Jerahmiel Samson "Jerry" Grafstein (born January 2, 1935) is a Canadian lawyer, businessman, and retired politician who served as a Canadian senator from Ontario from 1984 to 2010. Grafstein was the longest-serving member of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He served as co-chair of the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group and as a senior officer of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly for over a decade. He is a former partner of Minden Gross LLP, a business law firm in Toronto, Ontario.

Grafstein is also known as one of the founders of CityTV, MTV-Multilingual (now Omni TV), YTV, and a series of other media companies in Canada, the United States, South America, and Europe. He served on the board of several enterprises, including Petro-Canada.

He co-founded a series of online newspapers, including The Wellington Street Post (Ottawa), The Penn Ave Post (Washington, DC), Israel News Cloud, HollyPost (Hollywood, California), China News Cloud, Africa News Cloud, Brazil News Cloud, India News Cloud, Russia News Cloud, Fashion News Cloud, and Animation News.

Grafstein is well known for his participation in the community and his key role in the organization of events such as "Canada Loves New York" in the aftermath of September 11, "Toronto Rocks" Concert during the SARS outbreak, and the "Canada for Asia" telethon for relief aid of tsunami victims. He has served on numerous boards and committees in support of the Canadian Jewish community. He holds numerous awards, including honorary chief of the New York City Fire Department and honorary commandant of the US Marine Corps by the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group. He was named one of Canada's 100 most important "public intellectuals" in 2005 by the National Post.

Early life

Grafstein was born Jerahmiel Samson Grafstein in London, Ontario, on January 2, 1935, He was a member of the Bar of North West Territories for almost a decade in the 1970s and early 1980s. He lectured in commercial law and later instructed in the Bar Admissions Course at Osgoode Hall Law School. During 1966-1968 he served in Ottawa as executive assistant to John Turner, then Registrar General of Canada, and later as special advisor to the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs during its founding period.

From 1974 to 1986, he co-founded and was president of Red Leaf Communications Company, the advertising consortium for the Liberal Party during national elections. During his chairmanship, the committee completed twenty reports. He also initiated the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce special studies on hedge funds and Canada's interprovincial trade barriers. He was a member of the Special Joint Senate and Commons Committee on a Review of Canada's Foreign Policy.

He has long advocated national standards for clean drinking water and introduced numerous private member's bills on mapping and safeguarding Canada's fresh water resources.

Grafstein was the longest serving co-chair of the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group (the largest inter-parliamentary group in Canada) for 15 years. He served as vice chair and chair of the Standing Committee on Economic Affairs, Science, Technology and the Environment. He served on the OSCE election monitoring missions throughout Eastern Europe In September 2008 he co-hosted the first OSCEPA meeting held in Toronto. Highlights included the Georgian Crisis and a Mediterranean Forum, which he co-chaired.

He served on many Parliamentary Friendship Groups in Europe (east and west), Asia, North Africa and South America. In the fall of 2007, he was elected vice president of the Canada-Pakistan Parliamentary Friendship Group. In 2009, he was elected vice chairman of the Canadian Armenian Parliamentary Friendship Group. He served as a member of the International Political Committee for Co-existence between Muslims and Jews. In April 2009, Grafstein helped organize a counter-conference in New York City in the follow-up UN Human Rights Conference on Durban, held in Geneva, to combat antisemitism and lectured on the topic across Europe, Canada, and the United States. He co-sponsored numerous successful resolutions at the OSCE PA meetings across Western and Eastern Europe against racism and antisemitism. In May 2009, while he was a senator, he helped organize and was a keynote speaker at the OSCE PA Economic Conference in Dublin, Ireland.

Grafstein served as a member of Canada/Germany Atlantik-Brücke for over a decade. He was the first vice-president of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians. In 1972, he co-founded CITY-TV.

From 1979 to 1984, he served on the board of Petro-Canada, was a member of the Northwest Territorial Bar, and served as counsel to Northwest Territorial Airways for almost a decade. He then traveled across the far north extensively.

He was a co-founder of a range of media companies, especially broadcasting, communications, and publishing enterprises, including CUC Broadcasting Limited; national specialty TV channels in lifestyle, youth (YTV) and music; CityTV (Canada's first independent UHF station); MTV-Multilingual Television (Toronto) (now OMNI TV); CUC Cablevision (UK) Limited (Telecential); and Northern Communications, Ontario. He co-founded one of the longest private microwave companies in Canada that ran from Windsor to Toronto to mid-Northern Ontario, Canbras Communications Corporation; and Multivision Communications Corp. (Bolivia's largest MMDS Hyper Cable and cable MSO). He served on the board of Ukraine Enterprise Corporation, which made early investments in Ukraine.

He was also a lead director of Toronto Life Publishing Company Limited, which published Toronto Life (after it merged with Toronto Calendar) and Toronto Life Fashion, two of Canada's leading lifestyle and fashion magazines, and co-founded Toronto Life Fashion File, which is now seen on television around the world. and, for over a decade, was the chairman and a board member of the O'Keefe Centre, Canada's largest public performing arts centre. and The Fractured Twentieth Century (2022).

Community

Grafstein served on the Board of the League for Human Rights of B'nai B'rith and the Joint Community Relations Committee of Toronto in the 1960s and 1970s. He served as co-chairman of Toronto Committee for the Group of Seven Economic Summit in Toronto in 1988. He served as a member of the executive for the Toronto 1996 and 2008 Olympic Bid Committees.

Grafstein co-organized "Canada Loves New York" in November 2001, when over 26,000 Canadians visited New York City after September 11, to assist New York City's recovery, which was called "the largest peaceful invasion of Canadians since the War of 1812."

Awards and honours

In 1992, Grafstein was the recipient of the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal. In December 1996, he was named the "Man of the Year" by the Chabad Lubavitch of Ontario. In 2002, Grafstein was the recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal. In 2003, Grafstein was honoured by the Canadian Society of New York for his dedication to strengthening ties between Canada and the United States. As a senator, he was made an honorary chief of the New York City Fire Department and an honorary commandant of the US Marine Corps by the Canada-United States Inter-Parliamentary Group. On November 12, 2005 he was made a Duke of Friulani, Italy (Ducato dei Vini Friulani). created The Honourable Jerry and Carole Grafstein Network for Cancer Research at the Institute For Medical Research, Israel-Canada (IMRIC). In 2011, the CFHU named him "Man of the Year" in Toronto. On November 27, 2011, he was installed as honorary chairman of the Board of Governors of the Canadian Yeshiva & Rabbinical School, University of Toronto, at its inaugural convocation, the first such rabbinical school of its kind in Canada. Grafstein is the president and chairman of the National Board for the Canadian Friends of the Tel Aviv University and a governor of the university.

On July 7, 2014, Grafstein was honoured by Chief Ron Cooper of the Mohawk Nation and presented with a handcrafted lacrosse stick.

Author

Grafstein has written numerous articles and delivered papers on broadcasting regulations; communications; computers; travel; international relations; technology; transportation, politics; international trade; and constitutional matters in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He has written articles on key aspects of the public life of Winston Churchill.

His first book, Beyond Imagination, is an anthology of some of Canada's outstanding authors and poets that he edited; it published by McClelland & Stewart Inc. in 1995. His second book, The Making of the Parliamentary Poet Laureate : Based on a Private Member's Bill , was published by the Porcupine's Quill. He co-authored his third book, The Passage Through Parliament to Establish Holocaust Memorial Day, in Canada in 2004. His fourth book, Suicide Bombings: Parliament Speaks, was published in 2012 and is the parliamentary history of Bill 215, an Act to amend the Criminal Code (Suicide Bombing).

Personal life

Grafstein is married to Carole (née Sniderman),