The history of the Sons of Jacob Benevolent Society, which recently entered its 87th year, mirrors the growth and development of the Toronto Jewish community. The society’s current president, Joe Goren, says the records show that the organization, founded in 1918, was formed “to do good works and [give] charitable donations.” Its first meeting was…
Month: December 2011
Aerial view of Toronto, 1910
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This aerial photograph of Toronto was taken in 1910, when the science of flight was in its infancy. Note that the pilot is visible in the early biplane, which took off from the Aviation Park in Weston. The photo was obviously taken from a second plane, flying nearby. This poor reproduction doesn’t reveal much of…
Fresh memories of Kensington Market
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I can still remember the wonderful things I smelled, when as a child, my mother took me shopping to Kensington Market on Thursdays. Kensington Market was the hub of activity, as storekeepers — mostly East European Jews — and bargain-seeking shoppers congregated. You could always smell bread baking in the myriad of bakery shops. At…
Bossin family celebrates 100 years in Canada
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More than 225 descendants of Leib Yehuda and Surah Leah Bossin will come together from across North America, Germany and Israel to celebrate the family’s 100th anniversary in Canada. Descendants ranging in age from eight months to 90 years old will gather on the weekend of August 20 (2004) at the Nottawasaga Inn in Alliston,…
Club Desmond members hold 50th anniversary reunion
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Friendship and keeping in touch with old friends are very important, says Ken Heller. “Looking back, my teenage years were a wonderful time of life with less stress and a place to go every week to have fun.” Several months ago, Heller, 66, began planning a 50th anniversary reunion with the former members of Club…
Obit: gallery curator Ken Saltmarche (1920-2003)
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Canada’s art world is lamenting the end of an era with the demise of Ken Saltmarche, founding director of the Art Gallery of Windsor, who died in Toronto on July 3, 2003, at the age of 82. An accomplished artist, Saltmarche ultimately made his greatest mark as an arts administrator and is being remembered as…
Yarmouth, picturesque Maritime town, is losing its Jews
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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…
Ruth Wisse: a litterateur with political smarts
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Ruth Wisse, the noted author and professor of Yiddish literature, told a large gathering at the Leah Posluns Theatre during the 16th annual Jewish Book Fair that she was greatly influenced in her salad days by a circle of New York liberal intellectuals that included Lionel Trilling, Irving Howe, Harold Rosenberg as well as “my…
On the Warsaw Ghetto
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In the decades before the Holocaust, the Jews of Warsaw believed that they were on the eve of a great positive transformation, according to an Israeli professor of Jewish history who took part in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Jews of Warsaw were poor, often living in one-room flats where lively discussions of religion, politics…
Visiting a hill tribe in northern Thailand
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The mini-van had made it safely up the red mud slopes and Sam, our well-spoken Thai guide, said we’d get back okay provided the heavens didn’t burst. “If it rains, the road will become a sea of mud,” he said indifferently. “We’d get stuck for sure. Maybe even slide off a cliff.” The sky was…
