From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2013 Novelist Susan Glickman is the latest in a series of Canadian novelists, scholars, scriptwriters and performance artists to become enchanted by the legend of Esther Brandeau, the first known Jew to set foot in New France. As a young single Jewish woman, Esther Brandeau would not have been…
From the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, September 19, 1919 ◊ Note: “In 1919, Russian Jews were caught in the middle of a civil war, and became the victims of warring Red and White Russian, Ukrainian and Polish forces, among others. Thousands of pogroms resulted in the loss of an estimated 100,000 Jewish lives. Polish troops, Petlura’s soldiers,…
We visited the historic and elegant Arts & Letters Club, also known as “St. George’s Hall,” on Elm Street west of Yonge Street today. The lovely interior is filled with beautiful works of art by the Group of Seven, many of whom were its members, and by other notable members of the club. Indeed, a…
Millions of Diaspora Jews owe a huge debt of gratitude to Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the Jewish magnate, banker and philanthropist who built the Orient Express railroad from Vienna to Constantinople, for assisting our Russian ancestors to reach the United States, Canada, Argentina and other hospitable shores. According to his biographer, Samuel J. Lee, Hirsch…
Hard to believe, but there were Jews in Toronto and probably Montreal as well who were drawing monthly pensions from the U.S. government as late as 1925 for their participation as soldiers in the American Civil War. An index of Civil War pension recipients indicates that some 4,966 veterans of America’s most sanguinary conflict filed…
Toronto publisher Now and Then Books’s latest title — Only Yesterday: Collected Pieces on the Jews of Toronto, by Benjamin Kayfetz and Stephen A. Speisman — is a prolifically illustrated book featuring 18 evocative articles by two notable historians of Toronto’s Jewish community. Culled from a variety of sources, the pieces in Only Yesterday focus…
From the Toronto Star weekly October 4, 1913 Some men who began with the bag over their shoulders now worth around $1 million — Old iron sold to the foundaries to be recast — Bones made into glue, fertilizers, and used in refining sugar – Paper and rags go to the Mills — Nothing is…
From the Toronto Star Weekly, March 25, 1911 EVOLUTION OF TORONTO’S MANY SHACKTOWNS — PIONEERS HAVE MADE GOOD WITH A VENGEANCE Between life in The Ward or in the locality of Eastern avenue and life in the poorest district in the outskirts there is an immense difference. In the Eastern slum people are living in…
From the Canadian Jewish News, October 3, 2012 TORONTO — A series of old historic photographs from the Polish shtetl of Staszow has been quietly wowing visitors since being installed in the Stashover-Slipia Synagogue on Sultana Avenue in Toronto. The photographs are to remain on permanent display in the shul’s lobby. “Everyone notices them when they…
From North Toronto Tales, 1948 by Lyman B Jackes There is no section of the present City of Toronto which can claim the historical background that is the heritage of North Toronto. Writers for many years have been prone to stress the fallacy that communal life in these parts commenced in the vicinity of the…
