Tarnobrzeg, Poland, formerly known as Dzikow, cannot be accused of being a pretty town. With a population of 40,000, it is perched on the eastern bank of the Vistula, in a region known for the production of sulphur. One pictures a dreary, blighted place, surrounded by dark denuded hills. In 1757, a 15-year-old Christian boy…
Seeking the Fabled City: the Canadian Jewish Experience, by Allan Levine (McClelland & Stewart) Proficient, prolific, and preternaturally talented, Winnipeg-based historian Allan Levine has produced a robust new history of the Jewish experience in Canada that seems both compelling and fresh. Seeking the Fabled City — the title comes from a line by the late…
From the Toronto Sunday World, May 31, 1914 Saturday May 30, Decoration Day, has been looked upon as one of the most American of all American holiday, for it is on Decoration Day that the grand army of the republic past and present is honoured by the entire nation. Recently, however, attention has been called…
Irving Howe (1920-1993), the New York intellectual who was a zealous socialist all of his life, received what he called his fifteen minutes of fame from a remarkable scholarly achievement that seemed a world apart from his leftist political convictions. His book, World Of Our Fathers, which was published in 1976, became a national bestseller…
See map caption below by William D. Reid When Lord Durham, the Governor-General, refused to honor the contemplated autumn meet of the City of Toronto and York County Races of 1838 with his presence, the sponsors considered it advisable, for some unknown reason, to postpone the races altogether for the year. The author of the…
Castlefield was a grand residence north of Toronto built in 1835 by James Hervey Price (1797–1882), a prominent Canadian attorney and political figure. According to accounts, it was a handsome and imposing red-brick, neo-gothic mansion with four crenellated turrets on a long elm-lined drive which became Castlefield Avenue. The estate on which the mansion was…
One of the most interesting and unusual items pertaining to the Jewish history of confederate and pre-confederate Canada is a two-centuries-old diary in the custody of the National Archives of Canada. The diary belonged to Samuel Jacobs, a European merchant whose ship, the Betsy, was known to have plied the St. Lawrence carrying trade goods…
THIS appraisal of the lot of the colored population of Toronto in 1908 presents a fairly positive and upbeat portrait, but it is clear nonetheless that the “negro” of a century ago faced genuine discrimination in this city, with many doors closed in his face. The era was one in which the vast British-descended Anglo-Saxon…
One hundred years ago this week (April 2003), reports reached the West from St. Petersburg of severe anti-Jewish riots that had occurred in Kishinev, capital of the Russian province of Bessarabia. The first news was sparse. Twenty-five Jews had been killed and 275 wounded in the attacks, newspapers reported, but eventually the death toll would…
Special to The Star by Staff Reporter, Oakville, March 1, 1930 The Ku Klux Klan resorted to direct action for the first time in Canada’s history here last night, when 75 white-hooded figures invaded the, town, and, after burning a fiery cross on Main St., removed a white girl from the home of her negro…
