Winnipeg’s synagogue and Edmonton’s mosque

In 1889, on the northwest corner of Common and King streets, Winnipeggers of many creeds gathered to lay the cornerstone of a new house of worship. It was the first synagogue in Manitoba, Shaarey Zedek, the Gates of Righteousness.

The Manitoba Free Press called the crowd “representative of all classes of citizens.” Members of the legislature and city council stood beside clergy from several churches. The Grand Lodge of Freemasons led the procession. The Infantry School Band played.

Philip Brown, chair of the building committee, rose to speak. To the wider city he appealed for “all lovers of religious liberty, regardless of class, creed or nationality.” To his own congregation he offered steadiness: be strong; your trials will be many, but patience and success will crown your efforts. Then his words turned outward again, toward the Masons and other neighbours who had come in friendship.

Quoting Psalm 133, he said, “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” He praised the “worthy brotherhood whose motto is ‘Light, truth and charity,’” saying its principles were in harmony with Judaism’s own.

When Shaarey Zedek was dedicated in March 1890, more than 250 non-Jewish guests attended, and Mayor Alfred Pearson assisted in opening the doors. Up to $1,700 was contributed by Christian residents toward the synagogue’s construction.

Nearly 50 years later, that same spirit appeared again in Edmonton, where Muslims organized to build Canada’s first mosque. The Al-Rashid Mosque rose on a parcel of city land purchased for $550, the same discount offered to churches. Its leaders included Darwish Mohammed Teha, a former farmer from Damascus, and Najjib Ailley, a merchant who told the Edmonton Journal that Christ “also preached Islam.”

At the opening ceremony, Mayor John Wesley Fry welcomed a crowd of about 100. The Mayor of Hanna, J. F. Shaker, a Christian, chaired the service and reminded those present that “there is little difference between those who worship the God of Moses, the God of Jesus or the God of the prophet (Muhammad).” The visiting Indian-British scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali, translator of the Qur’an, added, “There is nothing mysterious, nothing everyone cannot understand about a religion such as ours.”

Both occasions — the cornerstone in Winnipeg and the dedication in Edmonton — were civic as well as religious. Each lived faith through public fellowship. People showed up for one another and, in doing so, shaped the moral landscape of the Prairies.

This inheritance spans generations. In Winnipeg, Freemasons and clergy joined to build a congregation dedicated to justice. In Edmonton, Muslim women petitioned the mayor for land on which to build a mosque. Each moment revealed pluralism not as tolerance alone but as a verb, a belief made visible through action.

The congregations were small. Winnipeg’s Jewish community was largely made up of recent Russian immigrants; Edmonton’s Muslims had mostly come from Syria. Both asked neighbours for help.

The Free Press chronicled the synagogue’s faith in the future, and the Journal later recorded Muslims who believed their city might one day be “the spiritual headquarters of Islam in Canada.” Both communities have now been sustained for generations.

By 1982, Edmonton’s Muslim population had grown to 12,000, and again non-Muslims contributed to expanding Al-Rashid. Shaarey Zedek became the largest synagogue in western Canada.

Such scenes remind us that pluralism in Canada was never only a matter of ideas. It was practiced in public life — in shared ceremonies, prayers and generosity. To read those accounts today, including parallels from the Upper Midwest in the United States, is to remember that the heartlands of both nations have long offered examples worth keeping.

Our headlines now tell harder stories: threats at schools, vandalized sanctuaries, neighbours attacked for how they worship — evidence of renewed antisemitism and xenophobia.

The past does not present perfection, but it reminds us that pluralism is an inheritance to be chosen again and again. When Winnipeggers and Edmontonians gathered in fellowship nearly a century apart, they offered a model of community that still speaks to the present.

The choice remains.

As one participant in the 1889 cornerstone service, Bessie Finklestein, wrote on behalf of the “Hebrews of Manitoba,” she hoped that “the mortar with which you cement this stone be typical of goodwill and universal charity which should be spread over our actions with one another.” Her words still hold. The work of pluralism is never finished; it must be renewed with every generation.

Pluralism, like justice, survives only when tended.

Austin Albanese is a writer and historian based in Rochester, N.Y. His work on interfaith history has appeared in the Washington Post, Des Moines Register, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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