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…
Category: Toronto
Sammy Lichtman profiled in Toronto Star, 1913
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The following is a newspaper profile of newspaper vendor Sammy Lichtman that appeared in the Toronto Star on July 31, 1913 under the heading “Sammy Lichtman is Afraid to Go Home to Austria.” Lichtman, who was then 25 years old, went on to become a major newspaper distributor who built up a chain of newspaper stores.…
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:…
A sensational Toronto murder from 1894
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Eighteen-year-old Frank Westwood had gone out with friends about 7.30 that Saturday evening, October 6, 1894. By the time he returned to his family’s Jameson Avenue mansion about 10:30, his father, sister and brother had already retired upstairs; his mother, seeing he was safely in, shortly went up, too, leaving him on the stairs. The…
Profile: Honest Ed Mirvish (2001)
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If this year is anything like previous years, the sun will be shining when “Honest” Ed Mirvish, Toronto’s legendary salesman and theatre impresario, hosts a mammoth street party on Sunday July 22 in celebration of his 87th birthday, offering free refreshments and entertainment to as many as 60,000 people over a seven-hour period. The party…
A sketch of artist Gerald Gladstone
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Humanity’s future: will it be “earthbound” or “spacebound”? My uncle, the artist Gerald Gladstone, posed this question to me recently outside Yorkdale shopping centre in North York. We were standing in the parking lot near The Bay, beside one of his major works, a bronze colossus called Universal Man, which was installed there in late…
Crossing the Yellow Line into Murder-Mystery Territory
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Toronto lawyer and writer Robert Rotenberg has produced a credible “police procedural” murder mystery called Old City Hall that is set in Toronto and features the famous building of the title — now home to an array of criminal courtrooms — as an iconic centrepiece of the story. Rotenberg’s debut novel focuses on Kevin Brace,…
Obit: Eddie Goodman, lawyer, political power broker (1918-2006)
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Eddie (Edwin) Goodman, a prominent lawyer, decorated war veteran, philanthropist and political power broker, died in Toronto from Alzheimer’s and heart disease on August 23, 2006. He was 87 years old. Head of a large law firm employing nearly 200 lawyers, Goodman was a lifelong Conservative who befriended Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and was a…
Profile: Rose Friedman at 100
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Torontonian Rose Friedman, who arrived in Canada from the Russian province of “White Russia” (Belarus) in 1908, celebrated her 100th birthday at two parties in mid-July (2005), one at the home of a granddaughter and the other at the Apotex Centre where she is a resident. Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Ontario Premier Dalton…
The Featherbed offers portrait of tenement life
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With The Featherbed, Toronto writer John Miller gives us a credible depiction of tenement life on New York’s Lower East Side of a century ago, but with a number of jarring twists. Anna and Sadie, sisters who haven’t seen each other in more than 50 years, are reunited at the funeral of their mother, who…
