Anthony Adamson, the architect who designed Upper Canada Village and oversaw the restoration of Hamilton’s Dundurn Castle, has died in Toronto (May 2002) at the age of 95. Descended from some of the most wealthy and historic families in Upper Canada, Adamson used to joke that he had been “relatively successful in the inheritance business.”…
Tag: toronto
Rabbi Schild’s ‘World Through My Window’
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Rabbi Erwin Schild, rabbi emeritus of Adath Israel Synagogue in Toronto and author of World Through My Window, an anthology of sermons published in 1992, arrives in Germany this week (1996) to attend the launch of the German-language edition of his book and to initiate a six-week speaking tour in German. The book was translated…
Obit: Toronto fire chief Walter Shanahan (1931-2002)
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Walter Shanahan, a firefighter who climbed the ladder to the top of the Toronto Fire Department, has died at the age of 71, largely as the result of lingering respiratory problems caused by injuries suffered in two catastrophic city fires. Shanahan joined the fire department in 1953 and served for many years as a firefighter,…
Obit: herniologist Nicholas Obney (1918-2003)
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Dr. Nicholas Obney, who performed more than 32,000 hernia operations during his long career at the renowned Shouldice Hospital in Toronto and Thornhill, Ont., once told a television interviewer that he had never encountered two hernias the same. Dr. Obney joined the Shouldice Hospital in 1946 and was its chief surgeon between 1965 and his…
Obit: Julia Ching (1934-2001), professor of Chinese
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Julia Ching, a University of Toronto professor widely respected for her versatile command of Chinese culture and her ability to interpret it to the West, has died in Toronto of complications from breast cancer. She was 67. A former Catholic Ursuline nun who left the order after 20 years, she went on to become an…
Obit: film worker Bill Brodie (1931-2002)
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Bill Brodie, a film production designer and art director who won a Genie for the Canadian film The Grey Fox and worked on Barry Lyndon, Superman and other acclaimed international features, has died in Cobourg, Ont. at the age of 70. Known for his exacting vision and relentless professional energy, Brodie scouted for locations, designed…
A conversation with great aunt Sophie
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It is a truism of family tree research that you can visit libraries and archives any time you like, but you must not delay interviewing elderly relatives as they will not be around forever. The greatest regret of many genealogists is that they didn’t ask the right questions of the right people at the right…
Ontario Jewish Archives: treasure trove on Bathurst Street
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Ask Dr. Stephen Speisman about the 80-year-old minute books of Toronto’s Kielcer Society and a gleam appears in his eyes. Director of the Ontario Jewish Archives, Speisman has long been seeking early records of landsmanschaft, mutual benefit and like societies in Toronto and other Jewish communities in Ontario. But too often such records get stashed…
Blurb on ‘Crossing the Distance’
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Toronto Life had less than great expectations last winter when it published a short but blistering diatribe about newscaster Evan Solomon’s not-yet-published first novel, Crossing the Distance. The manuscript needed massive editorial work, sneered the magazine, and its intended publisher, McClelland & Stewart, had taken it on merely because of its author’s high media profile.…
Paris wins prize for ‘Long Shadows’
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A book by a well-known Toronto author won a $10,000 prize for non-fiction last month and is in the running for a second $10,000 prize to be awarded in May (2001). Erna Paris’s sixth book, Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History, which was published last year by Knopf Canada, was awarded the Pearson Writers’ Trust…
