Above: Harry & Esther Harris & Children, Toronto ca 1920. Back row from left: Harold, Meyer, Rachel, D. Lou, Millie, Joe, Ann. Middle: Kay, Jean, Fred. Front: Gertie, Harry & Esther, Leola. D. Lou Harris (top centre in striped tie) became an influential Jewish communal figure. From Canadian Jewish News, Dec. 31, 1971 Fanny Green…
Excluded from YMCA, Jews built their own ‘Y’
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A Narrow Policy From an undated newspaper clipping, Toronto, about 1913 When the YMCA authorities determined to segregate their 400 Hebrew members they made a false step. It is true that the action is consistent with the policy of excluding Unitarians from the institution, but the general public who have been subscribing freely to the…
Inside Toronto’s first synagogue on Yom Kippur, 1881
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Note: This very early article may be the first significant piece written about the Jewish community of Toronto and any of its synagogues. It appeared only six years after the synagogue was built in 1875 on Richmond and Victoria streets. Like many stories of its kind from that era, it treated the Jews in a…
List of donors to Jewish charities, Toronto 1925
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The Federation of Jewish Philanthropies published a partial list of hundreds of donors in the Toronto Star in December 1925. The list, which is reproduced below in full, may be used as a primary genealogical source for those seeking the presence of a person on family in the city at that time. Click to enlarge.…
Making a living under the gas jets
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Anybody who has had occasion to be on the streets of Toronto about midnight or shortly after must have been struck by the almost sepulchral quiet which then reigns on the streets. Except the measured footsteps of the policeman as he treads his beat, a sound often audible at a distance of two or three…
Saturday Night casts a low eye upon the Jew, 1904
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◊ Saturday Night, the staunch Canadian magazine, did us a service by preserving in prose the naïve, native prejudicial stereotype of the day. This article from 1904 paints a disgustingly dark portrait of the ugly foreigner, particularly the Jew, who was then collectively making Toronto a cosmopolitan city for the first time. Anti-semitic in its purest…
List of Jews naturalized in Toronto, 1910
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◊ In the fall of 1910, the Toronto newspapers described certain bureaucratic difficulties that had been discovered in the naturalization applications of hundreds of would-be citizens because an assistant of Justice of the Peace Jacob Cohen had been signing the forms for Cohen instead of Cohen signing his own name himself. Cohen apparently had no knowledge…
Dark, dangerous police station in St. Andrew’s Market, 1907
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The Force Quartered in St. Andrew’s Market Have Poor Quarters, and the Cells are Dark, Dangerous, and Unsanitary From the Toronto Star, October 5, 1907 One cannot be a policeman in a day. It is only after a most thorough coaching and training that a man can don the blue uniform with the silver buttons…
Toronto by night: a policeman’s rounds, 1884
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From the Toronto World, May 1884 Toilers of the Night – No. 3 (Final part of a series) Walking Against Time by the Corporation Gaslight — How the Sleeping Citizens are Guarded at Night If night policemen are not exactly “toilers,” insofar as they have little manual labour to perform, they have at least “legwork”…
Obit: Marion Bessin (d. 1981)
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Adapted from the Canadian Jewish News, April 30, 1981 Marion Bessin, a well known community leader, died recently at the age of 60. A native of New York, she graduated from the Jewish Tehological Seminary with a degree in Hebrew literature. As a young woman, she worked for the US Mizrachi Organization in the 1930s…
