◊ From the Canadian Jewish News, March 2020 As Jews throughout history have been all too aware, tragedy, whether large or small, is never all that distant from the everyday realm of human affairs. This sad chain of events took place in Prague in 1693 and 1694. The central figure was a twelve-year-old boy named…
Resources for Genealogists All searchable/viewable on this site (links below) Searchable Databases >> Births (range 1880 to 1917) Marriages (range 1858 to 1936) Deaths (range 1939 to 1966) Searchable Databases >> Family Who’s Who (Hebrew Univ. book of Canadian genealogies) Toronto Marriage Records (all denominations) 1940s to 1980s Books, Maps & Nominal Lists…
From the Toronto Evening Telegram, April 1919 Thirty-nine years ago up on the the old grounds in Queen’s Park, near where now stand the Parliament Buildings, the Clipper Baseball Club performed. That was in 1880, a long time ago, it is true, but not too long for even some of the present day “regulars” to…
From the Toronto Star, 1900 Character Sketches Among the Throngs Who Travel Up and Down in the Big Departmental Stores of Toronto David Harum, who said, when striving with his rich friend, that many a wealthy man would duck his head instinctively at the cry, “beware bridge,” knew what he was talking about, for nearly…
From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2019 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Jordan B Peterson (Random House Canada) Jordan Peterson is a professor of psychology, most recently at the University of Toronto, with a thorough grounding in scientific literature, particularly in the biological sciences, psychology, and the nature of the human…
A Little Panic at Yonge St. Crossing — Crowd Burst Around Behind One Train and Ran in Front of Another From the Toronto Star, 1910 Careless shunting almost caused a serious accident at the Yonge street crossing on Saturday night. The Chippewa came in about 10.30 with a crowd of passengers, anxious to get to…
August 2018 We arrived in Opatow in early evening and I took my bags upstairs to my hotel room, which directly overlooked the city gate. The next day as we looked around, I thought of the many Torontonians whose parents and grandparents had left the town before the war, and the many more Jews from “Apt” (at least 7,000) who perished…
August 2018 The moment I stepped out of the car, I realized that this was the first time a member of my family had been back in our ancestral town in more than 130 years. I was in Konin, in the Lodz district of Poland, the town where my paternal ancestors had lived for generations…
Four years ago, a Pennsylvanian antiques collector purchased a trove of old scrapbooks and photo albums at an estate sale in the town of Red Lion, Pa. The cache, which included hundreds of photographs including some taken in the Warsaw Ghetto between 1940 and 1943, cost only $10. Discovering that the material was related to…
