North York resident Debbie Rose, who has been fervently researching her family tree for the past several years, has found a large trove of old Yiddish letters of historic significance that she hopes to get translated into English. The letters, some dating back to the end of the 19th century, belong to a relative in…
Born on Toronto’s Grace Street in 1927, Evelyn Wolfe became a well-to-do Forest Hill matron, cable-TV talkshow host, Jewish book-club organizer and social convener at the Beth Tzedec congregation, Judging from her recent autobiography Stray Cats & Other Loves (Mosaic Press,2005), she fulfilled each of these roles energetically and with style. A born raconteur, the…
Iconic Canadian author Mordechai Richler figures prominently in Getting Started: A Memoir of the 1950s, by William (“Why Rock the Boat?”) Weintraub (McClelland & Stewart, 1999). As a young print and radio journalist stationed in Europe, Weintraub kept up a lively correspondence with Richler, Mavis Gallant and Brian Moore during a period of heightened literary…
Al Waxman is sitting in a bookstore café in downtown Toronto, not far from his childhood stomping grounds in the Kensington-Spadina neighborhood — territory he made famous in the legendary King of Kensington television show which propelled him to fame three decades ago, near the start of his celebrated career. Around the corner is a…
David Vanek, a retired provincial criminal court judge, has produced a highly readable volume of memoirs that illuminates his family’s early history in the Toronto area, numerous historical matters pertaining to the local Jewish community, and his 21-year career on the Ontario bench. Fulfilment: Memoirs of a Criminal Court Judge (Dundurn Press, 1999) shows the…
Mama and Her Mitzvahs: Stories and Reminiscences, by Sophie Stransman (2002) provides a loving, anecdotal portrait of a golden-spirited woman who, with her husband, operated a small dry-goods store in the heart of Toronto’s Cabbagetown during the Depression. Rachel and Elia Siegel were the proprietors of Siegel’s Groceteria, an authentic mom-and-pop operation that stood on…
If the word “bittersweet” has often been associated with phenomenal American playwright Neil Simon, one need only read his recent memoir Rewrites (Simon & Schuster, 1997) to understand why. In it, he shares a string of typically good-humored tales of his quick ascent up the ladder of theatrical success, from his days of writing for television…
Rosalie Wise Sharp, a daughter of Polish immigrants, always felt that heaven had mismatched her with her parents, Joseph and Ydessa Wise, who ran a dry goods store on north Yonge Street at a time when few Jews lived in north Toronto. Later, fate matched her up with husband Isadore Sharp, founder of the international…
Emma Lazarus, who died 120 years ago at the premature age of only 38, fixed her place in American literary history through her poem “The New Colossus,” which famously graces a bronze plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Some of its stanzas are too well known to bear repeating even today, but,…
Ted Schmidt, a Catholic educator who edits the independent Catholic Times newspaper, has written and published a book in which he recounts his experiences “growing up Jewish” on Palmerston Blvd. in the Bloor-Bathurst neighbourhood of downtown Toronto. With Shabbes Goy: a Catholic Boyhood on a Jewish Street in a Protestant City (2001) Schmidt has laid down an engaging…
