Ezekiel Hart
Jewish Canadian entrepreneur and politician
Ezekiel Hart (15 May 1770 – 16 September 1843) was an entrepreneur and politician in British North America. He is often said to be the first Jew to be elected to public office in the British Empire.
He was elected twice by the voters of Trois-Rivières to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada. Some members consistently prevented him from taking his seat by observing that as a Jew, he could not take the oath of office, which included the phrase "on the true faith of a Christian".
Biography
Early life
Ezekiel Hart was born May 15, 1770, at Trois-Rivières, Quebec, to Dorothea (née Judah) and Aaron Hart. His father was a member of the British forces, and a well-known and successful businessman in Lower Canada. He obtained part of his education in the United States and, along with his brother Benjamin, served as a colonel in the militia during the American War of Independence. He began participating in his father's fur trade activities in 1792.
On January 29, 1794, he married Frances Lazarus, niece of Ephraim Hart. Hart and his brothers Moses and Benjamin established a brewery in Trois-Rivières, the M. and E. Hart Company, in 1796.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3062816. VIAF identifies the subject as 12176695. The Library of Congress control number is nr93007318. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1770, 1843, 1792 and 1794.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ezekiel Hart” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.