‘Stand up to hate’: 90 years since the riot at Toronto’s Christie Pits – Toronto | Globalnews.ca

Today marks the 90th anniversary of the Christie Pits riot, an outbreak of violence following a softball game at a Toronto park that historians have described as one of the worst incidents of ethnically or religiously motivated unrest in the city’s history.

The riot on Aug. 16, 1933, began after a group of young men unfurled a banner with a black swastika following the game, which featured a team of mostly Jewish teenagers.

Historians say that during the estimated six-hour brawl triggered by the banner, young people from Italian and Ukrainian backgrounds supported the Jewish side against the apparent Nazi sympathizers.

Cyril Levitt, co-author of the 1987 book “The Riot at Christie Pits,” which helped inform Canadians about the scale of the violence, says it is crucial for the public to remain informed about the incident.

Sam Rosenthal, whose grandfather owned a drugstore near Christie Pits in 1933, has created a theatrical production to educate school groups about the riots and the antisemitism of the era, which he says was a “crazy” time in Toronto.

He says that if a group of young people “didn’t stand up to hate on that day,” the level of racism and bigotry directed at Jews and other immigrant groups across the city may have been substantially worse.