One of the most interesting and unusual items pertaining to the Jewish history of confederate and pre-confederate Canada is a two-centuries-old diary in the custody of the National Archives of Canada. The diary belonged to Samuel Jacobs, a European merchant whose ship, the Betsy, was known to have plied the St. Lawrence carrying trade goods…
“A literary master living among us” is how the influential Globe and Mail newspaper described Montreal author Yehuda Elberg after his two brilliant novels, Ship Of The Hunted and The Empire of Kalman the Cripple, rolled off the presses nearly four years ago. Translated from the original Yiddish, the books were published in English by…
Special to The Star by Staff Reporter, Oakville, March 1, 1930 The Ku Klux Klan resorted to direct action for the first time in Canada’s history here last night, when 75 white-hooded figures invaded the, town, and, after burning a fiery cross on Main St., removed a white girl from the home of her negro…
A new online source of genealogical information about immigrants to Canada from the 1930s to the 1950s From Remembering Our Yesterdays, a blog at Inside Toronto While working at Libraries and Archives Canada several years ago, Joanna Crandell discovered that hundreds of mysterious “order-in-council” lists related to immigrants appeared in the index under the subject…
From the Globe, October 27, 1902 A Centre of History: Frank Yeigh Conducts a Farewell Pilgrimage through old Parliament Buildings A farewell tour of inspection of the old Parliament buildings, now in process of dissolution, was paid by the Canadian Club on Saturday afternoon under the guidance of Mr. Frank Yeigh. Probably 400 persons, including many…
Remember Jody Wilson-Raybould? She’s the former Trudeauvian Minister of Justice and Attorney-General who — incredible as it sounds — insisted upon telling the truth, a course that must have seemed all but inconceivable to the PM and his appointed viziers. In her 2021 memoir, Indian In The Cabinet, Wilson-Raybould, an Indigenous Canadian who uses the…
From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2015 In late 1947 and early 1948, representatives of the Canadian garment industry organized what became known as the Tailor Project, a plan to select more than 2,200 skilled tailors from the Displaced Person camps of Europe and give them jobs and housing in Canada. The Tailor Project had…
From the Canadian Jewish News, April 8, 2020 Note: I compiled this quiz for the Canadian Jewish News, and it ran as the cover story on the very last issue that was published. Answers appear below. ♦ QUESTIONS 1. What wartime Canadian novel dealt centrally with Jewish characters and themes and won a Governor General’s…
by Dr. Stephen A Speisman Lewis Samuel, merchant and philanthropist, was born in 1827 at Kingston upon Hull, England. He married Kate Seckelman in 1850 and they had eight children including Sigmund, a prominent philanthropist and patron of the arts in Toronto. He died on May 10 May 1887 at Victoria, B.C. and was buried…
Note (May 16, 2024): Several days ago, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow declined to attend the Jewish community’s flag-raising ceremony of an Israeli flag at City Hall, asserting that it was “divisive.” To be fair, such flag-raising ceremonies are frequent and the Mayor rarely attends them. However, it is telling that she was AWOL at an…
