by Dr. Stephen A Speisman Lewis Samuel, merchant and philanthropist, was born in 1827 at Kingston upon Hull, England. He married Kate Seckelman in 1850 and they had eight children including Sigmund, a prominent philanthropist and patron of the arts in Toronto. He died on May 10 May 1887 at Victoria, B.C. and was buried…
Here is a photo showing the youth group Poalei Tsion in Toronto, 1918, with names translated, below. Courtesy, Ontario Jewish Archives
Faux-intellectual “No Logo” celeb Naomi Klein spoke at a “Seder In The Street” last month in New York City before about one hundred mostly adoring JINO (“Jewish-in-name-only”) fans. She shamelessly delivered an antisemitic screed that would have made many of the more discreet, country-club sort of antisemites blush. Klein began her remarks by attacking the…
Marriage By Rabbi Held To Be Invalid He Was Not A British Subject at Time He Performed Ceremony Globe, January 15, 1925 (Canadian Press, Montreal) — Because a rabbi who conducted the ceremony was not a British subject, Mr. Justice Bruneau, in the Superior Court today, handed down judgment annulling a marriage conducted ten years…
Note (May 16, 2024): Several days ago, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow declined to attend the Jewish community’s flag-raising ceremony of an Israeli flag at City Hall, asserting that it was “divisive.” To be fair, such flag-raising ceremonies are frequent and the Mayor rarely attends them. However, it is telling that she was AWOL at an…
By Brian Mulroney Brian Mulroney, Canada’s prime minister from 1984 to 1993, was awarded the World Jewish Congress’s Theodor Herzl Award in New York on November 9, 2023. This is an edited transcript of his remarks (courtesy sapirjournal.org). In his book Explaining Hitler, Ron Rosenbaum tells of Hitler, just prior to his suicide, as the Third…
by Ellen Weiser If you’re a baby boomer, or more accurately, a Jewish Toronto baby boomer, undoubtedly you have fond memories of a time and place that lives only in our dreams. Let me take you back to where I’m constantly accused of living … in the past. If anything, it was cheaper. For myself…
After the death of her mother when she turned ten, Judith Friedland learned to be resilient. She met the expectations for upper-middle-class women in Toronto in the 1940s and 1950s, which included post-secondary education, marriage, and motherhood. While raising a family and supporting her husband’s academic career, she continued her formal education through part-time study…
From the Canadian Jewish News, Aug. 7 1980 Peter Sellers, the famed actor who died recently, often spoke proudly of the fact that he was Jewish, even though he never practiced Judaism. According to the Jewish Chronicle News Service, Sellers was once asked by an interviewer if he was half-Jewish. His reply: “I am fully…
NEWLY PUBLISHED MAY 2023 The Jewish Community of Rouyn-Noranda is a professionally produced, 254-page softcover book featuring more than 40 stories about the life and history of our small Jewish community in northern Quebec, remembered by those who lived there. Jews were present in Rouyn-Noranda from its earliest pioneer days in the 1920s and were…
