From InsideToronto Blog, December 2015 Although my client’s late father had always been told he had been born in Montreal, we ultimately found his birth record in Toronto. Why the purposeful deception? Turns out my client’s grandmother was trying to cover up the fact that her husband had been exposed as a bigamist in a…
Review of Empire of Deception: From Chicago to Nova Scotia — The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation. By Dean Jobb (Harper Avenue) From the Canadian Jewish News, June 2015 Five years ago, while researching a book on the history of the Jewish community of London, Ontario, I…
TORONTO POLICEMEN ARE MODELS OF POLITENESS Their Clubs Are Merely Ornamental, But They Manage to Enforce the Laws – How a Police Court Hearing is Conducted – The Finest are the Guides, Counselors and Friends of Our Canadian Neighbors – Not Like Pittsburgh. by Henry Jones Ford Pittsburgh Gazette, July 12, 1903 Above: Newpaper photo from Colonel…
Torontonians who have vanished to the four corners of the globe From the Toronto Star Weekly, November 29, 1913 By Arthur Barron In nearly every large city and town across the face of the earth are groups of men and women who, by all the laws of preference, should be spending their lives hundreds or…
◊ The following articles describe a tragedy that unfolded in Toronto’s Jewish district on Adelaide Street West near Spadina in 1914. I was particularly riveted by the sad drama because this is where some of my relatives were living at the time — practically in these very addresses — and one of my grandfather’s ‘landsmen’…
From The Star Weekly, July 5, 1913 Not long ago, a woman was caught red-handed in the act of shoplifting in Toronto under rather pathetic circumstances. Years ago, she had been accustomed to steal continuously from stores. In fact she belonged to a family which subsisted to a great extent by stealing.Then she had married…
From The Toronto Evening Telegram, May 6 1912 Note: This article describes the surprisingly high cosmopolitan character of the Toronto Police Force of 1912. For the previous decade the city had been filling up with tens of thousands of European and other immigrants, so it only seems appropriate that some would find their way onto…
From the Toronto Daily Star, May 7, 1907 At the next meeting of the annual conference of the Canadian Chiefs of Police, one of the most important subjects to be discussed is the establishment of a central general bureau for the identification of criminals. At the present time there is no general bureau and the…
From the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, September 5, 1919 A very interesting decision was handed down last Sunday in the Jewish Court of Arbitration. The case was that of the S. Karsch Co., kosher sausage manufacturers. The company consists of two partners, Sam Karsh and Joseph Peverman. One of the partners accused the other of misappropriating…
From the Toronto Star, November 4, 1909 ◊ This article reflects two problems sometimes faced by members of the city’s Jewish community in regard to the police. The first is selective enforcement of the law, seemingly targeting the Jews (and certainly other minorities probably even more). The second is the specific Sunday blue laws that meant…
