Jewish General doctor quits
The Gazette is headlining the resignation of a Jewish General surgeon over alleged antisemitism. He’s going to that heartland of tolerance, the United States.
They also namecheck Gad Saad, who apparently made a similar announcement recently. This would be the Gad Saad who called Quebec French an affront to human dignity, right? Which the Gazette seems conveniently to have forgotten. Bon débarras, Saad lad.
Here’s a blog thread about Saad around that time.
Taylor C. Noakes 11:54 on 2026-06-02 Permalink
The big red flag here is that the individual in question refused to make any on record statement explaining his motivations.
If I pitched an article that was “person X is doing Y because of Z”, and I couldn’t get person X to explain Z, I wouldn’t have a story and it wouldn’t get published.
And for good reason: there’s no story. There’s literally nothing to report.
With all due respect to Aaron Derfel, this isn’t news. It’s ragebait.
There’s nothing of substance here (as noted by the almost immediate pivot to discussing Gad Saad, noted pusher of the idea empathy is bad – among other embarassments)
Also, as Kate rightly pointed out, leaving Montreal for the famously tolerant American South, and more specifically a state that had the Confederate Battle Flag on its state flag until what, 20-30 years ago?
Georgia still has active KKK chapters FFS.
There’ve been numerous antisemitic incidents there recently, many of which appear to be far more violent than naything that’s happened in Montreal.
I can think of a far more likely reason why any Canadian physician would move to Atlanta – or anywhere else in the US – right now. Our governments are bending over backwards to undermine public healthcare, and down there a physician can be a millionaire.
Why beat your head against the wall in a public system being undermined from within, where you get shit pay and patient outcomes aren’t what they should be – even at an exceptional hospital like the JGH – when you can get paid properly, expect better patient outcomes (for those with insurance), and get afford to live in a gated community with its own private school?
He’s a highly trained professional at the top of his game and he’s doing what’s best for his family, but I sincerely doubt it has anything to do with antisemitism.
Joey 13:48 on 2026-06-02 Permalink
Agreed with Taylor – there is no ethically sound reason for Aaron Derfel to grant anonymity to his source. Also it’s barely mentioned towards the end that Dr. Moss completed a fellowship at Emory in Atlanta. I suspect that his take-home pay is about to increase dramatically.
bob 16:06 on 2026-06-02 Permalink
“Person X is doing Y because of Z” with no comment from person Z and a bunch of information from anonymous sources is par for the course in journalism. If we had to wait for these persons Z to comment we’d get only half the news (the other half being denials and non-denial denials).
As to Saad, the US South, for all its MAGAnificence, is not uniformly retrograde, just mostly so. That said, Saad is himself retrograde, and crackpottish, and will fit right in if he keeps away from NOLA, Austin, and Chapel Hill, Gainesville, and Raleigh-Durham, among other places – like Atlanta.
Atlanta’s Jewish community is 1/3 larger than Montreal’s, and it is growing, not shrinking. Atlanta has seen some antisemitic incidents recently – flyers and graffiti, but no shots fired or incendiary devices set off. What an odd thing that more bullets have been fired at synagogues and Jewish schools in Montreal than in Atlanta. There was an increase in antisemitic incidents in Georgia in 2025, to 83. Quebec’s 2025 count went down – to 573.
So, perhaps questioning the plausibility that this is part of the reason Dr. Moss has chosen, like tens of thousands of Jews before him, to leave Quebec misses out on something that deserves to be salient. On the other hand, systemic and pervasive antisemitism in Quebec may just be a figment of the Jewish imagination, just like that imaginary racism and Islamophobia, which are not things because the government says so and the better sort of people agree.
And, of course, Quebec’s health care dumpster fire does not help matters.
Taylor C. Noakes 19:22 on 2026-06-02 Permalink
@Bob – not how I practice it, not how the journalists/publications I respect practice.
mare 21:37 on 2026-06-02 Permalink
I had two heart operations done by this guy. I know exactly how much he was paid by the RAMQ for my surgeries. For my open heart surgery it was $2,279. Much less than I expected for 6 hours of very precise surgery (plus a few hours writing surgery notes, scrubblng in etc). I’m sure he can make far more in the US, but he didn’t come over as someone who was in it for the money. I don’t personally know him and have no idea about his reasons and I can make up many other reasons why a doctor would want to leave Quebec. I just know that if he hadn’t done his work well I wouldn’t have written this.
Joey 09:42 on 2026-06-03 Permalink
I would like to amend my comment – I still think granting anonymity to sources happens way too often, especially in cases like this (what is the real harm in the anonymous source going ‘on the record’ here?). I find it hard to believe that Dr. Moss would leave Quebec due to anti-semitism and not take the opportunity to call out said antisemitism – after all, fighting the rapid increase in anti-semitism is a priority even for Canada’s Prime Minister.
Anyway, whatever his reasons for leaving Montreal, I regret implying he was chasing dollars… Sounds like a great physician bringing innovation to our healthcare system – a loss for all Quebecers.
bob 11:20 on 2026-06-03 Permalink
@Joey – Perhaps he is being discreet for the sake of his career. Not everyone wants to be labelled an activist or a complainer or whatever. Plenty of people leave high profile jobs for “personal reasons” never revealing the real reasons.
jeather 13:07 on 2026-06-03 Permalink
He can be a great doctor who was feeling burned out by multiple things and then was offered a lot more money to move back somewhere he worked before and was in part compelled by the money. Note that the US measures antisemitic incidents very differently than Canada does, so the numbers are not comparable.
AMF 07:32 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
He has a letter in The Gazette today where he is explicit about the reasons he is leaving, and names antisemitism. He writes, “What has been most troubling is not only the rise in hateful acts, but the normalization of rhetoric and behaviour that would have been broadly condemned only a few years ago. When a community starts to feel unsafe in a city it has helped build, something has gone seriously wrong.” It’s striking how often the experience of antisemitism in Montreal is met with systemic invalidation and denial, in this case as in many others. I expect that is one reason he put himself on the record.
Kevin 07:37 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
Link to the letter
https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/jewish-general-surgeon-leaving-montreal-antisemitism/
bob 10:59 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
Well, whaddaya know.
Joey 11:58 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
After reading the letter I wouldn’t say that the rise of anti-semitism is the main driving force behind his decision, but it’s obviously a factor. I doubt Dr. Moss will find that the situation in Georgia is any better, but who knows.
Taylor C. Noakes 13:58 on 2026-06-04 Permalink
This guy can move to whatever country he likes for whatever reason, I’m not going to judge.
But if I were him, looking to get away from antisemitism, Atlanta wouldn’t be my first choice.
Nowhere in the US would be. Their president was elected in no small part thanks Elon ‘Sig Heil’ Musk. The evangelical wing of the GOP thinks supporting Netanyahu will lead to an apocalyptic war in the Middle East that will bring about the Second Coming.
Their pro-Israel stance is purely a means to an end (weapons sales primarily), and that pro-Israel rhetoric in no way shape or form translates into any kind of pro-Jewish sentiment. The GOP is a white Christian supremacist party. They are literally running concentration camps and disenfranchizing minorities.
I hope he thinks seriously about what he’s doing.
That said, from a journalism perspective, this wasn’t handled well. The Gazette published hearsay as reported news, and then the individual in question sends a letter to the editor. Derfel’s basically writing himself out of a job. This is a facebook post. If the doctor in question wanted this publicly known via a published article in a newspaper, he should have sat down with the journalist and answered the journalist’s questions (such as, did you go to Emory? Do you have family in Atlanta? Were you offered a higher paying job? Do you genuinely feel America is safer for Jews than Montreal right now (and why), etc.)