Naomi Bronstein was a strong-willed humanitarian worker and activist credited with saving the lives of over 140,000 children in the developing world – primarily from Vietnam, Cambodia and Guatemala – and helping to open the doors for international adoptions in Canada.
Bronstein was born Naomi Segal in Montreal. Her father was a textile merchant and her family had a comfortable life in Outremont. From a young age, she expressed outrage at the injustices faced by impoverished, sick and/or orphaned children. At just 17, she married Herbert Bronstein, a knitting mill sales manager who was also highly idealistic. They raised 12 children together, 7 of whom were adopted (from Vietnam, Cambodia, Ecuador and Canada). Through her tireless activism, Bronstein ultimately helped 650 other children also find adoptive families in Europe and North America.
Bronstein’s work with international adoptions began in the 1960s. After having three biological children, she and her husband started looking into adopting a fourth child, and were dismayed by the conditions of orphanages in the developing world, and the bias against international adoptions in Montreal. She began working with war orphans in Vietnam and helped organize “Operation Baby-Lift,” to transport over 100 of them to families in North America. Tragically, the cargo plane crashed shortly after takeoff, killing everyone on board. Bronstein was supposed to have been on the plane, but gave up her seat at the last second.
This traumatic event only solidified Bronstein’s commitment to aiding children around the world. During Cambodia’s brutal civil war, she opened an orphanage in Phenom Penh called Canada House. Following a devastating earthquake, Bronstein established Casa Canada in Guatemala City, which provided medical care for poor children. Back in Ottawa, she worked with Healing the Children Canada, an agency that provided specialized medical care in North America for children from the developing world. At the time of her untimely death from heart problems, at 65, she was living in Guatemala and working out of a bus that had been converted into mobile medical units.
Bronstein was awarded the Order of Canada in 1983. La Presse chose her as a “Person of the Year” in 1985. In 1997, she was awarded the Royal Bank of Canada’s $250,000 humanitarian award (she donated the prize money to humanitarian causes). A documentary about her work in Vietnam, called A Moment in Time: The United Colours of Bronstein, was released in 2001 and received a nomination for a Gemini Award that same year.
