A recent ceremony at the U.S. Holocaust Museum paid tribute to the captain and crew of the Paducah, an aging American gunship that was sold as surplus after WWII and retrofitted to smuggle Holocaust survivors through the British blockade to Palestine in 1947. The captain of the Paducah was Rudolph Patzert, a 35-year-old New York…
Touring Israel’s Upper Galilee
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Israel’s Upper Galilee is famed for many things, including natural beauty, archaeological ruins, and being the source of the Jordan River. Visitors could easily spend much time in this region, touring parks, ancient sites, museums and towns like Kiryat Shmona and the fascinating mystical jewel known as Safed. The towering forests and rippling waterways of…
Toronto sculptor Sorel Etrog helps commemorate D-Day landing
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Sorel Etrog, one of Canada’s most notable sculptors, recently attended a ceremony in Reviers, a town along the Normandy coast of France, at which one of his works was unveiled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Canadian landing on D-Day. The sculpture, called “Sunbird II,” is made of bronze, weighs about 900 pounds, and…
Exploring beautiful Cape Breton
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One hour’s flight north of Halifax, at the edge of the Atlantic, durable mountains meet the sea on beautiful Cape Breton, with some of the most spectacular scenery in eastern North America. Physically reminiscent of the Scottish highlands, the island boasts villages like Iona where Gaelic is still spoken and Acadian communities like Cheticamp where…
Bicycling in Austria’s Burgenland
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If you enjoy bicycling over relatively flat pastoral terrain, featuring vineyards and marshes inhabited by cranes and other rare birds, consider taking a bicycle tour of Austria’s easternmost Austrian province, the Burgenland. It is here that the European Alps surrender to the vast Eurasian plain. The Burgenland flatly contradicts our image of Austria as a…
Awesome Bon Echo Provincial Park
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What natural feature gives Bon Echo provincial park, in northeastern Ontario, a special reputation among campers? We arrived here late one June afternoon without knowing the answer — but we soon found out. After pitching our tent, we set off on a hike through the tangled forest, threading through stands of birches and pines along…
Mormons baptise Holocaust victims
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HERE are a series of articles written about the practice of some adherents of the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to perform baptism rituals on behalf of deceased Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The articles appeared in the New York Jewish Forward; the first piece prompted the New York Times to…
Feeding time is best time to visit Coral World
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At 3 on a typical afternoon at Coral World here, a diver descends into the shallow, sunlight-dappled water surrounding the underwater observatory and distributes lunch to hundreds of exotic fish that circle him. Just a few feet away, on the other side of the glass, a crowd of spectators also circle as they watch the…
Close encounters with the wildlife of Alberta
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Last winter (2003), it was my pleasure to travel through the Canadian Rockies in the company of a wonderful guide, Ian Hipkins. A transplanted Montrealer, Hipkins has lived around the mountains of Alberta for nearly 20 years, and has climbed nearly every Canadian peak between Calgary and the Pacific. One clear crisp morning, we set…
A compendium of Canadian Jews in the arts
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Note: this compendium of Canadian Jews in the arts appeared in a special supplement of the Canadian Jewish News in 2005. * * * Jewish poets were composing lines and Jewish painters composing scenes long before Canada was founded; and, as evidenced in the Canadian Jewish New’s weekly Eye on Arts column, there is no…
