General Choi Hong Hi, who founded the martial art of taekwon-do in Korea in 1955 and devoted his life to its promotion, has died in his birthplace of Pyongyang, North Korea. He was 83. Gen. Choi established the International Taekwon-do Federation in 1966 and oversaw its growth into more than 100 countries. He used to…
Tag: canada
From plague to comedy: filmmaker Ric Bienstock
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Toronto film producer-director Ric Bienstock says that she missed many comforts of home when she shlepped all over China, India and Egypt to make a series of three hour-long TV documentaries featuring Penn and Teller, a celebrated pair of stage magicians from Las Vegas. But the veteran filmmaker, whose previous works include an acclaimed documentary…
Stewart Bell: Keeping tabs on terrorists
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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…
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,…
Goldwin Smith, Historical Puzzle
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A historical puzzle: Why did Goldwin Smith, the foremost literary personality of 19th-century English Canada and a notorious anti-semite, attend the opening of Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple on Bond Street in 1897? And why, despite his outspoken enmity towards the Jews, did he contribute to the Holy Blossom’s building fund, as congregational records show? If…
Jerry Gray still traveling with Travellers
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By his own telling, Jerry Gray had one of the most thrilling experiences of his life in late June (2011). In front of a sold-out house at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, he stood at the conductor’s podium, raised a baton, and led the 385-voice Mormon Tabernacle Choir and a full orchestra in a rousing rendition…
The enduring legacy of A. M. Klein
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Ask any Jewish writer in Canada to name some of his or her most important influences, and before long the name of A.M. Klein is certain to arise. In an unofficial survey of contemporary Canadian writers whose works explore Jewish themes or feature Jewish characters, this writer found that almost all of them were quick…
Gone with the Grodtizinsky’s: name changes
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One of the more durable myths of Jewish genealogy is the notion that names were commonly changed at Ellis Island or — the Canadianized version — at Pier 22 in Halifax. Despite what Great Aunt Minnie once told you, surnames rarely underwent transformation at Ellis Island or Pier 22. Immigration officers at both sites usually…
