In the summer of 2005, two remarkable individuals, Elizabeth and Tony Comper, founded Fighting Antisemitism Together. The organization was known by its acronym FAST.
The Compers were outraged by a series of antisemitic incidents in Toronto and Montreal. Their shock reached its peak with the firebombing, in April 2004, of the library at the United Talmud Torah Jewish Day School in Montreal. And so, they took action.
Some short months later, they founded FAST. But there was a defining feature to the organization that bespoke its abiding insight into the fight against antisemitism and indeed, against all societal hatreds and intolerance. Tony Comper, at that time the president and chief executive officer of BMO Financial Group, explained that feature in an address to the Empire Club in the summer of 2005.
The following is an excerpt from the report in The Canadian Jewish News of the event.
“I am here,” Comper told the hundreds assembled at the Empire Club, “because my wife, Elizabeth, and I believe that in the end, this is a crisis [the rise of anti-Semitism] that must be resolved by non-Jews. That is why we founded FAST… as one way of crying: ‘Enough!’ And why we recruited an all-star cast of non-Jewish Canadian business leaders… to the cause.”
Some of the founding members whom the Compers recruited to FAST were Courtney Pratt, president and chief executive officer of Stelco Inc., Michael J. Sabia, president and chief executive officer of Bell Canada Enterprises and Dominic D’Allesandro, president and chief executive officer of Manulife Financial.
“Comper spoke movingly of his and his wife’s resolve in their campaign against anti-Semitism.
He concluded his remarks by invoking the famous articulation by the late scholar, philosopher Emil Fackenheim, of a 614th commandment, that Jews are forbidden to give Hitler a posthumous victory by shying away from or
“I am here today,” Comper told the hushed and utterly attentive audience, “because I believe that this should not be a lonely battle – as it has so often been, for so many, for so long. And because I believe that this 614th commandment is something we all should be living by.”
FAST’s first educational project, developed in close partnership with the Canadian Jewish Congress, Ontario Region, was a curriculum-based learning program called Choose Your Voice, for use initially in grades 6, 7 and 8 of Ontario schools. A decade later, Choose Your Voice had been used by over two million students in more than 19,000 schools in every province and territory in Canada. FAST won the Canadian Race Relations Foundation Award of Excellence 2010. Indeed, Tony and Elizabeth Comper received numerous honours and awards from educational and human rights organization in Canada, and in Israel, in recognition of their initiative, courage and exemplary goodness.
In his ground-breaking remarks to the Empire Club in June 2005, Comper explained that FAST was no starry-eyed project divorced from the hard realities of the persistent hatred he and Elizabeth were determined to fight. “We realize that this initiative – and for that matter, any others that FAST may undertake – is unlikely to touch the hearts and minds of the real hard-core crowd, the ones who most likely learned their hatred at the parental knee,” Comper said.
“But it could serve to further marginalize them, which sometimes is the best you can do when dealing with bullies and bigots… First, by stripping them of their potential power base, the people who really don’t know any better; and who, for whatever reasons, haven’t sought out the truth for themselves.
“Second, by going one step further and helping to encourage active opposition to the Jew-haters and racists and assorted other bigots and bullies the moment they start telling their despicable lies or making their ugly, pathetic ‘jokes.’ We believe if the truth can make us free, it should also make us bold.”
Alas, on June 22, 2014, Elizabeth passed away. Teaching was her calling. Profound compassion and abiding virtue were deeply embedded in her nature. She understood in her bones and was known to say that “the best way of securing the future was by teaching young people today.”
In 2021, FAST merged with the Canadian Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA), a scholarly organization that publishes the academic journal Antisemitism Studies.
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Writing in Policy Magazine: Canadian Politics and Public Policy, in July 2024,Hon. Kevin Lynch, former Clerk of the Privy Council and vice chair of BMO Financial Group, and Paul Deegan, CEO of Deegan Public Strategies and formerly public affairs executive at BMO and CN, reiterated the Compers’ plea that all of society, not just the Jews, must become engaged in the fight against antisemitism.
In an article entitled, It’s Time for Corporate Canada to Take Action on Antisemitism, they wrote: “….coalitions against antisemitism, with leadership from non-Jewish pillars of the business community, are needed even more today.
“…Canada needs a new forum for Jews and non-Jews to come together to combat this ancient hatred. This is an issue for non-Jews to address, as Comper wisely noted some twenty years ago, and business leadership can be crucial to progress. With the scourge of antisemitism on the rise, it’s time for today’s generation of CEOs to step up and show real leadership and allyship – not just in their own workplaces, but in the broader community – to ensure that the Jewish community feels not just believed, but supported.”
We note, sadly – to emphasize the urgency of the pleas by the late Elizabeth Comper, Tony Comper – and then reinforced 20 years later, i.e., today – by Kevin Lynch and Paul Deegan – that when she resigned her post earlier this year as Canada’s antisemitism envoy, Deborah Lyons told The CJN that over time, she grew “despondent and despairing” over how few Canadians stood up against anti-Jewish hatred.
It is understood and accepted – or should be – by all sentient, law-abiding people that antisemitism threatens cherished democratic norms and civil society as well as Jews. This is the key lesson that the Compers, their corporate and business colleagues in FAST, Lynch and Deegan attempted to impress upon us all.
Their clarion voices should have been joined, unceasingly, by those of our government leaders of all levels. But we do not hear them. Nor have we heard them since October 7, 2023, except, if at all, as platitudes. Shame.
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Shabbat shalom
Am Yisrael Chai
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
January 16, 2026
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 