GRAY, MORRIS ABRAHAM

GRAY, MORRIS ABRAHAM (Moishe Guraryeh ; 1989–1966), Winnipeg community leader and politician. Gray was born near Gomel, Russia, to Abraham and Sara Guraryeh. He came to Canada in 1907 at age 18 and settled in Winnipeg. By 1917 he was a leader in the Winnipeg Jewish community, serving as secretary of the Hilfs Farband, an early mutual aid society, and of the Western Canada Jewish War Relief campaign to aid sufferers in World War i. He took a leading part in immigrant aid work and by 1923 was serving as secretary of the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society in Western Canada and served as president of the Jewish Children's Aid and Orphanage of Western Canada. Gray was a pioneer of the Labor Zionist movement in Western Canada and a founder of the Canadian Jewish Congress in 1919. First elected to public office in 1926, Gray served first as school trustee, then as Winnipeg city alderman for 16 years, endorsed by the Independent Labour Party. In 1941 he was elected as ccf member of the Manitoba Legislature, where he served for 25 years until his death.

In political office Gray campaigned for welfare for the unemployed, for increased old age pensions, and for anti-discrimination laws and a Bill of Rights, as well as for the establishment of a Manitoba Dental College. But his Jewish political engagement was also strong. During the Depression he worked with the Jewish Colonization Association to place unemployed Jews on farms, he was a founder of the Jewish Economic Bureau, which considered economic problems affecting Jews, he was president of the Jewish National Workers Alliance, and he was active in the reorganization of the Canadian Jewish Congress in 1934. He campaigned against antisemitism and was a leader in the anti-Nazi protest movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Gray was also a founder of the Labor Zionist's Histadrut Campaign in Western Canada. In 1957, he was honored at Winnipeg's annual Negev Dinner to mark the 50^th anniversary of his arrival in Canada.

[Abraham Arnold (2^nd ed.)]