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…
Category: Jewish Toronto
Warm Toronto Memoirs
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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…
Growing up Catholic in Jewish ‘hood
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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…
Rapoport’s ‘House on the River’
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Nessa Rapoport, a New York writer-editor originally from Toronto, has written House on the River, a meditative account of a summer journey by houseboat through the Trent-Severn waterway of southern Ontario that contains reminiscences of her happy visits to her grandmother’s cottage in Bobcaygeon when she was a girl. Motivated by a desire to show…
The Tailor’s Daughter
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Writers who dedicate their pens to preserving community history generally do so as a labour of love, knowing their literary efforts will probably not capture a large reading audience nor generate large royalty cheques. Over the last decade, Miriam Bassin Chinsky has revisited the lush vineyards of her north Toronto childhood to write a series…
A Toronto doc’s memoir
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Barnet Berris, born in Toronto in 1921, became the first Jewish doctor appointed to the full-time staff of the University of Toronto’s department of medicine in 1951. In Medicine: My Story (U. of T. Press, 2002), Dr. Berris tells the story of his career. The book elegantly details the changes he observed in medicine during 46…
