From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2015 In late 1947 and early 1948, representatives of the Canadian garment industry organized…
Jewish Toronto
From the DP Camps to Canada via the Tailor Project
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Mount Sinai Hospital had humble beginnings
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When Dr. Daniel Drucker of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital receives the US$150,000 Manpei-Suzuki prize for groundbreaking diabetes research this February…
Landsmanshaft and Jewish mutual benefit societies of Toronto
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The following is an abridgement of a talk that Bill Gladstone gave to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Canada (Toronto)…
Michael Blume, Toronto’s first Jewish pharmacist (1866)
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From The Jewish Standard, April 1, 1966 The author, in an earlier article, wrote of the career of Mr. Charles…
Cecil Street Reunion: former shul receives plaque
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Back in 1938, two Jewish boys posed for a photo on the steps of Toronto’s Ostrovtzer Synagogue on…
Toronto’s Jewish ‘Unknown Soldier’ from WWI
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◊ An item in the Toronto Star from 1936 explains a certain inscription on a tombstone found at the Pape Avenue…
Obit: Elazar (Louis) Rotenberg, ran steamship agency (d.1936)
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From the Jewish Standard, January 1937 The most remarkable thing about the late Mr. Elazar (Louis) Rotenberg, who died on…
Review: Alison Pick’s Between Gods
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Seven years ago, as Toronto author Alison Pick began researching and writing what would become her prize-winning novel Far to…
Growing Up on Dundas Street, by Ben Kayfetz
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From Growing Up Jewish: Canadians tell their own stories (1997) My earlier recollection goesback to the very early 1920s,…
Excerpt: ‘The Rise of the Toronto Jewish Community’
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The following passages have been excerpted from The Rise of the Toronto Jewish Community, by Shmuel Mayer Shapiro (1877-1958), the…
Love turns to murder on Adelaide Street (1914)
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◊ The following articles describe a tragedy that unfolded in Toronto’s Jewish district on Adelaide Street West near Spadina in…
Toronto
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…
Toronto City Guide befits a great city
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Toronto Architecture: A City Guide (McClelland & Stewart) From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2018 In 1985, when architectural journalist…
OJA exhibit pays homage to Benjamin Brown
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From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2016 “Location, location, location,” they say, are the three most important things in real…
Infuriated Toronto Youths Riot Over Showing of Swastika (1933)
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Police Rushed to Willowvale Park After Ball Game to Restore Order From The Montreal Gazette, August 17, 1933 Toronto August 16…
Saving the Babies of Toronto’s Poor—Pure Milk Depots Doing Grand Work (1911)
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From the Toronto Star Weekly, August 26 1911 Enterprise of the Household Economic Association Has Achieved Wonderful Results—Little Ones so…
Toronto had 3,000 cars in 1911 (Star Weekly)
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Hamilton man owned first motor in Canada J.C. Eaton of Toronto Bought the Second – Wonderful Development of the…
Christian missions proselytized Jews in ‘the Ward’
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From the Canadian Jewish News, April 2015 Having recently marked its 25th anniversary, the organization Jews for Judaism continues to counter…
Is Toronto Troubled by ‘Too Much Sunday’? (1914)
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Above: Some 3,500 Torontonians protested at Massey Hall when City Council refused to allow the use of slides at High Park…
The oldest family tree in the world
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 24, 2004 You may not find Dr. Neil Rosenstein’s new book listed on national best-seller lists, but the noted genealogist — with his tongue halfway in his cheek — compares it to the popular thriller “The Da Vinci Code.” Both books, the noted American genealogist and surgeon said, deal in…
Toronto’s Jewish ‘Unknown Soldier’ from WWI
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◊ 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…
Review: Alison Pick’s Between Gods
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Seven years ago, as Toronto author Alison Pick began researching and writing what would become her prize-winning novel Far to Go, she realized that the seeds of two different projects — one a fictional manuscript, the other a closely allied memoir — were struggling for dominance within her mind. Giving priority to the novel, she…
Two views of Bristol house, 1911 & 2014
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Angell and Janey Lester (nee Alexander) were living in this house at 4 Radnor Rd., Bristol, in 1911 when this photo was taken. Janey is standing outside the house holding her infant son, Lionel Lester, with her four-year-old daughter, Ida, standing in front. Janey’s younger sister, twelve-year-old Dora Alexander, stands beside them in the dark…
A shocker: Mother & babe held at US-Canada border for two weeks
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From The London Jewish Chronicle, March 20, 1931 ◊ This shocking tale from the height of the depression focuses on a poor and desperate mother who, with a helpless infant, was caught in a bureaucratic no-man’s-land between the United States and Canada while authorities argued over which country would take her. Dorothy Cohen, a Jewish girl,…
