Canada largest communities are Toronto (175,000) and Montreal (100,000), followed by Vancouver (30,000). Winnipeg (15,000), Ottawa (12,000), Calgary (7,500), Hamilton (5,000) and Edmonton (5,000). The level of intermarriage has increased over the last ten years, but remains significantly lower than in the United States. Most of the community is Ashkenazi, but there is a large population of French-speaking Moroccan Jews in Montreal. In the last decade, primarily due to immigration, Canadian Jewry grew by 14%, making it one of the fastest-growing communities in the Diaspora. Twenty-five percent of all the Jews who immigrated to Canada in the past ten years were born in the Soviet Union or its successor states, and 20% in Israel (an estimated 30,000 Israelis live in Canada). History After their exclusion during the period of French rule, Jews arrived together with the British soldiers who made their homes in Montreal. The first synagogue, Shaarei Israel, was consecrated there in 1768. The census of 1831 recorded 107 Jews (but there were probably others who did not declare their religion). In 1832 Canadian Jews were granted full civil rights. However, until the 1850�s aside from a few Jews scattered throughout the country, nearly all of Canadian Jewry lived in Montreal. In the 1850�s Jewish immigrants arrived from Lithuania and began to settle in Toronto and Hamilton, raising the number of Jews to 2,500 by the early 1880�s. This was a watershed year for Canadian Jewry. Russian oppression brought a new influx of Jewish refugees which increased the Jewish population to 16,000 in 1900 and to 126,000 in 1921. In the face of the Nazi onslaught against European Jews, Canada slammed its doors shut. In the years preceding the war, and during the Holocaust itself, only a few thousand Jews managed to find sanctuary there (2,000 in 1940). The energetic campaign of the Canadian Jewish Congress after the war helped to open the gates to Holocaust survivors and refugees from North Africa. This immigration significantly increased the size of Canadian Jewry from 170,000 (1941) to 260,000 (1961). Twenty years ago, the communities of Montreal and Toronto were similar in size (i.e. 100,000), but over the years many Jews moved from Montreal to Toronto out of concern for the consequence of a possible Quebec breakaway. In the past twenty years Toronto�s Jewish community has grown by 70%