by Ellen Weiser If you’re a baby boomer, or more accurately, a Jewish Toronto baby boomer, undoubtedly you have...
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Memories of Good (Jewish) Eats on Eglinton & Downtown
by Ellen Weiser If you’re a baby boomer, or more accurately, a Jewish Toronto...
Globe notices sharp increase of Jews in Toronto (1910)
Photographer William James’s superb elevated view of Agnes and Teraulay (Dundas and Bay streets)...
Unbuilt Toronto 2: More of the City That Might...
Review of Unbuilt Toronto 2: More of the City That Might Have Been, by...
The Potash and Perlmutter Stories
For years the magazines sent him rejection letters, inferring that his short stories about...
The Streets of Toronto — Yonge, Queen, King, College...
From the Toronto Star Weekly, December 24, 1910 Yonge, King, Queen, Bloor, College, and...
Memories of Good (Jewish) Eats on Eglinton & Downtown
Yiddish Youth Concert, Massey Hall, 1918
The Yiddish Yugend Farein or Yiddish Young People’s Organization of Toronto sponsored a Sukkot Concert at Massey Hall on...
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Toronto’s first Jewish nurse writes of early Toronto
Memoirs of Dorothy Goldstick Dworkin In the following article, the former Dorothy Goldstick relates her experiences working as a...
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Police Raid Matzah Factory (1909)
From the Toronto Star, November 4, 1909 ◊ This article reflects two problems sometimes faced by members of the city’s...
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Toronto’s junk trade worth $10 million a year (1913)
From the Toronto Star weekly October 4, 1913 Some men who began with the bag over their shoulders now...
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Toronto shul exhibits photos of Polish shtetl
From the Canadian Jewish News, October 3, 2012 TORONTO — A series of old historic photographs from the Polish shtetl...
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Toronto Pioneers — the Robinsons and Franklins
From the Canadian Jewish News, May 3, 1963 by Mordecai Hirshenson Who was the Mrs. Elisa Robinson who bequeathed...
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Obit: Florence Hutner (1907-1992)
From the Canadian Jewish News, January 30, 1992 Florence Hutner, who guided the United Jewish Welfare Fund through problem-filled...
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Profile of an old Russian Jew in Toronto (1913)
From The Toronto Star Weekly, July 1913 Zeth Slavin had to flee the Czar’s domains because his customers were...
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Toronto’s Jewish ‘Unknown Soldier’ from WWI
◊ An item in the Toronto Star from 1936 explains a certain inscription on a tombstone found at the Pape...
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20,000 gawkers swarm Bessie Starkman funeral, 1930
Prelude: Bessie (Besha) Starkman, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, married baker and driver Harry Tobins in Toronto in 1907...
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Oppenheimer-Marks “Rainbow Wedding,” 1902
From the Toronto Star, September 24, 1902 A fashionable audience of guests gathered this afternoon in Holy Blossom Synagogue...
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Obit: Mary Wilensky (d. 1958)
From the Toronto Star, May 13, 1958 Funeral service for Mrs. Mary Wilensky, eight-six, a Russian immigrant who raised...
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Obit: Sports hero Harry Sniderman (1976)
From a Canadian newspaper, August 20, 1976 By Mordecai Hershenson Harry Sniderman was a colourful figure in the Toronto...
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Obit: Sam Shopsowitz, hot-dog king, dead at 63 (1984)
Based on article from the Canadian Jewish News, Sept. 20, 1984 Sam Shopsowitz, the pastrami and hot dog king...
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Fine tailoring pays off for Harry Rosen (1984)
Abridged from The Canadian Jewish News Harry Rosen, known across Canada as a master craftsman in the art of...
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Directory of Toronto Jewish Organizations, 1931
This directory of organizations of Toronto’s Jewish community is from the Toronto Jewish City Directory for 1931. Click on...
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Obit: Eva Rothblott (1918-2012)
From Beth Sholom Newsletter, 2008 Eva Rothblott was born on Baldwin Street in...
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Magistrate Jacob Cohen profiled in Globe, 1910
THE following feature profile of Jacob Cohen, a retired Toronto businessman who became Toronto’s first Jewish justice of the...
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Making girls of Jewish birth into good Canadians
From Toronto Star Weekly, February 12, 1916 The Jewish Free School at the corner of Cecil and Beverley streets...
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The Jews — A Tenacious People of Faith (1921)
From The Globe and Mail, July 28, 1921 ◊ The writer of this sympathetic and thoughtful article seemed to want...
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Gas poisoning in hotel at York & Adelaide, 1909
From The Toronto Star, September 9, 1909 Boscol Moses, a young farmer from Audbury (sic), Ontario, celebrated his first...
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Growth of a Kensington grocery store (1987)
From The Canadian Jewish News, November 19, 1987 If you trace the path of the Toronto Jewish community for...
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Rabbi Halpern dead, founder of synagogue (1922)
Note: Rabbi Isaac Halpern came to Toronto from New York about 1888 and at first collected rags. He was...
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Globe notices sharp increase of Jews in Toronto (1910)
Photographer William James’s superb elevated view of Agnes and Teraulay (Dundas and Bay streets)...
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Unbuilt Toronto 2: More of the City That Might Have Been
Review of Unbuilt Toronto 2: More of the City That Might Have Been, by...
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The Streets of Toronto — Yonge, Queen, King, College (1910)
From the Toronto Star Weekly, December 24, 1910 Yonge, King, Queen, Bloor, College, and...
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Site for new Women’s College Hospital (1926)
From The Toronto Evening Telegram, July 6, 1926 Southeast corner of Grosvenor Street and...
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Dancing at Jewish Wedding Violates Sunday Blue Laws (1912)
From the Toronto Star, February 19, 1912 Shall Dancing Be Allowed in Civic Halls...
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Deputy chief says police census was carefully done (1912)
As nearly correct as it is humanly possible to make it From the Toronto...
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Hucksters versus housewives in Kensington market (1925)
Note: This is an early and very colourfully written article about what would become...
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A ‘gipsy’ encampment near Davisville (1911)
Note: The following article, which appeared in the Toronto Star Weekly of January 28,...
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From Post Office Manager to Prison — A Tale of the Ward
◊ The following newspaper stories tell of young Joseph Gurofsky’s rise from assessment clerk to...
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Fewer women thieves in city than 10 years ago (1913)
From The Star Weekly, July 5, 1913 Not long ago, a woman was caught...
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The shantytowns on Toronto’s outskirts (1911)
From the Toronto Star Weekly, March 25, 1911 EVOLUTION OF TORONTO’S MANY SHACKTOWNS –...
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Obit: Ross Dowson, Trotskyite & mayoral candidate (d. 2002)
From the Globe and Mail, February 2002 As a Trotskyite and leader of the...
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How Toronto’s city directory is compiled (1913)
From the Toronto Star Weekly, September 1913 ◊ Note: This article describes the very diligent...
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Insurers promise to treat Jew and Gentile alike (1931)
From the Toronto Star, April 29, 1931 Jews and Gentiles will have their automobile...
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“Mashers I Have Met” — Toronto Girl Tells All (1913)
From the Toronto Star Weekly, July 5, 1913 One popular fellow-singer proposed a jaunt...
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Geological History of North Toronto
From Tales of North Toronto II, ca 1950 by Lyman B. Jackes North Toronto...
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An Iroquois-Huron village in north Toronto
From North Toronto Tales, 1948 by Lyman B Jackes There is no section of...
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A glimpse into the early days of the Queen’s Hotel
Sixty Years’ Changes, As Hotelman Has Seen Them — The Queen’s Has Been “An Institution”...
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Photo exhibit portrays early Jewish immigrants to Toronto
“Picturing Immigrants in the Ward,” a recently installed exhibit at the City of Toronto...
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Lawrence Solman, Canada’s Uncrowned Amusement King (1926)
From The Toronto Star Weekly, November 18, 1926 ◊ Profile of the remarkable Toronto-born entrepreneur...
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Emma Goldman, Toronto’s anarchist guest (1926)
From the Toronto Star Weekly, December 31, 1926 by Frederick Griffin You can’t imagine...
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Crowd scene beside City Hall at 1914 Armistice
A jubilant crowd gathered at Queen & James beside Toronto City Hall upon news...
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Canadianizing the foreigners with ‘Settlement Work’ (1914)
From the Toronto Star Weekly, July 1914 By Julia K. Lamont “But is she...
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Toronto’s ‘400’ Sometimes Visit Pawnbrokers (1914)
From the Toronto Star Weekly, June 13, 1914 “It is a great mistake,” said...
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Miscellaneous -- Movies, Theatre, Biography, Travel, Etc.
The Potash and Perlmutter Stories
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...
Only Yesterday: Collected Pieces on the Jews of Toronto
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:
Hebrew Sick Benefit Society Booklet (1935) page B
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....
Hebrew Sick Benefit Society Silver Jubilee Booklet (1935)
◊ 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...
Book review: The Dentist of Auschwitz
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,”...
How not to cross the Allenby Bridge
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...
Geological History of North Toronto
From Tales of North Toronto II, ca 1950 by Lyman B. Jackes North Toronto is, geologically speaking, very different from the remainder of the city. Some eight or nine thousand years ago, what is now North Toronto was the beach land of a great lake. The level of the water is clearly marked today...
Review: The Gershwins & Me, by Michael Feinstein
For those who love the classic tunes of the so-called American “songbook” and particularly the timeless melodies and lyrics of George and Ira Gershwin, Michael Feinstein’s new book, The Gershwins and Me: A Personal History in Twelve Songs is much more than heartfelt homage by an outsider or Johnny-come-lately to a remarkable musical era that...
Devil in the White City: Murder & Chicago World’s Fair, 1893
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...
Swept away at Niagara Falls: a cautionary tale
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...
One of Mengele’s experimental twins tells her story
From the Canadian Jewish News, 1995 It was, finally, the melody of a Hebrew song that brought Sora Vigorito fully back into the Jewish fold. As a child, she had been tortured at Auschwitz. The Nazis had murdered all her loved ones except her father. She had met him for the first time after...
Emma Goldman, Toronto’s anarchist guest (1926)
From the Toronto Star Weekly, December 31, 1926 by Frederick Griffin You can’t imagine the gigantic United States with all its doughboys and buddies being scared of a woman. It is like a man being scared of a mouse. And yet we have the fact that they were so frightened over there by the...
Capernaum is rich in Christian history
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...
Bad day in Bathurst Manor Plaza
A 79-year old woman was shaken up but not seriously hurt after flipping her Honda Accord into a parking spot at Bathurst Manor Plaza in north Toronto one morning in April 2009. The accident was caused by the “misapplication of pedals,” police said. An eyewitness, Peter Kim, said he saw “this blue car coming...
Some Early Toronto Film Pioneers
From the Canadian Jewish News, May 4, 2006 Born in the East End of London, leading British cameraman Joe Rosenthal came to Canada about 1900 at the behest of the Canadian Pacific Railway to make Living Canada, a series of documentary films intended to stimulate immigration. The series was a popular success in Britain,...
Samuel Koteliansky — A Russian Jew in Bloomsbury
Samuel Koteliansky was never a major figure in the Bloomsbury circle. Author Leon Edel never even mentions him in Bloomsbury: A House of Lions, his masterful portrait of the loose affiliation of writers and artists associated with the London-based Bloomsbury circle. Neither is Koteliansky mentioned in the other books about Bloomsbury on my shelf....
His Girl Friday at Shaw Festival 2012
From Canadian Jewish News, July 2012 The phrase “gallows humour” has a particular resonance in regard to Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s famous 1928 play The Front Page, which is punctuated by the recurrent testing of a gallows in a courtyard of the Chicago courthouse in which death row prisoner Earl Williams is due...
Toronto Jewish Film Festival turns 20
From The Canadian Jewish News, April 2012 The 20th annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival opens Thursday May 3, 2012 at the Cineplex Odeon Varsity with the English-Canadian premiere of A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, a France-Canada co-production about a teenaged Israeli girl who receives an email response from a young Palestinian who calls...
The Road to Timbuktu: Adventures of a Jewish Traveller
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...
Opening of Toronto’s Lyric Theatre, 1909
Grand Opening of New Jewish Theatre Quite an Up-to-Date Playhouse with All Sorts of Conveniences — Notables See the Play. From the Toronto Star, May 5, 1909 With waving of flags and the making of many speeches, the new Jewish theatre, called the Lyric, at Agnes and Teraulay streets, was opened last night as...
Only in Los Angeles: the Wilshire Boulevard Temple
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...
An 1839 travelogue through the Jewish world
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...
Many highlights for repeat visitors to Montreal
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...
Montreal Jewish community has rich history
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...
The Elm Hurst Inn in Ingersoll, Ont.
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...
Buxton known for Georgian architecture, mineral springs
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...
Vancouver’s Stanley Park
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...
Seeing Quebec’s Monteregie by hot-air balloon
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...
Birds, bears, whales and lichen on view in Churchill
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...
Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology
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...
Genealogy
Deputy chief says police census was carefully done (1912)
As nearly correct as it is humanly possible to make it From the Toronto...
Canadian Jews fought in American Civil War
Hard to believe, but there were Jews in Toronto and probably Montreal as well...
How Toronto’s city directory is compiled (1913)
From the Toronto Star Weekly, September 1913 ◊ Note: This article describes the very diligent...
Obit: Florence Hutner (1907-1992)
From the Canadian Jewish News, January 30, 1992 Florence Hutner, who guided the United...
Finding an unclaimed fortune in the family tree
My uncles, aunts and cousins on the Glicenstein side always perk up when...
Toronto’s Jewish ‘Unknown Soldier’ from WWI
◊ An item in the Toronto Star from 1936 explains a certain inscription on a...
Jewish coats of arms
The Rothschilds had one. The Disraelis had one. The Montefiore, Mocatta and Sassoon families...
Oppenheimer-Marks “Rainbow Wedding,” 1902
From the Toronto Star, September 24, 1902 A fashionable audience of guests gathered this...
Influx of poor Hebrews causes problem (1891)
From The Globe, September 10, 1891 The influx of pauper Hebrew immigrants to this...
Toronto merchant leaves stores to sons (1919)
Barnett Danson Left Estate of $22,450 From The Toronto Star, March 20, 1919 Barnett...
Greenwalds celebrate 50th (1985)
From the Canadian Jewish News, August 22, 1985 The 50th wedding anniversary of Belle...
Obits: Fanny Green, Moshe Grossman, Esther Harris
Above: Harry & Esther Harris & Children, Toronto ca 1920. Back row from left:...
List of Jews naturalized in Toronto, 1910
◊ In the fall of 1910, the Toronto newspapers described certain bureaucratic difficulties that had...
Of the Dwor and Devor Families
Adapted from the Canadian Jewish News, April 21, 1961 Mrs. Bella Dwor, widow of...
The oldest family tree in the world
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 24, 2004 You may not find Dr. Neil Rosenstein’s...
A shocker: Mother & babe held at US-Canada border for two weeks
From The London Jewish Chronicle, March 20, 1931 ◊ This shocking tale from the height...
From Belarus to Cape Breton & beyond
From the Canadian Jewish News, May 15, 1997 In the early part of the...
Orchestrating the American dream
Family Matters: Sam, Jennie and the Kids, by Burton Bernstein, was first published in...
Stories from Jewish Portland
If you have roots in Jewish Portland, you may be interested in a recent...
Titanic genealogy
The 100th anniversary of the S.S. Titanic disaster is almost upon us. The legendary...
How Yad Vashem computerized names of victims
Faced with a non-negotiable deadline of March 31, 1999, an army of some 1,200...
Genealogist explores her family’s history in Stropkov
Jews settled in Stropkov, in the Slovak Republic, around 1640. It was a little...
Lost in Hollywood: my cousin, the child actor
During a sightseeing visit to Los Angeles some years ago, I surprised myself by...
The sculptor Glicenstein and other Glicenstein ‘cousins’
Born as Tsvi Hirsh Glicenstein in Konin Poland about 1872, my great-grandfather came to...
A Bacher family reunion in the Catskills, 1983
More than 250 members of the Bacher family met for a reunion at Grossinger’s,...
Irish rabbi’s descendants gather in Dublin
The Leventon family reunion, held recently in Dublin, Ireland, brought together 127 direct descendants...
Medical condition leads to genealogy breakthrough
Stanley Diamond, a semi-retired Montreal businessman who ran a company that manufactured decorated ceilings,...
The House of the Living (Excerpt)
THE following is the beginning of The House of the Living, a “long” short...
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