Discovery; or, the Ferment of Jewish Montreal in the Fifties

We present here the fifth chapter from the memoirs-in-progress of the renowned scholar and author Ruth R. Wisse. Earlier chapters can be found here. Further installments will appear over the next months.

In college, which I entered in the fall of 1953, I was as free as I would ever be. By then, McGill University had done away with measures restricting the number of Jewish undergraduates and was admitting any local student who had scored well in Quebec’s provincial examinations. All of my friends made the cut—although for some the annual tuition of about $300 required a real sacrifice on the part of their families.

But they, too, gave the impression of being as carefree as I felt—so carefree, in my case, that I arranged with a friend to hitchhike from home to McGill’s downtown campus for class. The idea was not to save money on bus fare but to experience a more venturesome form of transportation.