That's a great question, because the 1950s turned out to be a pretty pivotal time for the various Jewish communities of Canada; in the wake of WWII, as massive shifts in Canadian society in general were happening, so too the Jewish community shifted. As an American myself, who is more familiar with what was going on in the US at this time (also plenty of change), there are many parallels I've observed in researching this question, while of course there were some shifts that were unique to Canadian Jewry.

First, let's talk a bit about what was going on pre-1950s. At this time, the majority of the 175,000 members of the Canadian Jewish community were the descendants of Ashkenazic, European Jews who had emigrated to Canada between the second half of the 19th century (intensifying, as it did in the Americas in general, starting in 1881 when increased persecution in Russia led to a massive outflow of Jewish emigration to more hospitable places) and the 1920s-30s (when Jewish immigration began to be restricted as "undesirable"). Open antisemitic discrimination was prevalent both in official and unofficial contexts, becoming especially problematic in the 1930s; at this same time, the Canadian government was refusing to accept Jewish refugees from the Nazis, in the end receiving only 4,000 out of the 800,000 who applied. Jews generally lived in the inner-city immigrant neighborhoods in which their parents had settled on their arrival in the country, with few options for available housing elsewhere; they had few opportunities for economic advancement outside of trade, due to antisemitic limitations. There were vibrant Jewish communities throughout Canada in small towns and large cities alike, though Montreal led the pack with Toronto a bit behind. They were only just starting to become truly familiar with the truth of what had happened to their fellow Jews- often, their family and friends- in the Holocaust.

Of course, both WWII and the Holocaust would soon have transformative effects on the Canadian Jewish community. There had been about 16,000 Jews in the Canadian armed forces during the war, who now returned to a time of economic growth and prosperity and distancing themselves from their immigrant past and thinking of themselves as fully Canadian. In addition, as Canada began to enter this economic boom, it became more receptive to European immigration; though initially the government's commitment against admitting Jewish refugees remained strong, and indeed like the US there was a period of time in which it was easier for a former Nazi to enter Canada than a Jewish survivor of Nazi persecution, by late 1947 the Canadian Jewish Congress had managed to convince the Canadian government to let in 1,100 orphaned survivors, and in the ensuing years more and more Jews were able to trickle in until by 1951 there were some 30,000 Jewish survivors in Canada, with about 5,000 more entering in the 1950s; this meant that, after Israel, Canada had proportionally the most Holocaust survivors relative to its previous Jewish population in the world. By 1960, the Jewish community of Canada was about 150% larger than it had been 25 years before, with about 27% of its population having arrived between 1945 and 1960.

This meant a massive adjustment to the existing community, which was, due to its inability to advance socioeconomically, quite poor. The existing community and its various social service agencies were swamped, unequipped to handle the physical and psychological issues which often plagued many of the survivors, and many (though certainly not all) of these long-standing Canadian Jews had really no way to comprehend what these newcomers had endured during the war and referred to them derogatorily as "greener." They were trying to move away from their immigrant identities and therefore there was a massive culture clash with these new immigrants, who were living reminders of the persecution which Jews had suffered back in Europe when the Canadian Jews' parents and grandparents had emigrated. This led to something of a split between the preexisting community and the survivor communities, which divided themselves into landsmanshaften, or communal organizations based on place of origin. In the end, by the late 1950s, functionally the gap had narrowed; even if the preexisting community would never quite understand what its survivor elements had suffered to get where they did, the survivors managed to Canadianize themselves very rapidly and become quite successful, even as they could remain a tight-knit group due to their mutual understanding of each other.

The 1950s were important as well because they signaled the end of many (though not all) of the forms of institutionalized antisemitism which had characterized Canadian Jewish life for decades and prevented the socioeconomic advancement of the community. Due to the influence of various human rights organizations and faith communities, as well as Canada's signing the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, there had been a large shift in the way that minorities and diversity were perceived, and quickly, anti-discrimination laws in hiring began to be implemented (though there could still be a WASP-elitist glass ceiling). Things weren't perfect: there were attempts to restrict Jewish students from some Protestant school systems, there was a 10% quota of Jewish students at McGill University until the 1960s, Jews were still banned from some neighborhoods,hotels and private clubs, medical schools and residencies often restricted Jewish entry, and many in power (including the Governor-General at the time, Vincent Massey) still held antisemitic views. But things were by far improving, with especially clear indications of this shift being seen in Quebec with French Canadian outreach to and acceptance of the Jewish community and other minorities.

This all meant that doors were increasingly being opened to Jews and that they were able to take an unprecedented part in Canadian life, and thereby rise socioeconomically. By 1961, Jews were one of the highest earning socioeconomic groups in Canada, were working more and more in the professions, and were the most likely to be college-educated- in large part because Jews were more likely than other groups to be living in cities. Jews were involved in the new building of suburbs- both as residents and as builders. As residents, there was a great deal of population shifting in two directions: Jews moving from smaller communities throughout Canada to larger ones, especially Toronto, and Jews moving from the inner city areas of first settlement in Toronto and Montreal to nicer areas of the city and suburbs. As successful Canadian-born Jews left the inner city, their places were soon taken by new Holocaust-survivor immigrants, who then left themselves when they achieved their own success. At this point, while Montreal was still the largest Jewish community in Canada, Toronto was quickly making its way to overcome it in the top spot.

At this same time, building was becoming a booming industry in Canada, and as Jews were able to gain access to the industry as entrepreneurs without having to worry about the preexisting antisemitic restrictions, Jews soon became a major force in construction. (The same was true for a number of other entrepreneurial professions; by 1961 42% of Jews were self employed, three times the rate of any other group in Canada.) Probably most famously, the Reichmann family's construction empire began in the mid-1950s, when the family emigrated from Tangier, Morocco (where they had arrived as refugees from the Nazis in the 1940s) and the various brothers settled first in Montreal and then in Toronto. While at first they went into the building supply business (again, taking advantage of the booming construction market), starting a tile company, they then went into contracting after building their own warehouse and developing a formula for success, becoming a few decades later the fourth richest family in the world, valued at $13 billion. (Incidentally, their success then led, through their charitable giving, to the growth of the Orthodox Jewish community in Toronto; I highly recommend Anthony Bianco's fascinating biography of the family.)

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