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From Our Archives

Yom Kippur on University Avenue (1912)

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From the Toronto Evening Telegram, September 12, 1912 Special Service conducted by Cantor Wladowsky With impressive ceremonial, with colour and light, and music of clear yet deep toned voices, special services for the Jewish New Year were celebrated in the University avenue synagogue this morning. Through windows within the vestibule you saw an audience of…

by Bill Gladstone

From the Globe and Mail, 2003 As a great-grandson of American slaves, Dr. Daniel Hill carried the lessons of universal equality and civil rights in his blood. Founding director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and a former Ontario ombudsman, Dr. Hill is being remembered as a pioneer of the human rights movement in Canada…

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Professions claim young Jews; many rise to prominence Dr. Bessie Pullan Singer First Woman in Canada to Receive Degree of Doctor of Medicine From the Toronto Evening Telegram, January 2, 1929 ◊ Note: This is an interesting, albeit uneven story that focuses more on two prominent rabbis of the city than on the younger generation of…

by Bill Gladstone

I am one of this city’s great silent army of working poor, and so my name is Legion. I am just one of the masses, evidently, poor and huddled, yearning to breath free; one of the anonymous faces that wash up in the courtrooms of Old City Hall each morning, charged with bylaw infractions and…

by Bill Gladstone

Some years ago, while researching an article for Walrus Magazine on art theft, Joshua Knelman interviewed a convicted art thief in a local restaurant. While providing some quotable patter, the thief threatened to break Knelman’s legs if he used his real name, and handed him some rolled-up items, which proved to be stolen artworks, now…

by Bill Gladstone

Family Matters: Sam, Jennie and the Kids, by Burton Bernstein, was first published in 1982, and remains, 30 years later, one of the most interesting family histories this reviewer has read. The reason is not so much that Burton Bernstein was the brother of a celebrity, the great composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein, but because he treated…

Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World

by Bill Gladstone

In his book Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World, Montreal author Marc Raboy points out that Guglielmo Marconi was the Bill Gates or Steven Jobs of his day, and was the world’s first champion of and visionary for not just global wireless communications, but two-way global wireless communications. Although associated primarily with the development…

by Bill Gladstone

From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2016 “Location, location, location,” they say, are the three most important things in real estate. If so, the Ontario Jewish Archives (OJA) has scored a wonderful coup by securing the Urbanspace Gallery in the majestic loft building at 401 Richmond Street West as the venue for an exhibition in…

Toronto Panorama 1910

Kitty Wintrob, author of I’m Not Going Back