Some time between Saturday December 26th and Sunday December 27th, someone spray-painted a swastika and a threatening message on the Alex Hope Elementary school at 21150 85th Ave. in Walnut Grove.

It read “we are everywhere.” Area resident Robert Causley, who spotted it early in the morning Sunday, called it “awful,” “appalling,” and “beyond the pale.”

He hopes the RCMP will be able to find the person or persons responsible. “I assume it happened last night,” Causley speculated.

“I walk my dog through the park [near the school] every morning , and I didn’t see it last night.”

In previous incidents, the district has had staff covering over offensive graffiti as soon as possible, and the schools following up with conversations about code of conduct and respectful behavior with students. Clean-up costs come out of the district’s budget.

Antisemitic incidents like these are on the rise in Canada, according to B’nai Brith Canada’s 2019 annual audit of antisemitic incidents released in April. It shows 2019 was the fourth consecutive record-setting year, up 8.1 per cent from the previous year.

The 2,207 incidents reported in 2019 amounted to over six antisemitic incidents occurring every day.

Biggest increases were in Ontario and Quebec, with 62.8 per cent and 12.3 per cent more incidents, respectively, than in 2018.

While online hatred accounts for most of the antisemitic harassment in Canada, the report said face-to-face harassment almost doubled in 2019. Both forms of harassment “skyrocketed at primary and secondary schools,” the report said.

”Jewish students have been mocked for their backgrounds and have experienced both denial and distortion of the Holocaust, despite the ostensibly mandatory provision of Holocaust education throughout Canada. This is all the more shocking given a recent study by the Azrieli Foundation, which found that a fifth of Canadians under 34 either have not heard of the Holocaust or were unsure of whether they had.