One needs a “strong sense of perseverance” to be a poet, says Seymour Mayne, the Ottawa professor and wordsmith whose recent slim volume September Rain (Mosaic Press) is the 29th book of poetry he’s published since 1964 — “ken eina hora, almost 41 years ago.” Educated at the Talmud Torah in his native Montreal, Mayne…
Tag: profile
Morley Torgov & The War to End All Wars
by •
Sitting in his elegant apartment in midtown Toronto, novelist-lawyer Morley Torgov explains why his latest novel, The War To End All Wars (Malcolm Lester Books) took him 17 years to write. Whenever he felt challenged about the direction of the story, he’d put the manuscript into a drawer, sometimes for a year or more at…
Barney Danson (1921-2011)
by •
Barnett (Barney) Danson, the Canadian politician and Cabinet minister, died October 17, 2011 at the age of 90. Born to a Jewish family in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, Danson joined the Queen’s Own Rifles in 1939, rose to Lieutenant Colonel and lost an eye in the Battle of Normandy. He returned to Canada and joined his…
Gilbert Gottfried is a scream
by •
American comedian Gilbert Gottfried, whose most celebrated role was the voice of the parrot in the Disney movie Aladdin, brought his quirky brand of stand-up humor to Canada recently (1997) for two sold-out shows at Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Superclub as part of the Toronto Comedy Festival. Gottfried responds to the audience’s welcoming applause by pleading…
Interview with playwright Jason Sherman
by •
Although his current play It’s All True is based on a “labor opera” from the 1930s, and though many of his previous plays have been highly critical of Israel, Toronto playwright Jason Sherman told an audience at Harbourfront recently, “I don’t think of myself as a political playwright any more than I do a Jewish…
Conversation with Red Buttons
by •
As he prepares to bring his recent smash Broadway revue to Toronto, stage and screen veteran Red Buttons, who is 76 and lives in Los Angeles, joked that he was contemplating taking French lessons just in case the Yes side won the Quebec referendum. “I might even bring my wife along, and introduce her as…
Grace Paley, Ariel Dorfman, Thomas Keneally at IFOA
by •
Numerous writers of special interest to the Jewish community appeared recently at the Harbourfront International Festival of Authors, Toronto’s pre-eminent literary event. Their presence insured that Jewish themes were well represented. American Jewish writer Grace Paley, interviewed publicly by Toronto newspaper columnist David Lewis Stein, spoke engagingly about art and politics, the two activities to…
The art of magazine profiles
by •
The New Yorker or Maclean’s Magazine: which has perfected the art of the magazine profile to a higher degree? Magazine lovers will recognize that the question is rhetorical and doesn’t require an answer. After all, it was the New Yorker that invented, about 1927, the modern intimate journalistic essay we recognize as a magazine profile.…
Obit: Ben Kayfetz
by •
Forty years ago, Ben Kayfetz, the longtime director of community relations for the Canadian Jewish Congress, flew to Cuba to oversee distribution of a shipment of kosher food to Havana’s isolated Jewish community of 2,500. Benjamin Gershon Kayfetz, former community relations director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, born Toronto, December 24, 1916; died Toronto, February…
Obit: Isabel LeBourdais (1909-2003)
by •
When Isabel LeBourdais first heard that an Ontario court had condemned a 14-year-old boy to death for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl, she was appalled that the criminal justice system showed no interest in giving a deeply maladjusted teenager the psychological therapy he so obviously required. But her opinion quickly changed once…
