As I am researching the history of my mother’s huge Toronto mishpocha (family), I’ve attempted to locate as many ships’ passenger manifests as possible showing the arrival of relatives to Canada from their various towns in Belarus, beginning about a century ago. The recently established web site of the National Archives’s Canadian Genealogy Centre (www.genealogy.gc.ca)…
Pierre Berton’s ‘No Jews Need Apply’
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Pierre Berton’s column “No Jews Need Apply,” which originally appeared in Maclean’s in November 1948 and was reprinted in last week’s CJN, offered a penetrating look at the discreet, country-club-style antisemitism that was rife in Canadian society. Berton, who died last month, pointed out that people with names like Greenberg were frequently denied job interviews,…
Sephardic Jews in early Canada
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One of the most interesting and unusual items pertaining to the Jewish history of confederate and pre-confederate Canada is a two-centuries-old diary in the custody of the National Archives of Canada. The diary belonged to Samuel Jacobs, a European merchant whose ship, the Betsy, was known to have plied the St. Lawrence carrying trade goods…
Jews and the Lord’s Day Act
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Deputy Magistrate Kingsford of Toronto had his hands full one October day in 1900 when two Jewish butchers and a Jewish baker appeared before him, all charged with violating the Lord’s Day Act by pursuing their callings on a Sunday. One of the butchers was actually Rabbi Isaac Helpern, spiritual leader of the Austrian Jewish…
The 1911 census is a powerful tool
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The 1911 census of Canada, which became available to the public in mid July for the first time, is a tremendously valuable resource for family tree researchers whose relatives were in Canada in the first decade of the 20th century. It is the latest in a wave of genealogical resources — the Ellis Island data…
Genealogy as a labour of love
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“I’m working on a book of family history,” Sara Edell Kelman declares, as she shows me her massive collection of archival documents, ketubot, photographs, Yiddish letters and other family memorabilia, spilling out of diverse albums, binders and boxes. “No, it’s more than one book — it’s a series of books. There’s a lot of stuff…
The sound of no hands clapping
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What is the best sort of critical reception to give a newly-published book of revisionist history that exonerates Hitler, minimizes the evil of the Holocaust, and knowingly perpetrates other intellectual frauds? For Michael R. Marrus, the author and professor of European history at the University of Toronto, the answer is simple: no critical reception at…
Miscellaneous theatre notes
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Wallace Shawn is known to many for his roles in movies like My Dinner With Andre (which he co-wrote), The Princess Bride and several Woody Allen films. He is also an avant-garde playwright whose latest work The Designated Mourner (Noonday Press, $14) opened in London last year and has been made into a film starring…
Al Waxman is ‘Lost in Yonkers’
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With the production of Lost In Yonkers that opened Feb. 4 at the Atlantis Theatre, director Al Waxman has delivered his third theatrical hit in as many years to the Toronto theatre-going public. This production of Neil Simon’s Tony and Pulitzer prize-winning 1990 play is solidly put together, delivering all the laughs, drama, pathos and…
Gilbert Gottfried is a scream
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American comedian Gilbert Gottfried, whose most celebrated role was the voice of the parrot in the Disney movie Aladdin, brought his quirky brand of stand-up humor to Canada recently (1997) for two sold-out shows at Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Superclub as part of the Toronto Comedy Festival. Gottfried responds to the audience’s welcoming applause by pleading…
