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‘I love every square meter of this country’: Jim Carr, Canadian Jewish MP, dies at 71
(JTA) — Jim Carr was close to death from myeloma, a blood cancer, when he gave one of his last interviews to the Canadian national broadcaster, the CBC.
The Jewish Liberal member of the Canadian parliament from Winnipeg went on air ostensibly to speak about the passage of a bill he authored promoting an environmentally friendly economy in the prairie provinces that nurtured him into adulthood.
But he made it about the country he had represented in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, the country he helped market abroad as the minister of international trade diversification from 2018 to 2019.
“Physically not great,” he said when a reporter asked him how he was doing, “but emotionally really, really solid and grateful for the chance to continue to contribute to my country. I love every square meter of this country in English, en Francais, in Indigenous languages — I wish I spoke more of them — in the language of the newly arrived and all that represents to Canada and Canadians.”
It was an identity he wrapped into his Jewishness. “I can’t separate my values and political views from my identity as a Canadian and as a member of the Jewish community,” he told the Canadian Jewish News when he was first elected to the federal parliament in 2015.
Carr died at 71 on Dec. 12, days after Canadian lawmakers passed his bill, Building a Green Prairie Economy. Members of parliament of all parties praised him as a moderate who sought to bring rivals together to better his country.
Carr had been able to speak on the floor of parliament the day the bill passed. In his remarks, he strayed from the topic at hand to praise the Canadian traditions of moderation and cooperation, frayed in recent years by increased polarization.
“The wisdom of inviting witnesses to add thoughtful commentary and an opposition that has been respectful though occasionally dissenting are what a democracy is all about, and it is always rooted in strengthening the national fabric, woven as it is from those mini threads that make Canada the envy of the world,” he said.
“With resources, natural and human, comes responsibility to each other and to the world itself. How could we not be humbled by the greatness of this magnificent country?”
Trudeau teared up in a scheduled end-of-year interview with the Canadian Press, a wire service, when asked about Carr’s death. Carr’s contributions to his Cabinet, in which Carr served in various roles from 2015 to 2021, were imbued “with such a passionate thoughtfulness about the country and how all the parts needed to fit together in order for us to be what we wanted to be.”
Carr was born the descendant of Russian Jewish immigrants in Winnipeg’s closely-knit Jewish community. He said his Jewish upbringing, and the antisemitism he encountered as a teenager, helped shape him and informed his leading efforts to bring Canadian Jews and Muslims together. He was a member of the Jewish-Muslim caucus in the Liberal Party and founded Arab-Jewish Dialogue of Winnipeg.
As trade diversification minister, he led a mission to Israel in 2018. “I’m delighted as (a) Jewish member of Parliament and as a Jewish member of the cabinet to be here representing Canada,” the Canadian Jewish News quoted Carr as saying on that trip.
Carr served in the Manitoba legislature from 1988 to 1992 and as executive director of a number of groups, including the Business Council of Manitoba, and was well-regarded in the province. Trudeau recruited him to run for office as part of his successful strategy to regain power for the Liberals in 2015.
Despite his extensive career in politics, Carr always harbored an affection for one of his first jobs, oboist in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.
Marc Garneau, a Liberal colleague in parliament from Quebec and a former astronaut, posted his “best remembrance” of Carr on Twitter.
“He asked me if I took music in Space and I mentioned [Alessandro] Marcello’s Oboe concerto,” Garneau said. “He then told me he played the oboe and we cooked up the idea for him to play the 2nd movement at Liberal national caucus.
“He was excellent.”
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The post ‘I love every square meter of this country’: Jim Carr, Canadian Jewish MP, dies at 71 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘The Art of the Yiddish Monologue’ and other mini-courses in Yiddish
במשך פֿונעם חודש יאַנואַר 2026 וועט ייִוואָ פֿירן די ווײַטערדיקע מיני־קורסן אויף ייִדיש:
• „די קונסט פֿונעם ייִדישן מאָנאָלאָג“, וווּ מע וועט לייענען און אַרומרעדן מאָנאָלאָגן פֿון שלום עליכם, י. לץ פּרץ, דער טונקעלער, ב. קאָוונער, משה נאַדיר, רחל ברכות און יצחק באַשעוויס. מע וועט אויל אַרומרעדן די געשיכטע פֿונעם מאָנאָלאָג אין ייִדישן טעאַטער (שיין בייקער)
• שעפֿעריש שרײַבן, וווּ מע וועט אויפֿן סמך פֿון ליטעראַטור־מוסטערן באַטראַכטן די וויכטיקע באַשטאַנדטיילן פֿון פּראָזע — שפּראַך, סטיל, דיאַלאָג, געשטאַלט און פּייסאַזש (באָריס סאַנדלער)
• יצחק־לייבוש פּרץ און זײַנע באַציִונגען מיט די נײַ־געבוירענע ייִדישע סאָציאַליסטישע קרײַזן אין משך פֿון די 1890ער יאָרן (עדי מהלאל)
• די גרויסע אַקטריסע אסתּר רחל קאַמינסקאַ, וווּ די סטודענטן וועלן לייענען אירע זכרונות אויף ייִדיש (מיכל יאַשינסקי)
• די לידער פֿון דוד האָפֿשטײן, וואָס איז מערקווירדיק צוליב זײַן צונױפֿפֿלעכט פֿון דײַטשישע, רוסישע און אוקראַיִנישע ליטעראַרישע טראַדיציעס מיט תּנכישע און מאָדערנע ייִדישע השפּעות (יודזשין אָרנשטיין)
• די ייִוואָ־גדולים אין זייערע אייגענע ווערטער, וווּ מע וועט לייענען די שריפֿטן פֿון א. טשעריקאָװער, מ. װײַנרײַך, י. לעשטשינסקי, י. מאַרק, ש. ניגער, נ. פּרילוצקי, ז. קלמנאָװיטש, ז. רייזען, י. שאַצקי און נ. שטיף (דוד בראַון)
The post ‘The Art of the Yiddish Monologue’ and other mini-courses in Yiddish appeared first on The Forward.
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Suspect at Large in Brown University Shooting that Killed at Least Two, Injured Eight
Police vehicles stand near the site of a mass shooting reported by authorities at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, U.S., December 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Taylor Coester
Police in Rhode Island were searching for a suspect in a shooting at Brown University in Providence in which two people died and eight were critically wounded at the Ivy League school, officials said.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley told a news conference that police were still searching for the shooter, who struck at Brown’s Barus & Holley engineering building, where exams were taking place at the time. Officials said police were looking for a male dressed in black and were scouring local video cameras in the area for footage to get a better description of the suspect.
Smiley said officials could not yet disclose details about the victims, including whether they were students. He lamented the shooting.
“We are a week and a half away from Christmas. And two people died today and another eight are in the hospital,” he said. “So please pray for those families.”
Brown is on College Hill in Providence, Rhode Island‘s state capital. The university has hundreds of buildings, including lecture halls, laboratories and dormitories.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had been briefed on the situation, which he called “terrible.”
“All we can do right now is pray for the victims and for those that were very badly hurt.”
Compared to many countries, mass shootings in schools, workplaces, and places of worship are more common in the US, which has some of the most permissive gun laws in the developed world. The Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shootings as any incident in which four or more victims have been shot, has counted 389 of them this year in the US.
Last year the US had more than 500 mass shootings, according to the archive.
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Rights Groups Condemn Re-Arrest of Nobel Laureate Mohammadi in Iran
Taghi Ramahi, husband of Narges Mohammadi, a jailed Iranian women’s rights advocate, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, poses with an undated photo of himself and his wife, during an interview at his home in Paris, France, October 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
International human rights groups have condemned the re-arrest of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi in Iran, with the Nobel committee calling on Iranian authorities to immediately clarify her whereabouts.
Mohammadi’s French lawyer, Chirine Ardakani, said on X that the human rights activist was arrested on Friday after denouncing the suspicious death of lawyer Khosrow Alikordi at his memorial ceremony in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Mashhad prosecutor Hasan Hematifar told reporters on Saturday that Mohammadi was among 39 people arrested after the ceremony.
Hematifar said she and Alikordi’s brother had made provocative remarks at the event and encouraged those present “to chant ‘norm‑breaking’ slogans” and disturb the peace, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
The prosecutor said Mashhad’s chief of police and another officer received knife wounds when trying to manage the scene.
CALLS FOR RELEASE
The Norwegian Nobel Committee called on Iranian authorities “to immediately clarify Mohammadi’s whereabouts, ensure her safety and integrity, and to release her without conditions.”
The European Union also called for Mohammadi’s release. “The EU urges Iranian authorities to release Ms Mohammadi, taking also into account her fragile health condition, as well as all those unjustly arrested in the exercise of their freedom of expression,” an EU spokesperson said on Saturday.
A video purportedly showing Mohammadi, 53, without the mandatory veil, standing on a car with a microphone and chanting “Long Live Iran” in front of a crowd, has gone viral on social media.
Ardakani said Mohammadi was beaten before her arrest.
Reporters Without Borders said four journalists and other participants were also arrested at the memorial for human rights lawyer Alikordi, who was found dead in his office on December 5.
Authorities gave the cause of his death as a heart attack, but rights groups have called for an investigation into his death.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said the crowd also chanted “death to the dictator,” a reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as: “We fight, we die, we accept no humiliation.”
Mohammadi, who received the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize, has spent more than 10 years of her life in prison, most recently from November 2021 when she was charged with “propaganda against the state,” “acting against national security,” and membership of “illegal organizations.”
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, the Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, said on Saturday that the opposition’s campaign in Venezuela was akin to that taking place in Iran.
“In Oslo this week, the world honored the power of conscience. I said to the ‘citizens of the world’ that our struggle is a long march toward freedom. That march is not Venezuelan alone. It is Iranian, it is universal,” she said on X on Saturday.