From the Canadian Jewish News (editorial), 1987 The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Founded half a century…
Jewish Toronto
The CBC’s shame (1987)
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Toronto’s May Day parades of yesteryear (1955)
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by Ben Lappin (from Commentary, 1955) Spadina Avenue, the main street of the needle trades in Toronto, looks very much…
Mutual Benefit: Toronto’s ‘Society’ doctors
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by Irving B Rosen, MD, FRCSC Society doctors, like Harley Street specialists, evoke the image of the sought after, affluent…
History of Beth Lida Forest Hill Congregation
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Note: In 2012, Beth Lida commissioned Bill Gladstone to write a detailed history of the congregation since its founding in…
Fond farewell to Frydman-Kohl after 25 years
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◊ After the departure of Rabbi Benjamin Friedberg from Toronto’s Beth Tzedec Synagogue in the early 1990s, the congregation turned…
The Keeping of Jewish Records in Ontario
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Above: Current OJA executive director Dara Solomon stands beside image of early Passover seder, the sort of historic photo the…
Samuel Sachs, long-time Goel Tzedec rabbi (1989)
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From the Canadian Jewish News, January 22, 1989 TORONTO – Rabbi Samuel Sachs died recently in Santa Monica, California at the…
Profile: Dorothy Dworkin, nurse & Mount Sinai founder
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Dorothy Goldstick (later Dworkin) donned the modest white cap of a maternity nurse in 1909, but her accomplishments ranged into…
M.J. Nurenberger founded the CJN
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Although his name may be little known even within the Canadian Jewish community, Meyer Joshua Nurenberger was an internationally-known Jewish…
A ‘robust, new’ history of Jews in Canada
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Seeking the Fabled City: the Canadian Jewish Experience, by Allan Levine (McClelland & Stewart) Proficient, prolific, and preternaturally talented, Winnipeg-based…
Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut: An Appreciation
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From the Canadian Jewish News, 2017 From the moment in 1961 that he stepped into the role, Rabbi W. Gunther…
Toronto
Remembering Barbara Frum, CBC broadcaster (1937-1992)
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From the Canadian Jewish News, April 1992 After an eighteen-year battle with leukemia, Barbara Frum died March 26, 1992 at…
Detective Benny Cooperman turns 30 (2010)
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Some thirty years ago, writer Howard Engel gave the world Benny Cooperman, a new made-in-Canada literary detective whom the Globe…
All in a day’s work: Census takers in ‘the Ward’
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“The Lot of the Census Taker in the Ward is Anything But an Easy One” is the title of the…
A Toronto baseball team from 1880
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From the Toronto Evening Telegram, April 1919 Thirty-nine years ago up on the the old grounds in Queen’s Park, near…
Ing Quong, Chinese magnate, in his last procession (1912)
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As “John Bull” he celebrated the inauguration of the Chinese Republic Guards Band Played Him Home Funeral of Well-Known merchant…
Helen Keller at Massey Hall, 1914
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A WONDER WOMAN AT MASSEY HALL Helen Keller Spoke to Large Audience Who Were Spellbound. HER FAMOUS TEACHER Mrs. Macey…
Ups & downs of a department store elevator (1900)
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From the Toronto Star, 1900 Character Sketches Among the Throngs Who Travel Up and Down in the Big Departmental Stores…
Panic at Yonge Street crossing (1910)
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A Little Panic at Yonge St. Crossing — Crowd Burst Around Behind One Train and Ran in Front of Another…
Davisville hotel to disappear (1928)
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Photostory From the Toronto Evening Telegram, June 1928 Old North Toronto landmark at southeast corner of Yonge and Davisville has…
First Home of Heintzman Piano Factory
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From Toronto Evening Telegram, 1928 When King Street, from Yonge Street to the Market, was Toronto’s busiest shopping district, Heintzman’s…
Toronto’s ‘400’ Sometimes Visit Pawnbrokers (1914)
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From the Toronto Star Weekly, June 13, 1914 “It is a great mistake,” said a local pawnbroker, “to imagine that…
Archaeology of Toronto’s ‘Ward’
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The Ward Uncovered: The Archaeology of Everyday Life, edited by Holly Martelle, Michael McClelland, Tatum Taylor, and John Lorinc. (Coach…
History
Ben Gurion in Nova Scotia
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by Dr Stuart E Rosenberg From The Canadian Jewish News, 1972 Here’s an interesting footnote to Jewish Canadiana. A very unusual episode, full of portent and prophecy for the future of Jews everywhere, was played out in a remote corner of the country, at an army base in Windsor, Nova Scotia. It was there that a man who, thirty years…
The Baghdadi Jews of Bombay (Mumbai)
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Book Review: Bombay: Exploring the Jewish Heritage, by Dr. Shaul Sapir. Large format, hardcover, 290 pages; full-colour interior, lavishly illustrated with large four-panel foldout map. $50. Published by Bene Israel Heritage Museum and Genealogical Research Centre, India, 2013. There are four distinct historic Jewish communities in India — the Cochin or Malabar Jews, the Bene-Israel Jews, the Bene-Menashe Jews of northeast…
Baby born at sea amidst Ukrainian rescue
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by Gaye Applebaum From the Canadian Jewish News, 1983 As the SS Hamilton Scandinavian docked at Quebec City on Aug. 21, 1921, a tremor of excitement surged through the rain-drenched crowd. On the ship’s deck huddled 108 frightened but excited Ukrainian Jewish children – all of them rescued war orphans from the devastated Polish Ukraine. Also on deck was Lillian…
Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey
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Book Review: Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey, by Mikhal Dekel. Hardcover, 418 pages. Published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2019. In September 1939, as Nazi militias approached their town of Ostrow Mazowiecka in northeastern Poland, the author’s paternal grandparents, like many others, were faced with a momentous decision: stay or flee eastwards into Russian-occupied eastern Poland, then the vast…
Sledgehammer: An ambassadorial account of the Abraham Accords
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Book review: Sledgehammer: How Breaking With The Past Brought Peace To The Middle East, by David Friedman, former US Ambassador to Israel. HarperCollins, 2022. In Sledgehammer, lawyer-turned-ambassador David Friedman offers some excellent background to the important story of the Abraham Accords, which stand as the most significant development in Middle East peace since Israel’s treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Representing…
Rediscovered
Ontario puts new restrictions on birth records (2016)
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From Inside Toronto, 2016 As if attaining genealogical records wasn’t already hard enough, genealogists now have to face a steep new barrier when it comes to getting Ontario birth records. Quietly, on the sly and when no one was looking, the Ontario Registrar General changed its longstanding rule about how…
Ben Gurion in Nova Scotia
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by Dr Stuart E Rosenberg From The Canadian Jewish News, 1972 Here’s an interesting footnote to Jewish Canadiana. A very unusual episode, full of portent and prophecy for the future of Jews everywhere, was played out in a remote corner of the country, at an army base in Windsor, Nova…
Rhea Clyman chronicled Soviet famine
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Rhea Clyman, an accomplished journalist born to a Jewish family in Toronto in 1904, wrote many front-page newspaper stories in the late 1920s and 1930s about political events and their tragic human consequences in Russia, Ukaine and Germany, but died in near-obscurity in New York in 1981. Clyman wrote rare…
A glimpse into the early days of the Queen’s Hotel
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Sixty Years’ Changes, As Hotelman Has Seen Them — The Queen’s Has Been “An Institution” of Toronto, Like the Parliament Buildings or St. James’ Cathedral — Glimpses of ‘60s & ‘70s — View of Bay Fetched Topnotch Price for Rooms — Nickel-plated Self-feeder Supplied Luxury of Heating — Tin Bath When Asked — First…
Canadianizing the foreigners with ‘Settlement Work’ (1914)
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From the Toronto Star Weekly, July 1914 By Julia K. Lamont “But is she a dainty cook?” “No-o; not especially, but an excellent worker.” “Won’t suit,” declared the settlement superintendent. “The children must have dainty dishes.” “Why, what children?” “Why, the neighbourhood children for our summer camp.” Elegance and simplicity…
