B’nai Brith, a human rights organization advocating Jewish rights, said it has received two disturbing reports of anti-Semitic behavior over the past week.
Last Thursday, a Winnipeg woman said she saw a large swastika drawn into the snow, along with a vulgar word.
"I was extremely upset, extremely upset when I saw the swastika and those words in the freshly fallen snow," said Chris Melnick, who was walking her dogs at the time near the corner of Meadowood Drive and Ashworth Street.
Melnick explained that she quickly wiped out the swastika with her boot.
“Hate of any kind has no place in our community,” Melnick added. “I don’t want a child seeing that symbol or those words,” she said.
Melnick said she did not have a cellphone, so she could not take a photo of what she saw.
According to B’nai Brith, another similar case appeared in the Outremont community of Montreal, where swastikas were scrawled into the snow on the windshields of at least four cars.
B’nai Brith said a group of young people in that city countered the hateful messages by drawing hearts onto windshields in their place.
"Too often, we get calls about incidents such as these," said Amanda Hohmann, national director of B'nai Brith.
Hohmann said B'nai Brith's statistics show antisemitism in Canada has been on a steady increase for the last 10 years.
B’nai Brith said it will divulge details regarding the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada during the year 2016 in its annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, which will be published spring 2017.
Meanwhile, Melnick said this is the second time she’s seen a swastika drawn in a public place in St. Vital.
“A number of years ago in Brentford Park, which is just down the road, I did see one that was drawn on the walkway,” Melnick added.
This comes weeks after a Wolseley couple came home New Year's Eve to find a large rock painted with an anti-Semitic message near their front steps.
