For 21 years, Selim Sassoon, an Egyptian Jew, worked as an executive accountant for the Shell Oil company in Cairo. Then in 1956, with the Suez crisis looming, Sassoon became convinced that there was no future for Jews in Egypt and took his family to Canada, part of a modern exodus and expulsion that saw…
Rare 1910 Toronto panorama from Library of Congress
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A rare panoramic photograph of Toronto harbour, taken in 1910 from the top of one of the city’s first skyscrapers, has been transferred into video format and posted with some analysis and description onto YouTube. Toronto author and publisher Bill Gladstone, who maintains the website www.billgladstone.ca, came across the rare photograph in the US Library…
Bridging 90 years of Rubinoff-Naftolin history
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Sometime between 1905 and 1908, my mother’s grandparents said goodbye to their parents and their village of Zhlobin, Belarus, and brought their children with them to Canada. For decades, although they were divided by a wide gulf of geography and history, family members sent letters in Yiddish back and forth between the Old World and…
Tale of Two Cities: kosher eats in London and Paris
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Goldenberg’s, one of the leading kosher restaurants in Paris, serves Russian, Yiddish, Turkish, Romanian and Bulgarian delicacies in an informal haimishe atmosphere at 69, avenue de Wagram, about 20 minutes by foot from the Arc de Triomphe. The restaurant is one of a chain whose other outlets are in Sofia, Bucharest, Constantinople and Odessa, where…
Birdwatchers flock to Presqu’ile Provincial Park
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An unusual and even comical species of animal called Hominus Ornithologicus gathers each spring and fall in Ontario’s Presqu’ile Provincial Park, situated on the eastern part of Lake Ontario about 155 km east of Toronto. Specimens of this breed are easily distinguished by their binoculars, sketchbooks, cameras with telescopic lenses, and well-thumbed editions of Peterson’s…
Good ship Paducah smuggled Jews to Palestine
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A recent ceremony at the U.S. Holocaust Museum paid tribute to the captain and crew of the Paducah, an aging American gunship that was sold as surplus after WWII and retrofitted to smuggle Holocaust survivors through the British blockade to Palestine in 1947. The captain of the Paducah was Rudolph Patzert, a 35-year-old New York…
Touring Israel’s Upper Galilee
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Israel’s Upper Galilee is famed for many things, including natural beauty, archaeological ruins, and being the source of the Jordan River. Visitors could easily spend much time in this region, touring parks, ancient sites, museums and towns like Kiryat Shmona and the fascinating mystical jewel known as Safed. The towering forests and rippling waterways of…
Toronto sculptor Sorel Etrog helps commemorate D-Day landing
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Sorel Etrog, one of Canada’s most notable sculptors, recently attended a ceremony in Reviers, a town along the Normandy coast of France, at which one of his works was unveiled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Canadian landing on D-Day. The sculpture, called “Sunbird II,” is made of bronze, weighs about 900 pounds, and…
Exploring beautiful Cape Breton
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One hour’s flight north of Halifax, at the edge of the Atlantic, durable mountains meet the sea on beautiful Cape Breton, with some of the most spectacular scenery in eastern North America. Physically reminiscent of the Scottish highlands, the island boasts villages like Iona where Gaelic is still spoken and Acadian communities like Cheticamp where…
Bicycling in Austria’s Burgenland
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If you enjoy bicycling over relatively flat pastoral terrain, featuring vineyards and marshes inhabited by cranes and other rare birds, consider taking a bicycle tour of Austria’s easternmost Austrian province, the Burgenland. It is here that the European Alps surrender to the vast Eurasian plain. The Burgenland flatly contradicts our image of Austria as a…
