dallaire: On December 11, 1946, a Red Cross ship full of war brides with their children arrived at Pier 21. The ship had an accident and was delayed. No one was injured. My mother, who was a Dutch war bride, and I, in a wicker basket, arrived at Pier 21, were processed, and immediately went across to the Red Cross train that was waiting to move us across the country. We ended up in Quebec City.

My mother is 91 and is currently not well. In her memories — she has Alzheimer's that is advancing — Pier 21 came up a couple of weeks ago. She remembers, and she has, and I have, the documents of my entry into this country as the son of a Canadian veteran and a Dutch war bride.

I think this bill is a magnificent gesture and piece of legislation. Well done.

Hon. Jim Munson: Honourable senators, I will bring the history up to the 1990s. I was a foreign correspondent for ten-odd years overseas in the Middle East, China and Europe. We moved back to Atlantic Canada in the fall of 1992. I ran into a tenacious woman by the name of Ruth Goldblum. She said, "You may be one of those big foreign correspondents but you are back in the Maritimes now. Let me take you to Pier 21."

She took me to Pier 21. We walked through it. I wrote a series of stories for CTV at that time. It was my history as well, as a Maritimer. I had not understood a lot of it, but understood more after listening to Ruth. It was an important picture for me to present to Canadians, from my perspective.

I thought I would throw in a word of appreciation to Senator Cowan and Senator Di Nino on this historic event.

Hon. Pana Merchant: Honourable senators, I, too, want to say that this bill is an important moment for me. In the summer of 1957, my mother arrived with five young children from Greece to join my father, who had come two years earlier to see if Canada would be the place where he might want to raise his family. He quickly decided that Canada was indeed the country. He thought we all would have a wonderful future.

My father was born in Turkey. He had been a refugee in 1922 and settled in Greece. He had a young family. He had served in the Second World War; soon after that, the communists were threatening to take over Greece. He had also fought the communists. Because he had five children, he thought the future did not look good for them in Greece so he decided to uproot himself and his family.

I am grateful to him because I know that this must be the most difficult decision that a father can make, to uproot a family from their familiar surroundings, from their language, from their culture, and to hope for a new and bright future in a different country. He was forever grateful and happy that he had brought us here.

I, too, want to say that this day is a wonderful moment. I want to thank everyone, the Government of Canada and the people who have worked so hard to make this day a reality.

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