Canada’s recent changes to citizenship-by-descent rules have opened the door to citizenship for many people who were previously excluded because they were born outside Canada beyond the first generation. But the rollout of the new law has also produced confusion and anxiety, after some newly approved citizens were asked to return their citizenship certificates while…
There have been several moments in the history of American-Canadian relations when significant numbers of Americans have fled northward to Canada. The most notable example, of course, is the United Empire Loyalists, who came in large numbers to what is now Canada after the American Revolution because they wished to remain loyal to the British…
From Canadian Jewish News, 2011 Seven years after the death of Isaac Bashevis Singer and 20 years after he won the Nobel Prize for literature, the literary world has produced three significant new books by and about the man who is one of the most important and popular Jewish writers of modern times. The last…
It has been about twenty years since I had my first “Eureka!” moment as a genealogist. Several smaller discoveries led up to this great moment. First, I discovered that my great-grandfather, Harris Glickstein, had been born in the town of Konin, Poland; second, that his father’s name had been Rafael; third, that our family name…
From the London Jewish Chronicle, November 2025 Twenty-nine-year old IDF soldier Jonathan Karten is being hailed as a hero by many Torontonians after single-handedly ejecting up to a dozen masked protestors after an unruly mob disrupted a meeting of pro-Israel students at Toronto Metropolitan University on November 5. The skirmish, which spilled onto the street,…
Montreal resident Edeet Ravel admits that she’s been fairly negligent until recently about getting her writing into print. A teacher at a Montreal-area high school until last year, the Israeli-born author expresses amazement that the British publisher Headline found her letter on its slushpile of unsolicited manuscripts and was interested enough to ask to see…
In 1930, when Yiddish writer and playwright Sholem Asch celebrated his 50th birthday, he seemed to be riding on top of the world. His newest book, Fam Mabul, was a critical and popular success among Yiddish readers– it would soon become vastly more popular in its English translation as Three Cities — and his various…
Trying to put a yarmulke on the King of rock ‘n’ roll From the Forward, 2002 Evan Popoff, co-producer of a new documentary that demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that American rock idol Elvis Presley was Jewish according to halakha or Jewish law, says that the film uses Elvis “as a metaphor for identity —…
From the Canadian Jewish News, December 2004 What do you get when you put a popular shtetl folk tale into a pot and add some flavourful compositions for full orchestra, rich klezmer sounds, a pinch of Hanukkah seasoning and live narration by Barbara Budd, the Toronto-based actor and co-host of the immensely popular CBC radio…
December 10, 2025 Librarians are a cautious bunch. How else to explain why those at the main branch of the Toronto Public Library have taken to hiding away the latest Toronto phone books from public view? They are all on the open shelf, they will tell you. But they are not. The phone books on…
