Police are investigating a string of shootings at synagogues in the Toronto area, while Montreal police are probing antisemitic vandalism after swastikas were painted on several Saint-Laurent business windows.
TheJ.ca Staff | Mar 7, 2026
Three synogogues were hit with gunfire in the Toronto area with two shooting taking place on Mar 7, 2026. Screengrab via Youtube
Police are investigating three separate synagogue shootings in the Toronto area within less than a week, including two overnight attacks on Saturday, while Montreal police are separately probing antisemitic vandalism after swastikas were painted on the windows of several businesses in Saint-Laurent. The incidents have intensified concern over anti-Jewish violence in Canada at a time of already heightened security anxiety in Jewish communities.
The latest shootings occurred shortly after midnight on March 7. Reuters reported that gunfire struck Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto in Thornhill and Shaarei Shomayim in North York. No injuries were reported in either attack. Prime Minister Mark Carney called them “criminal antisemitic assaults” and said federal agencies, including the RCMP, would support law enforcement in identifying those responsible.
Toronto Police said in a March 7 news release that multiple shots were fired at the front doors of Shaarei Shomayim on Glencairn Avenue at about 12:03 a.m. Investigators asked the public for dashcam and building video recorded between 11:30 p.m. and 12:15 a.m. in the Bathurst Street and Glencairn Avenue area.
CityNews reported that at Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto in Thornhill, police said the front doors were hit by gunfire shortly after midnight and that two people were inside at the time, though neither was injured. York Regional Police said the suspects arrived in a dark sedan and opened fire on the building. Deputy Chief Kevin McCloskey called the attack “despicable” and said hate and bigotry have no place in York Region, Ontario, or Canada.
Those attacks followed an earlier shooting at Temple Emanu-El in North York on March 2. Toronto Police said officers responded at about 10:49 p.m., found multiple shell casings at the front entrance, and observed gunfire damage to the building. The synagogue was closed at the time, and no injuries were reported. Deputy Chief Rob Johnson said, “A shooting targeting a place of worship is unacceptable,” adding that the service’s Gun and Gang Task Force and Hate Crime Unit had joined the investigation.
Police statistics released at that March 3 briefing underscored the broader context. Toronto Police said that since Oct. 7, 2023, the service had made 309 arrests and laid 858 charges in relation to hate crimes. Police also said that 22 antisemitic occurrences had been reported so far this year, accounting for about 63 percent of all reported hate crime occurrences in the city.
Alongside the confirmed synagogue attacks, police are also investigating three separate shootings at Toronto businesses in the city’s northwest end in the early morning hours of March 2. CityNews reported that one commercial property near Dufferin Street and Steeles Avenue West was hit around 2:45 a.m., another business on Fenmar Drive near Weston Road was shot at just before 5:30 a.m., and a third incident followed shortly after in Etobicoke. Police said businesses were damaged and that investigators had not yet determined whether the incidents were connected.
Some Jewish community outlets and community advocates have identified two of the March 2 damaged properties as Old Avenue Restaurant and the York Entrepreneurship Development Institute, both described in those reports as Jewish-affiliated. The Forward, citing police statements about damage to nearby businesses, reported that Old Avenue Restaurant was among the affected properties. At this stage, publicly available police summaries reviewed for this article confirm the business shootings and the locations, but do not, in those summaries, identify all affected businesses by name.
In Montreal, the latest reported incident involved swastikas painted on the front windows of several businesses in Saint-Laurent. CTV Montreal reported that the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal hate crime unit had opened an investigation. The report described the vandalism as affecting several storefront windows and said at least one local business owner was shocked by the discovery.
Taken together, the Toronto shootings and the Montreal swastika vandalism point to a sharp escalation in anti-Jewish intimidation through both gunfire and explicit Nazi imagery. In Toronto, the pattern now includes three synagogue shootings in one week. In Montreal, the defacement of commercial storefronts with swastikas has revived fears of openly ideological antisemitic targeting.
The Toronto synagogue attacks have already drawn national political attention. Carney said Jewish Canadians have the right to “live and pray in safety” and described the shootings as a violation of Canadian values. Community groups have likewise warned that repeated attacks on synagogues and Jewish-linked sites are not isolated incidents but part of a larger pattern of intimidation.
Investigations remain active in both cities. Toronto Police are seeking footage and witnesses in the Shaarei Shomayim case, while Toronto and York police continue to investigate the broader synagogue shootings. Montreal police are examining the Saint-Laurent vandalism through their hate crime unit. No arrests were publicly announced in the materials reviewed here.
For Canada’s Jewish community, the immediate concern is no longer a single incident but the accumulation of them. Three synagogues hit by gunfire in the Toronto area within days, plus business shootings under investigation and swastikas on Montreal storefronts, have created a climate in which security fears are being reinforced by repeated, highly visible acts of hate.
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