A new book on Canada’s role as a haven for international terrorism provides alarming details on how border and immigration authorities here have repeatedly slipped up and allowed known Middle Eastern and other terrorists to enter the country and even attain citizenship. In his new book Cold Terror, author Stewart Bell documents how the country’s…
Profile: artist Aba Bayefsky (1923-2001)
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It was the 1936 movie Rembrandt starring Charles Laughton that persuaded then-14-year-old student Aba Bayefsky to switch from an academic stream to the art department at Toronto’s Central Tech High School, but it was his experience as an official war artist in Europe during and immediately after WWII that instilled a deep and permanent sense…
McCaul Synagogue Golden Anniversary (1938) – Section D
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THIS Golden Anniversary book was published in 1938 to mark the first 50 years of the Beth Hamidrash Hagadol Chevra Tehillim of Toronto, which was founded in 1887 and moved into the McCaul Street Synagogue about 1905. The Congregation published its Golden Jubilee 50th anniversary book in 1938. In the early 1950s it merged with the…
Artist Karla Goldberg triumphs over adversity
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Although it usually doesn’t host art exhibitions, The Baycrest Geriatric Centre has made a rare exception in the case of Karla Goldberg, an 84-year-old Toronto artist who trained herself to make art with her left hand after a stroke paralyzed the right side of her body two years ago. The exhibition “Creative Strokes of the…
Bases (and basement) loaded for Peter Seidman
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Give Peter Seidman a book about baseball that he doesn’t already have and you’re likely to score a bases-loaded home run with the Montreal-born collector of baseball paraphernalia. But chances are you’ll strike out in the attempt, because the 57-year-old teacher and administrator for the Toronto board of education has already amassed more than 4,000…
McCaul Synagogue Golden Anniversary (1938) – Section C
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THIS Golden Anniversary book was published in 1938 to mark the first 50 years of the Beth Hamidrash Hagadol Chevra Tehillim of Toronto, which was founded in 1887 and moved into the McCaul Street Synagogue about 1905. The Congregation published its Golden Jubilee 50th anniversary book in 1938. In the early 1950s it merged with the…
Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Hotel
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“Harpo Marx, having played a mute in all his films, was probably the most articulate of all the Marx brothers,” declares Barbara McGurn as we sit in the Oak Room of New York’s famed Algonquin Hotel, awaiting the entrance of cabaret performer K.T. Sullivan. The next moment McGurn, who is equal parts literary scholar and…
New book from JGS Toronto
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To mark its 25th anniversary, the Jewish Genealogical Society of Canada (Toronto) has published a book of 44 genealogy-related stories written by its members. The stories in Tracing Our Roots, Telling Our Stories are diverse and range freely over geography and time, encompassing both the Old World and the New from a couple of centuries…
Windows into Toronto’s past
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Towards the end of the 19th century, as Jewish multitudes left the Old World for the promising shores of the New, the Toronto neighbourhood of St. John’s Ward became a densely populated Jewish ghetto. Toronto’s population was counted as 86,415 in the 1881 census, with an average of 19 persons per acre. On Elizabeth, Chestnut,…
The Jews of Curacao
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Jewish passengers on Caribbean cruises often become excited after their ship docks at Curacao, the little stringbean-shaped isle 63 km off the coast of Venezuela, when they discover that the island is home to a Jewish community with roots that go back nearly 400 years. A rugged and hilly outcropping, Curacao is part of the…
