From Canadian Jewish News, February 2014 Aaron Lansky, president and founder of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., announced…
From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2014 As announced in obituaries in Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, the New York Times…
From the Canadian Jewish News, January 2014 Ninety years ago, New York newspaper editor Abraham Cahan was at the epicentre…
Suffering was Terrible — Little Children Lay Naked on the Bare Earth — Their Parents Half-Clad, Lay Beside Them —…
Recollections of Old Timer Forty Years Ago John Heenan ‘Tended Bar’ at the N.E. Corner of Front Street Many Changes…
From the Canadian Jewish News, April 1, 1977 Sarah Gitel Salsberg, long a colourful, vivacious figure in the Toronto Jewish community, died this past weekend after a brief illness. She was 94 years of age. Born in Lagow, Poland, Salsberg came to Canada 64 years ago, about 1903. The mother of CJN columnist J. B.,…
A look back at the CJN from 40 years ago: From the Canadian Jewish News, March 6, 1974 Spry Ben Sherman has no thought of retiring, and plans to work a full day in the hardware store he founded 55 years ago, the Canadian Jewish News reported in March 1974. Sherman’s family wasn’t even planning…
From Beth Sholom Bulletin, Fall 2012 In 1933, Toronto residents Philip and Sally Latchman were surprised by the birth of triplets — three identical boys, Donald, Marvin and Victor — a blessed event that prompted Buckingham Palace to send them a ceremonial payment of several British pounds sterling. “When we were born the King of…
From the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, November 11, 1938 Rebbetzin Lifsha Gordon, wife of the late Rabbi Jacob Gordon, died, after a brief illness on Monday, October 31st. The funeral service was held at the University Avenue Synagogue, where Rabbi Samuel Levine of Hamilton, Rabbi A. N. Mandelbaum of the Beth Medrash Hagodol of Alany Park,…
From the Globe and Mail, April 18, 1908 Objecting to a Reference to Kosher Meat, Shier Herman Pulled Rabbi Levi from the Altar and a Disturbance Followed Because he objected to the rabbi’s doctrine, Shier Herman of Teraulay street caught Rabbi Levi by his robe yesterday morning at the Tower of Justice Synagogue [possibly Shaarei…
◊ The Jew in Canada (first published 1926) offers hundreds of personal profiles as well as history capsules of Jewish communities from coast to coast as well as synagogues and many Jewish organizations. It is a wonderful resource for historians and genealogists. Below is the complete “biographical index” of persons profiled (with photographs) in the book.…
Condensed from The Canadian Jewish News, August 4, 1983 When the cucumber harvest is in, the Strub brother’s facility in Dundas, Ontario goes into their busiest season. The cucumbers are brought to the plant, unloaded, washed, sorted, packed into big barrels and vats filled with special pickling ingredients and then put into cold storage. Some…
Condensed from The Canadian Jewish News, July 28, 1983 Sam Sterling was named Man of the Year of the Fashion Industry by the Fashion Division of State of Israel Bonds despite the fact that Sterling has never visited Israel, Frank Rasky wrote. Sterling — the courtly 66-year-old “Button King” of Toronto’s garment trade — was…
From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, Toronto, Spring 2013 It is a busy day for Gerald and Naomi Goldenberg as they help plan some last-minute details for the upcoming wedding of one of their grandchildren. But even so, they kindly take a few minutes to sit down with me in the den of their Briar Hill…
From the Canadian Jewish News, May 12, 1972 For some time now it has been open season for Toronto’s Spadina Avenue and its off-shoot the Kensington Market in the daily, weekly and periodical press. At one time when The Toronto Star and the late Telegram were both carrying TV and entertainment supplements, one could expect…
From the Globe and Mail, Toronto, Oct. 4, 1952 This photo appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail on October 4, 1952 at the start of the Festival of Sukkot. The photo shows Rene Slonim, daughter of Rabbi Reuben Slonim of the McCaul Street Synagogue, guiding six-year-old Seymour Epstein through the ceremony of the blessing…
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From the Jewish Standard, January 1937 The most remarkable thing about the late Mr. Elazar (Louis) Rotenberg, who died on Thursday, December 31, 1936, was the note of aristocratic bearing which characterized all his life and helped to create the tone of quiet refinement for which his household is noted. Throughout his fairly long life…
It has been 25 years since Canada’s leading publishing house McClelland and Stewart brought out A Basket of Apples and Other Stories by Shirley Faessler, a book that quickly won critical acclaim for its lively and colourful re-creation of the world of the Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants in the Kensington Market neighbourhood of Toronto in the…
There is now a vacant lot where the house on 42 St. George Street stood. All that is left of Mendel Granatstein’s home, a property which is now owned by the University of Toronto, is the front portico. According to Heritage Toronto records, the home was the first in Toronto to be owned by a…
Longtime friends of commercial and real estate lawyer Sam Moskowitz refer to him affectionately as “the son of the pickle man.” If you ask him what pickles and law have in common, he will tell you “everything.” His fond memories of his parents’ store at 186 Baldwin St., filled with barrels of pickles, herring, tomatoes,…
From the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, September 5, 1919 A very interesting decision was handed down last Sunday in the Jewish Court of Arbitration. The case was that of the S. Karsch Co., kosher sausage manufacturers. The company consists of two partners, Sam Karsh and Joseph Peverman. One of the partners accused the other of misappropriating…
From the Toronto Evening Telegram, September 12, 1912 Special Service conducted by Cantor Wladowsky With impressive ceremonial, with colour and light, and music of clear yet deep toned voices, special services for the Jewish New Year were celebrated in the University avenue synagogue this morning. Through windows within the vestibule you saw an audience of…
From the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, November 4, 1932 Kosher Quarrels Sap Energy from Community A truce was declared some time ago between the Toronto Vaad Ha’eer and the Kehillah, this truce now culminating in a peace between the rival organizations. As to the origin of the feud, it will always remain one of those indefinable…
From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, April 2011 Mickey and Frimette Snow speak exuberantly about their long attachment to Beth Sholom, the Toronto synagogue that they joined in 1951, two years after they were married. Mickey, whose surname was shortened from Sosnowski, was born in Toronto in 1927 in a house on Euclid Avenue owned by…
From the Globe and Mail, February 28, 1951 When Bernard Rosensweig is installed as rabbi of Bais Yehuda Synagogue, Dovercourt Road, next Sunday, it will be the first time that a Toronto-born boy has returned here as a rabbi. There are no rabbinical colleges in Canada. A student wishing to become a rabbi must leave…
Professions claim young Jews; many rise to prominence Dr. Bessie Pullan Singer First Woman in Canada to Receive Degree of Doctor of Medicine From the Toronto Evening Telegram, January 2, 1929 ◊ Note: This is an interesting, albeit uneven story that focuses more on two prominent rabbis of the city than on the younger generation of…
Suffering was Terrible — Little Children Lay Naked on the Bare Earth — Their Parents Half-Clad, Lay Beside Them — No Breeze in Narrow Alleys From The Toronto Star, July 4, 1911 If you really…
Recollections of Old Timer Forty Years Ago John Heenan ‘Tended Bar’ at the N.E. Corner of Front Street Many Changes Noticed Now — But the Sign Board of ‘Heenan’s Place’ Is Still to Be Seen…
From The Star Weekly, July 5, 1913 Not long ago, a woman was caught red-handed in the act of shoplifting in Toronto under rather pathetic circumstances. Years ago, she had been accustomed to steal continuously…
From The Toronto Evening Telegram, May 6 1912 Note: This article describes the surprisingly high cosmopolitan character of the Toronto Police Force of 1912. For the previous decade the city had been filling up with…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, September 9, 1922 Toronto is becoming a bungalow city. Entire streets of new houses built this summer consist of nothing but one storey, four, five and six roomed bungalows. To…
They Were Used for Amusement by Dr. A. M. Rosebrugh, Who Secured Instruments from Dr. Bell, Inventor Wires Ran on Poles of Fire Alarm System Dr. Rosebrugh Tested a Line to Hamilton and Started the…
From the Canadian Jewish News, December 2004 What do you get when you put a popular shtetl folk tale into a pot and add some flavourful compositions for full orchestra, rich klezmer sounds, a pinch…
I often get requests from researchers who have seen their family in the 1901, 1911 or 1921 census of Toronto but can’t find the street they were living on a modern map because the street…
From the Toronto Daily Star, May 7, 1907 At the next meeting of the annual conference of the Canadian Chiefs of Police, one of the most important subjects to be discussed is the establishment of…
◊ In light of the passing of Paul Reichmann in Toronto on Friday October 25 at age 83, we bring your attention to this review of the most thorough biography of the Reichman family, Anthony Bianco’s…
It has been 25 years since Canada’s leading publishing house McClelland and Stewart brought out A Basket of Apples and Other Stories by Shirley Faessler, a book that quickly won critical acclaim for its lively…
BOOK REVIEW: Joe Salsberg: A Life of Commitment, by Gerald Tulchinsky (University of Toronto Press, June 2013) It was said that it would take Joe Salsberg three to five hours to stroll along Spadina Avenue from…
There is now a vacant lot where the house on 42 St. George Street stood. All that is left of Mendel Granatstein’s home, a property which is now owned by the University of Toronto, is…
Even the children have their deposits — One lad of four opens his own account — Hard business to transact From the Toronto Daily Star, January 26, 1906 That Toronto in common with American cities…
Children of the Factory were surprisingly happy From the Toronto Star Weekly, July 12, 1913 by Annie H. Crone When I awoke the second morning it was with an awful thought of the day before…
Fame and Fortune Came to Canada’s Biggest “King Coal” When He Fought American Trust Elias Rogers Began Life as Farm Lad in York County — Earned First Wages in a Lumber Yard — A Quaker…
From the Globe and Mail, 2003 As a great-grandson of American slaves, Dr. Daniel Hill carried the lessons of universal equality and civil rights in his blood. Founding director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission…
Told by Dr. Hastings, MHO, in his report on slum inspection 22 People Live in cellars; water on the floors MHO would have city expropriate land around city for future city planning From the Toronto…
From the Toronto Star, February 21, 1924 ◊ Note: this article refers to an undated clipping from the Star and harps on the theme of the crucial need for playgrounds where the many children of the…
Torontonians who have vanished to the four corners of the globe From the Toronto Star Weekly, November 29, 1913 By Arthur Barron In nearly every large city and town across the face of the earth…
From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2014 As announced in obituaries in Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, the New York Times and other publications, screenwriting guru Syd Alvin Field died last November in Los Angeles at the age of 77. It’s been 35 years since Field’s book Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting was first published in…
From the Canadian Jewish News, January 2014 Ninety years ago, New York newspaper editor Abraham Cahan was at the epicentre of international Jewish affairs — not a newsmaker himself but an opinion-maker, someone who had an extraordinary and powerful influence on the Jewish masses in New York, around the Diaspora and in pre-state Israel. As…
The rumbling is sudden and loud and the floor vibrates intensely. Yet patrons in this darkened theatre on Pier 39 in the Fisherman’s Wharf district remain calm. And why not? They have paid $7 to attend the San Francisco Experience, a 28-minute multi-media show that promises that “you will feel the earth shake.” Utilizing a…
Certainly you’ve seen of some of the movies that he wrote — the list includes Lady for a Day (1933), It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can’t Take It With You (1938) and Meet John Doe (1941) — but you may be forgiven if you don’t…
In this riveting page-turner that reads like a murder mystery thriller, Erik Larson resurrects the legend of a forgotten American psychopathic mass murderer, the cold-blooded H. H. Holmes, and overlays it atop the equally dusty story of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, one of the most impressive achievements of gilded-age America. Satisfying the modern…
Archivist of Gothomania By Hye Bossin From the Canadian Jewish Standard, September 1936 New York’s prize piece of human curiosa is Walter Winchell. He climbed over Shaw, Stalin, Hitler, Roosevelt, etc., to top the New York Post’s poll. Suckers stare at him in night clubs instead of the floor show. You are likely to hear…
From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, Toronto, Spring 2013 It is a busy day for Gerald and Naomi Goldenberg as they help plan some last-minute details for the upcoming wedding of one of their grandchildren. But even so, they kindly take a few minutes to sit down with me in the den of their Briar Hill…
From the Canadian Jewish News, December 2004 What do you get when you put a popular shtetl folk tale into a pot and add some flavourful compositions for full orchestra, rich klezmer sounds, a pinch of Hanukkah seasoning and live narration by Barbara Budd, the Toronto-based actor and co-host of the immensely popular CBC radio…
◊ In light of the passing of Paul Reichmann in Toronto on Friday October 25 at age 83, we bring your attention to this review of the most thorough biography of the Reichman family, Anthony Bianco’s The Reichmanns: Family, Faith, Fortune and The Empire of Olympia & York. As Brooklyn-based author Anthony Bianco chronicles in his…
From the Canadian Jewish News, October 2012 As legions of Barbra Streisand fans pay exorbitant prices (reportedly up to $500) for tickets to see her during her latest (and perhaps last) world tour — which includes a concert at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre on Oct. 23rd 2012 — it seems a fortuitous time for the…
From the Canadian Jewish News, January 13, 2005 Hy Burstein can’t quite explain his passion for riding horses, only that it first hit him as a teenager and that it’s still going strong six decades later. Born to Russian-Jewish immigrants in Toronto in 1928, he recently published Ride ‘em Jewish Cowboy, a book describing his…
BOOK REVIEW: Joe Salsberg: A Life of Commitment, by Gerald Tulchinsky (University of Toronto Press, June 2013) It was said that it would take Joe Salsberg three to five hours to stroll along Spadina Avenue from College to Queen because he couldn’t venture more than a few steps without meeting someone and having a conversation. The…
From the Canadian Jewish News, January 2013 London-based writer Salman Rushdie was happy to sell his novel The Satanic Verses to Viking Penguin in February 1988. But six months after the novel appeared, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him for his blasphemous insult “against Islam, the Prophet and the Qur’an.” Instantly he became…
Fame and Fortune Came to Canada’s Biggest “King Coal” When He Fought American Trust Elias Rogers Began Life as Farm Lad in York County — Earned First Wages in a Lumber Yard — A Quaker by Faith — Once Ran for Mayor in Toronto From the Toronto Star Weekly, September 20, 1913 Passing along King…
For years the magazines sent him rejection letters, inferring that his short stories about a pair of Jewish cloak and suit makers in New York were about as unmarketable as last year’s suits and dresses. But in the early 1900s Montague Glass broke through to the big time as major American magazines like The Saturday…
New book by Benjamin Kayfetz and Stephen Speisman, published April 2013 by Now and Then Books. With 144 photographs and illustrations, including many exclusive photos from the Stephen Speisman Collection. Order the book at www.nowandthenbookstoronto.com Share this:
Toronto publisher Now and Then Books’s latest title — Only Yesterday: Collected Pieces on the Jews of Toronto, by Benjamin Kayfetz and Stephen A. Speisman — is a prolifically illustrated book featuring 18 evocative articles by two notable historians of Toronto’s Jewish community. Culled from a variety of sources, the pieces in Only Yesterday focus…
The following pages are from the souvenir booklet published by the Hebrew Sick Benefit Society of Toronto in 1935 upon the commemoration of its 35th anniversary. It contains many greetings, advertisements and other items from individual members, often listing family names and other details about family history. Most of the pages are in Yiddish. Each…
◊ Founded 1910 in Toronto, the Hebrew Sick Benefit Society marked its 25th anniversary (silver jubilee) in 1935 and published a commemorative book loaded with names and photos of members and friends. Herewith are some pages from the book with family names and photos on them. Most of the pages are in Yiddish. The pages have…
From The Canadian Jewish News, 2001 SS commander Otto Moll had a tooth-ache, and so visited the dentist of Auschwitz, a Jewish inmate from Dobra, Poland named Berek Jakubowicz. Settling into the chair, the pulled out his revolver and pointed it at the emaciated attendant. “Don’t try anything stupid, dentist,” he warned. “Herr Hauptscharfuhrer,” the…
Genie Milgrom, the author of My 15 Grandmothers, was one of numerous captivating speakers at the five-day International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Boston in August 2013. Although she was born into a Roman Catholic family of Spanish origin in Havana, Cuba, Milgrom felt an affinity for Judaism from a young age. She was five…
From the Canadian Jewish News, October 2013 Some 70 years after he last saw his father, mother, brothers and sisters alive, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and Bergen Belsen concentration camp was recently given a photograph of his family for the first time. “When I received this photo, I said, ‘This is better than…
Born as Tsvi Hirsh Glicenstein in Konin Poland about 1872, my great-grandfather came to London as a youth, married, then brought his family to New York in 1909, and to Toronto in 1913. His tombstone (1955) memorializes Harris Glickstein, the anglicized name he used most of his life. My late grandfather Ralph Gladstone further altered…
The photo shows the opening session of the 33rd international conference on Jewish Genealogy taking place August 4 to 9 at the Park Plaza Hotel in wonderful Boston. Some 1200 delegates have assembled in the Imperial Room of this historic hotel to hear Aaron Lansky, founder of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Ma., deliver…
“The Lot of the Census Taker in the Ward is Anything But an Easy One” is the title of the first story; its subtitle is “The Foreigners There Have No Idea of the Months of the Year, and It Takes a Long Time to Convince Them That the Information Is Not for the Tax Collector.”…
As nearly correct as it is humanly possible to make it From the Toronto Star, February 6, 1912 ◊ This article describes a census conducted one century ago by the police of Toronto for their own purposes only six months after the federal census of Canada. It is unknown what information was collected: did the police…
Hard to believe, but there were Jews in Toronto and probably Montreal as well who were drawing monthly pensions from the U.S. government as late as 1925 for their participation as soldiers in the American Civil War. An index of Civil War pension recipients indicates that some 4,966 veterans of America’s most sanguinary conflict filed…
The following pages are from the souvenir booklet published by the Hebrew Sick Benefit Society of Toronto in 1935 upon the commemoration of its 35th anniversary. It contains many greetings, advertisements and other items from individual members, often listing family names and other details about family history. Most of the pages are in Yiddish. Each…
From Canadian Jewish News, 2003 He was a British soldier and she was a Jewish nurse in British-mandate Palestine: they met in Egypt about 1940. She was killed in an accident and he vowed to let her family know. But how to find them? He — the British soldier — knew that she had been…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, September 1913 ◊ Note: This article describes the very diligent efforts that went into producing Toronto’s city directories of a century ago. This is good news for genealogists because it assures us of the reliability of the directory information. However, individuals of Chinese, Macedonian and other “foreign” ancestry were not always…
From the Canadian Jewish News, January 30, 1992 Florence Hutner, who guided the United Jewish Welfare Fund through problem-filled war and postwar years as its executive director in the 1940s and beyond, died January 6 [1992] at Baycrest Hospital at the age of eighty-four. She was the first woman to head a major Jewish organization…
My uncles, aunts and cousins on the Glicenstein [Gladstone] side always perk up when I mention the huge unclaimed fortune that is supposedly hidden somewhere in our extended family tree. Their eyes grow big when they hear that an alleged distant cousin of ours, a wealthy brewery owner, supposedly died intestate (without an heir) in…
◊ An item in the Toronto Star from 1936 explains a certain inscription on a tombstone found at the Pape Avenue Cemetery, Toronto’s oldest Jewish cemetery. George Sorblum, Toronto’s “unknown soldier,” died in 1919 but his family only learned what happened to him in 2007. * * * From the Toronto Star, November 7, 1936 Some…
The Rothschilds had one. The Disraelis had one. The Montefiore, Mocatta and Sassoon families each had one. And so, according to some interpretations, did each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Popular with the Jewish aristocracy in Europe since medieval times, Jewish coats of arms once seemed a sort of harmless conceit for the rich.…
Problem: you know your Jewish ancestors or relatives lived in Toronto in 1911 — you even know their street address – yet you can’t find them in the 1911 census. No matter how many times you search, they do not show up in Ancestry.com’s database of the 1911 census. Frequently the problem occurs because a family…
From the Toronto Star, September 24, 1902 A fashionable audience of guests gathered this afternoon in Holy Blossom Synagogue to witness the marriage of Mr. Joseph Oppenheimer of New Orleans to Miss Lottie Marks, daughter of Mrs. D. Marks of 526 Euclid Avenue. The bride entered leaning on the arm of her grandfather, Mr. N.…
The Canadian Jewish Immigrant Aid Society published the following list of names in the Canadian Jewish Review in 1922 under the heading, “List of Letters from Europe for Relatives in Canada.” See the list below for full details. Butshatsky – Frazek Boxer – Praber from Taravize, Kiever Chia Dviore Grinspoon from Veinberg, Benderske, Chersaner Kvitko,…
From Beth Sholom Newsletter, 2008 Eva Rothblott [who died on December 7, 2012] was born on Baldwin Street in Toronto in 1918 — ninety years ago — and has been associated with Beth Sholom Congregation “from the very beginning,” she told me when I met with her recently at her retirement home on Sheppard Ave.…
This list of names appears in the program of a Negev Dinner Tribute that took place at the Royal York Hotel, November 1956. The list may help genealogists determine the presence of an ancestor or relative in Toronto at that time. The list is five pages long; a thumbnail of each page appears below; please…
For the genealogist, these membership lists from Toronto’s Shaarei Shomayim synagogue may help establish the presence or confirm the identity of a relative or ancestor. The pages have been copied from the 50-year history of the synagogue, published in 1978. The synagogue is located on Glencairn Avenue east of Bathurst Street in midtown Toronto. The…
The rumbling is sudden and loud and the floor vibrates intensely. Yet patrons in this darkened theatre on Pier 39 in the Fisherman’s Wharf district remain calm. And why not? They have paid $7 to attend the San Francisco Experience, a 28-minute multi-media show that promises that “you will feel the earth shake.” Utilizing a…
From the Canadian Jewish News, 1989 Since the recent declaration of peace between Jordan and Israel, and the opening of the Arava border-crossing point between Eilat and Aqaba, it is now a simple matter for visitors to cross freely between these two spectacular Middle Eastern countries. Until these most welcome innovations, tourists frequently faced considerable…
The Niagara Falls Visitor and Convention Bureau recently gave me an envelope filled with complimentary admission tickets to local museums and fun houses, and for a couple of hours I was like a kid again as I visited them all in succession. The Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum, the Guinness Book of World Records…
In the ancient fishing village of Capernaum, above the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, visitors may examine a partially reconstructed 2nd- or 3rd-century synagogue and glimpse portions of the underlying remains of an earlier synagogue in which Jesus is said to have preached. The town’s name derives from the Hebrew name K’far Nachum,…
Seeking to extend their colonial holdings in the early 1800s, the major European powers considered the notion of dispatching expeditions through the forbidden Sahara Desert to Timbuktu, the legendary lost city of gold in the heart of Africa. Rumors of the vast wealth of Timbuktu had been circulating ever since 1324, when Mansa Musa (“Emperor…
When your address is Hollywood and you’d like some murals in your synagogue, who are you going to call? L.A.’s Wilshire Boulevard Temple is a magnificent structure, both inside and out. Modeled roughly after the Great Synagogue of Florence, its features seem by turns pure Byzantium and pure Hollywood. Large as a cathedral, it boasts…
In the year 1839, had you been a traveller along the road from Rzeszov to Cracow, you would have been obliged to show a passport in Podgorze, the suburb of Cracow on the Austrian side of the Vistula (“Weichsel”) River. After submitting to a cursory inspection from Austrian officials, your vehicle would have crossed the…
In Place d’Armes, an historic square in Montreal’s Old City, two opposing shrines — a loftily-domed church and a classically-pillared bank — face off against each other, potent symbols of the durable dialectic between religion and commerce that has helped shape this dynamic French-and-English-speaking city founded on an island in the St. Lawrence more than 350…
A special summer of activities highlighting Montreal’s historic Jewish community kicks off June 15 (2000) when a musical version of Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz premieres at the Saidye Bronfman Centre in this famously bilingual city. As it happens, the musical is also bilingual: it’s in Yiddish, with simultaneous English translation available for…
James Harris, a 19th-century dairy farmer, brought renown to the southwestern Ontario town of Ingersoll by exhibiting a mammoth piece of locally-produced cheese at world’s fairs in the United States and England. Today, the elegant house that Harris built in 1867 still brings a modest renown to Ingersoll, in its modern incarnation at the heart…
Boasting numerous gems of Georgian architecture, this hilly, former spa town, set in the Peak District of the English Midlands, has been recognized since Roman times for its warm mineral springs — as musicians who venture into the orchestra pit of the Buxton Opera House know only too well. Alec Guiness, Laurence Olivier, Anna Pavlova…
The largest urban park in Canada and the third largest in North America, Vancouver’s Stanley Park is still “half savage and half domestic” as writer James Morris noted a century ago. The historic park offers visitors a compelling mix of dense natural woodlands and well-pruned flower gardens, fierce aboriginal totem poles and a genteel Victorian-style…
Twice a day for nine days each August, 100 propane-fueled hot air balloons rise from 10 sites around the town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, and drift lazily over the outlying vineyards, apple orchards and fields of maize. At six in the morning and again at six in the evening, weather permitting, a single balloon-meister gives the…
About the time Alberta-born Doug Webber moved to Churchill, Man., with his family in the early Sixties, the remote Hudson Bay community had a population of about 7,500 residents, many of them attached to the NASA space port and the Canadian and American military bases there that have since closed down. “Those were the days…
Situated on a dramatic windswept cliff overlooking Vancouver’s Georgia Strait and the snow-capped peaks of the Coast Mountains, the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology pays homage to the art of the Northwest Coast First Nations in several important and pioneering ways. The museum, which opened in 1976, was designed by internationally renowned Canadian…
With factories, warehouses, train stations and other relics of the past strewn about central Manchester like so many children’s toys, the city where the industrial revolution began has been quietly adapting to the post-industrial age. The place that J.B. Priestley once described as “an Amazonian jungle of blackened brick” has cleaned up its image in…
Insect chop suey, sauteed crickets, and pizzas slices loaded with mealworms were among the hors d’oeuvres served recently at a cocktail party at the Insectarium, a Montreal museum devoted to insects. As a master chef fried locusts in a wok, guests sampled cricket-stuffed mushrooms and acras, a Caribbean pasta dish liberally sprinkled with mealworms. For…
One of the first and most persuasive successes of the League of Nations, the international political body that prefigured the United Nations, was the resolution of the so-called Aland (pronounced “Oh-land”) Islands Question in 1921. This archipelago of about 10,000 islands, only 6,500 of which are large enough to have been named, is usually represented…
Note: Written in the height of the Mubarak years, long before his overthrow during the so-called Arab Spring of 2011. Bartering is a way of life in this bustling, dirty, exotic city of 15 million people. From the moment you arrive, you will be beseeched and cajoled to buy perfume, eat a shishkebab, hire a…
A melancholic mist o’erhangs the main street of Yarmouth, an isolated village of about 7,000 people on Nova Scotia’s extreme southwestern shore. Sixty miles from the coast of Maine, Yarmouth has not changed much since its glory days as a thriving regional seaport in the late 19th century, when it served as a major embarkation point…
