Ben Weider, who with his brother Joe founded a billion-dollar bodybuilding empire and helped launch Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career in the United States, died October 17 (2008) of heart failure in his native city of Montreal at the age of 85. Weider was also a collector of rare Napoleonic artifacts, and donated some sixty valuable pieces…
Category: Obit
Obit: Canadian arts patron Bluma Appel (1919-2007)
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Known for her patronage of the arts and her dedication to social causes, Bluma Appel died of cancer July 15 (2007) in a Toronto hospital. She was 86. Born in Montreal, Appel supported many arts and cultural organizations as well as individual artists. An officer of the Order of Canada, she was also the founder of…
Obit: builder, philanthropist Max Sharp (c1902-2004)
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Builder, philanthropist and community leader Max Sharp died at home, surrounded by his family. He was just short of his 103rd birthday. He was eulogized at the Shaarei Shomayim Congregation, where he was actively involved in the building of both the synagogue’s former location on St. Clair Avenue and its present location on Glencairn Avenue.…
Obit: media mogul Izzy Asper (1932-2003)
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Israel “Izzy” Asper, the Winnipeg-based media mogul who turned a single television station into an international communications empire worth more than a billion dollars, died in Winnipeg on October 7, 2003 at the age of 71. The founder and chairman of the CanWest Global media empire, which operated a third national TV network and published…
Obit: A. Douglas Tushingham, ROM archaeologist (1914-2002)
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A. Douglas Tushingham, the Royal Ontario Museum’s chief archaeologist for 27 years, participated in many major international digs, including several in Jerusalem and Jericho with the eminent British archaeologist Dame Kathleen Kenyon, yet his greatest moment of glory may have come as a result of a spectacular project that had nothing to do with archaeology:…
Community mourns passing of Pierre Elliott Trudeau (2000)
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Note: This obituary appeared in the London Jewish Chronicle shortly after Trudeau’s passing on September 28, 2000. Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who died last week at the age of 80, is being remembered as a staunch defender of minority rights and a friend of the Jewish community. Trudeau served as prime minister…
Obit: Admiral Antony Storrs (1907-2002)
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Antony Storrs, the Canadian rear admiral who led a vital minesweeping operation in advance of the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, has died in Victoria, B.C. at the age of 95. Adm. Storrs was the leader of the 31st Mine Sweeping Flotilla, a Canadian naval unit that cleared the waters around the…
Obit: Dr. Arthur Squires (1909-2002)
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Dr. Arthur Squires, former chief of medicine at Toronto’s Wellesley Hospital, was such an outstanding physician that many of his patients, colleagues and friends formed the Squires Club, an organization to honour him upon his retirement in 1974. Although Dr. Squires died in late June at the age of 92, the Squires Club lives on.…
Obit: J. Murray Speirs (2001)
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J. Murray Speirs was six when he spotted the colourful ruby-crowned kinglet that sparked his lifelong interest in birds, and when at 15 he turned in earnest to the study of nature and especially birds, he began to fill a little black notebook with meticulous notes of every bird he saw. He kept up the…
Obit: judge and sailing devotee Livius Sherwood (1923-2002)
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Ottawa’s Brittania Yacht Club recently named the entry to its harbour Sherwood Port and erected a plaque there in honour of Livius Sherwood, the provincial court judge and internationally-known champion of sailing, who died June 7 in his native Ottawa at the age of 78. In the courtroom Mr. Sherwood was known for his patience,…
