By BERNIE BELLAN In March 2023 Moe Levy retired as executive director of the Asper Foundation, after 23 1/2 years in that position.

To that point Levy had been the only person to hold that position. In an April 2014 column about Levy I wrote about how he had come to fill that role. Prior to becoming executive director of the Asper Foundation, Levy had an extensive background in both the public and the private sectors.
After coming to Canada from his native Bombay, with a stop in Israel along the way, Levy entered university here, acquiring both a Bachelors and Masters in Business Administration from the University of Manitoba.
As I noted in my 2014 article, “Levy says that he began to work for the Manitoba government as soon as he graduated from university here. ‘I started off as a consultant, he explained. In two years ‘I created the first business incubator program in Canada,” he said with pride. ‘It was called ‘Enterprise Manitoba.’
“One of the programs that grew out of that particular initiative was something called ‘Business Start”,’which saw young entrepreneurs receive $5,000 grants from the government,’ ” Levy added.

Later, Levy was involved in various other enterprises, including joint ownership (with his brother) of what became two well known restaurants in Winnipeg (although both have since closed): Moskowitz and Moskowitz” (at the corner of Mayfair and Main), then Schmeckers (in St. James).
As I noted, however, Levy and his brother eventually sold the restaurants. “ ‘I couldn’t stand the restaurant business,’ Levy explained.”
In 1993, along with other investors, Moe bought a company known as the Northern Fur Exchange – which is where I first met Moe and his late wife Barbara (who was heavily involved in managing the company), when I went there to do a story about the business.
“But, by 1999, Levy says, he ‘wanted to take the company in a different direction than his partners, so he sold his interest to them and began to take stock of where he wanted to go
from there.
“ ‘I was 51 years old. I saw an ad in the Globe and Mail. It was an ad for a Jewish foundation (in Winnipeg). It didn’t say exactly which foundation. The ad was for an executive director for that foundation.’
“ ‘I threw my name into the hat,’ he said, without knowing that he was applying to be executive director of the Asper Foundation. Levy had met Izzy Asper only once before – in 1997, when Asper was in the process of endowing the Asper Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Manitoba. While the two men eventually forged a close relationship, it was as a result of Izzy’s sudden death in 2003 that Moe Levy found himself working hand-in-hand with Izzy’s daughter, Gail.
“While the Hebrew University was the major focus of the Asper family’s involvement in Israel for years, Gail paid tribute to the Asper Foundation’s work in Israel having ‘greatly expanded’ since Moe Levy became executive director of the Foundation,” I wrote in that 2014 article.

This past May 22, Moe Levy was the guest speaker for the Remis Luncheon group. His talk was advertised this way: “Moe will recount many compelling and funny stories of working with Izzy, one of Canada’s leading philanthropists and entrepreneurs. including the initial vision for the Canadian Mureum for Human Rights, the Asper School of Business, and many ground breaking projects in Winnipeg and Israel.”
Before he began his talk I asked Moe whether anything he was about to say would be off the record. He thought about it and replied that if he were going to say anything that he didn’t want recorded, he would let me know. As it was, he only thought of going off the record once – and even though he didn’t say: “This is off the record,” the fact that he even contemplated it led me not to repeat what he had said. (As you read on, you’ll find what it is that I withheld printing.)

Levy began by recalling sitting in Izzy Asper’s “beautiful back yard” one July evening in 2000. “He had just given away $50 million in the last 10 months. I started on September 1, 1999 and, in six months – $10 million to the Jewish Foundation, $10 million to the Winnipeg Foundation, $5 million to St. Boniface (Hospital), $5 million to the Hebrew U…”
“I had just come back from visiting the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Izzy’s passion for human rights goes back to 1973 when he tabled the first Bill of Rights in the Manitoba Legislature.” (Asper was leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party at the time. I remember interviewing him for a paper I was writing about the Manitoba Liberal Party.)
During the course of that evening, Levy said, Izzy broached the idea of building a human rights museum in Winnipeg. “Later that night, around midnight,” Levy continued, “the phone rang.”
“It has to be Izzy,” Moe’s wife (the late) Barbara said.
Picking up the phone, Levy observed that Izzy told him, “You know that idea we spoke about tonight? After you left, I went downtown and I found the land that we’re going to build this museum on…It’s the same site on which the museum is located today,” Levy noted.
“But,” Levy added, Izzy also told him: “It’s Tuesday night. By Friday I want you to get the land – to tie up the land.”
“But Izzy,” Levy said he asked Asper, “there are a lot of levels of government to go through.”
“Don’t worry,” Asper replied, “Just tell the guys I sent you and it’ll get done.”

Levy told a story about the first trip he took with Asper. It was on Asper’s private jet; they were flying to Toronto. As you might expect, if you knew anything about Izzy Asper, “the cabin was full of smoke.”
The purpose of the meeting was to meet with “two of the most important Zionist figures” in the history of Israel, Levy said: “Smoky Simon – who created the Israel Air Force; and Harry Horowitz” (who had deep roots in right wing Zionist causes, according to information on the World Zionist Organization website). Simon and Horowitz wanted “to get a million dollars for the Menachem Begin Centre.” (Incidentally Levy also mentioned that Horowitz had once come to Winnipeg at Sid Halpern’s invitation. Sid Halpern is a regular attendee at the Remis Grooup Luncheons and Levy was looking right at him when he made that remark.)
(What I find so contradictory about Izzy Asper, however, was that, as a supposed staunch defender of human rights, his actions belied the notion that he was a champion of human rights. Anyone who admired Menachem Begin, for instance, could hardly have been considered an advocate for human rights – unless by human rights you meant the rights of certain groups, but not others. Oh well, we’re all full of contradictions, aren’t we?)

Levy went on to describe his “life with Izzy as nothing short of amazing, exhilirating, exciting, such as “putting together the jazz series…” Apparently, according to Levy, Asper would go so far as to choose the playlist for any jazz concert performer (sounds like Trump), but “come Monday morning,” Levy said, “I would receive a memo from Izzy saying they did not play the playlist in the order I gave it to them!”
Also, according to Levy, Asper couldn’t just sit back and enjoy the jazz concerts. Instead, he would head up to the top of the Berney Theatre (home to the Asper Jazz Series) and “count the empty seats.”
Again, in addition to complaining about artists not following his playlist instructions, Asper would complain about empty seats in that same Monday morning memo. Since the concert series was invariably sold out in those years, any empty seat signified a subscriber not having shown up.
In that same memo Asper would complain, for instance, that “there were 17 empty seats. Those subscribers could have given their seats to someone else!”

The subject of Holocaust education was also something that was very important to Asper, Levy noted. “Izzy recognized very early on that we needed to reach not the Jewish kids, but the non-Jewish kids, so that over the course of time we’ve sent 14-15,000 kids on trips to Washington” (to visit the Holocaust Museum).

Another memorable incident which had a connection to Asper and in which Levy played a part, albeit a minor one, was “the Concordia riot” of 2002.
“Concordia” (University, in Montreal) ” was a hotbed for antsemitism,” Levy explained.
Along with Rabbi (Joshua) Poupkow, who was from Montreal, Levy and Asper decided (in September 2002) that it would be a good idea “to bring BB Netanyahu to Montreal to speak at Concordia. He (Netanyahu) was in between jobs, after serving as Finance Minister (of Israel), then Prime Minister, he was on the speakers’ circuit. So, we paid him …to come for three lectures: Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg.” (Levy wasn’t sure whether the exact amount Netanyahu paid should be published, so I won’t repeat the figure here. Suffice to say, it was a huge amount.)
“We knew that” the pro-Palestinians had as their aim that, “if Netanyahu shows up, he’s never, ever going to speak at Concordia. So this became a major challenge for Izzy. ‘I’m going to bring him here (Montreal) and I’m going to make sure he speaks,’ ” Levy said was what Asper wanted to do.
“Of course, BB always wanted to fly on a private jet, so Izzy – who had other things to do, told me to take his private jet and go pick up BB.”
“So I flew on Izzy’s private jet to pick up BB. I’ll never forget – his wallet was about this thick (and here Levy gestured with his fingers showing how thick Netanyahu’s wallet was) and it was full of thousand dollar bills,” Levy observed.
“Anyway, by this time, the press is full of stories – about how students are going to stop him from speaking,” Levy said. “So we land – and Netanyahu has one security guy with him and, I’m not kidding, he was about this high (gesturing to show that he was very short). But he had a lot of guns on him. I don’t know how many.”
“There are about 20 police cars waiting for us and they wouldn’t let the security guy off the airplane with the guns, so we sat while” diplomats negotiated how many guns the guard might be allowed to take with him and, in the end, “he was allowed to take one gun with him.”
As one might have expected, there was a huge crowd of demonstrators surrounding the hotel where Netanyahu was staying (the Ritz-Carlton).
Netanyahu though, was determined to speak at Concordia. However, his “security guy got on the phone with the Mossad in Israel and they said there was no frigging way they were going to let him speak. So his security guy told him he’s not going anywhere.
“But BB, all of a sudden, decides he wants a haircut. Someone tells him there’s an Arab barber in the basement. He was asked whether he was okay with that?”
He answered, “absolutely.”
Levy described the ensuing scene: There’s BB sitting in a chair, with this “Arab guy giving him a haircut,” while BB’s security guy has his hand resting over his jacket where his gun is – ready to spring into action if needed.
The upshot was that BB “was not allowed to speak.” A riot did take place at the Sir George Williams campus of Concordia University. Levy noted that there were two documentaries made about the riot, (one by the National Film Board, titled “Dicordia,” and the other by filmmaker Martin Himel, titled “Confrontation at Concordia.”)

Another story Levy told was about a meeting held between Asper and then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien to discuss federal funding for the Human Rights Museum. (Levy says the meeting was held at the Prime Minister’s residence in Ottawa, but every other source that I was able to check referred to a meeting at Izzy Asper’s Palm Beach residence, in 2001. Perhaps there were two meetings.)
In either event, Levy said that, as the only other person in the room during that meeting, he was fascinated with the notion that the most powerful man in Canada at the time, Jean Chretien – according to Maclean’s Magazine, was meeting with the second most powerful man, Izzy Asper, again – according to Maclean’s Magazine,
As Levy described it, “there’s these two guys, arguing over how much money” the federal goverment would be willing to commit to the building of the human rights museum. “There was something explicit going on between these two guys. I thought: ‘You two guys use that kind of language with each other?’ “

Asper always liked to dream, Levy noted. For example, where the skating rink now sits on the Asper Campus, “he wanted to build a 500 seat concert hall,” Levy said.
He told another story about a trip Izzy and Gail Asper took one day in 1999 to Steinbach, where they were supposed to meet with Chuck Loewen of Loewen Windows. The purpose was to hit up Loewen for a contribution to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which was still only a dream that Izzy wanted to bring to fruition at that point. Although one of Canada’s most successful businessmen by then – perhaps actually the most successful at that time, Izzy was not above doing the grunt work that was indispensable to raising enough money for the museum project – so that eventually the idea was that with enough privately donated money, it would leverage the federal government into contributing to the project as well.
Levy said that, while sitting in his oiffice, he got a call from Gail, who said, “Moe, we’re at Marion and Lagimodiere. How do we get to Steinbach?” It turned out they were in the wrong lane, but eventually, after much explaining which way to go, Izzy and Gail did make it to Steinbach, Levy observed.

Levy recalled the say he heard the news that Izzy had suffered a massive heart attack – and had died. “It was October 7, 2003, and we were on our way to Vancouver to launch an international architectural competition” for the design of the new museum.
Izzy Asper’s funeral was one of the largest ever held in Winnipeg. It attracted former prime ministers, the then-Prime Minister (Chretien), and a host of dignitaries from all walks of life. The day that Izzy died, Levy added, he was supposed to have received an honourary Indigenous title from Manitoba Grand Chief Phil Fontaine, which, translated into English, Levy explained, was “He who walks among the stars.”
Levy said: “What can I say about Izzy except that he was charismatic, a raconteur, bon vivant, had a great sense of humour, was an entertainer…he lived a hundred lives.”
Later in his talk, Levy added this about Izzy Asper: “He was the kind of guy who made you think you could accomplish anything. He made you sit there – and imagine and, before you knew it, you were doing things well beyond what you thought was your own capacity.”

In describing the effort that went into fundraising for the museum, Levy noted that “When you think about it, 75% of the money privately raised came from this little city (Winnipeg) – $115 million.” That fact was pivotal in then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s coming forward with a major contribution from the federal government: $100 million plus $21.7 million annually for operating costs.
Turning to Izzy Asper’s “passion for Israel,” Levy described Izzy’s support for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, saying that Izzy was determined to undertake the human rights museum project without sacrificing any of his commitment to the State of Israel.
Levy noted that “in a month the Hebrew University is going to celebrate its hundredth anniversary. Who was there (at its founding)? Einstein, Freud, Buber – the greatest minds that ever lived,” he suggested.