Sonny Lapinsky, the memorable hero of Karen X. Tulchinsky’s engaging novel The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky (2003) is a Toronto boxer who wins the world middleweight crown at Madison Square Gardens in 1948 and again in 1954. Like a champion boxer, the novel itself has impressive staying power and seems nowhere near ready to leave…
Category: Toronto
Rakoff’s Baldwin Street
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Alvin Rakoff, author of the previous novel & Gillian, is proof of the old maxim that you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy. An accomplished film producer and director based in London England, he now offers us — with Baldwin Street (Bunim &…
Barney Danson (1921-2011)
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Barnett (Barney) Danson, the Canadian politician and Cabinet minister, died October 17, 2011 at the age of 90. Born to a Jewish family in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, Danson joined the Queen’s Own Rifles in 1939, rose to Lieutenant Colonel and lost an eye in the Battle of Normandy. He returned to Canada and joined his…
Laundry has spotless reputation
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Three-quarters of a century after his grandfather and great-uncle founded Careful Hand Laundry & Dry Cleaners, company president Brian Chelsky celebrated the company’s 75th anniversary last month (2004) with a party for about 75 employees, suppliers, relatives and friends in its main location at 2700 Dufferin St. near Briar Hill. “When you spend $150 and…
The 2002 arson attack at Toronto’s Anshei Minsk
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The morning after firefighters quenched a late-night arsonist’s blaze at Toronto’s Anshei Minsk Synagogue, congregants arrived to a chilling sight: thousands of prayer and holy books, charred by fire and soaked by firefighters’ hoses, were littered across the building’s front steps and the adjoining sidewalk. While the building sustained damage estimated at several thousand dollars,…
Obit: Dr. Nestor Yanga, Toronto SARS victim (1948-2003)
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As the first doctor in North America to die of SARS, Toronto physician Nestor Yanga may have gained more prominence in death than by anything he had accomplished in life. He was a dedicated general practitioner, church volunteer and family man who was passionate about everything he did, according to friends. A former president of…
Obit: Nancy Wade Stadler, Toronto librarian (1948-2002)
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When it came to literature and children, Nancy Wade Stadler was like an open book: she loved reading and she loved transmitting the joy of reading to young minds. Stadler worked as a children’s librarian and branch head throughout the Toronto Public Library system for 20 years. She had an extensive knowledge of literature and…
Pierre Berton’s ‘No Jews Need Apply’
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Pierre Berton’s column “No Jews Need Apply,” which originally appeared in Maclean’s in November 1948 and was reprinted in last week’s CJN, offered a penetrating look at the discreet, country-club-style antisemitism that was rife in Canadian society. Berton, who died last month, pointed out that people with names like Greenberg were frequently denied job interviews,…
Drabinsky protects Showboat with legal action
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Entertainment mogul Garth Drabinsky has filed a legal notice of claim against the Ontario government after learning that the provincial Anti-Racism Secretariat allegedly funnelled $200,000 to various groups that were part of an organized campaign to stop the musical Show Boat from opening at the North York Performing Arts Centre in October 1993. “They have…
Obit: Ben Kayfetz
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Forty years ago, Ben Kayfetz, the longtime director of community relations for the Canadian Jewish Congress, flew to Cuba to oversee distribution of a shipment of kosher food to Havana’s isolated Jewish community of 2,500. Benjamin Gershon Kayfetz, former community relations director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, born Toronto, December 24, 1916; died Toronto, February…
