Lea’s biography

1903-2000

All my life I have stood with the working men and women.
I was proud to belong to the rank-and-file.
Whenever I said “we,” I meant “we,” what we could achieve together.
That’s what I loved.

“I’m acting out of my deepest conviction.” You have to tell yourself:
Come what may, I’m going ahead; if it succeeds, so much the better;
If not, I’ll find another way or just move on.
There is nothing sadder than people with no enthusiasm.

What’s important is learning to be human,
learning that we are all alike

Look out the window. The sky’s almost covered.
Some grayish white clouds, some almost black,
But between them you can see a bit of blue.
I focus on the blue

Photographie reproduite avec avec l’aimable autorisation des Archives de la Bibliothèque juive de Montréal
Courtesy of Jewish Public Library Archives, Montreal

Lea Roback was born in Montreal in 1903 to a Jewish family of Polish origin. One of nine children, she grew up in Beauport, near Quebec City. As a child, she already felt that she resembled her paternal grandmother, Lieba, a divorced, eccentric, fiercely independent woman, brimming with creativity and vitality.

Lea returned to Montreal at the age of 15 to work for a dyer and then as a cashier at Her Majesty’s Theatre on Guy Street. She saved all her earnings to travel to Grenoble and study literature. When she ran out of money, she returned to Montreal “where there was nothing to do,” only to leave again, this time for New York where she worked in offices and stores before travelling to Berlin to join her brother in 1927. There, she witnessed the rise of Hitler and anti-Semitism and joined the German Communist Party. To escape Hitler’s raids, Lea returned to Montreal in 1932, and began, with Norman Bethune, to organize action to support people without work, while earning her living at the Jewish Women’s “Y”. In 1934, she left once again, this time to join a lover in the Soviet Union where she spent three months observing the Russian Revolution only to return home again, vowing more than ever not to marry and to devote herself, body and soul, to the struggle against injustice. She campaigned for Fred Rose, Communist Party candidate in St. Henri, supported the suffragette movement and opened the first Marxist book store in Montreal. In 1936, she was a union organizer during the International Ladies Garment Workers Union strike. In 1941, she organized the RCA Victor union in St. Henri, where she remained until 1952.

After she left the Communist Party at the end of the 1950’s, Lea spent several years caring for her brother’s family when he became ill and fought hard for peace with the Voice of Women. For another forty years, she took part in all the struggles: against the war in Vietnam, racism, war toys, for access to housing, education, for the right to a free abortion, and wage equity. At the dawn of the 21st century, on August 28, 2000, at the age of 96, still in fighting spirit, Lea suffered a fatal accident in the district of Côte-des-Neiges, a neighborhood she always loved.

Photographie reproduite avec l’aimable autorisation des Archives de la Bibliothèque juive de Montréal
Courtesy of Jewish Public Library Archives, Montreal

All rights reserved © Lea Roback Foundation 2002 and 2005

Tous droits réservés © Fondation Léa-Roback 2002 et 2005