Garth Drabinsky was appalled that day in 1987 when he heard that publishers were about to bid at auction for the rights to an unauthorized biography of himself. Realizing that “a book filled with misstatements and misrepresentations and ignorant reporting of the facts would do me a lot of harm,” he quickly took strong evasive…
by Ellen Weiser If you’re a baby boomer, or more accurately, a Jewish Toronto baby boomer, undoubtedly you have fond memories of a time and place that lives only in our dreams. Let me take you back to where I’m constantly accused of living … in the past. If anything, it was cheaper. For myself…
After the death of her mother when she turned ten, Judith Friedland learned to be resilient. She met the expectations for upper-middle-class women in Toronto in the 1940s and 1950s, which included post-secondary education, marriage, and motherhood. While raising a family and supporting her husband’s academic career, she continued her formal education through part-time study…
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 24, 2000 (JTA) The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto is trying to keep pace with the city’s growing Jewish population through a massive building and revitalization project. The most recent is a $150-million Jewish campus in the York region, the area just north of the city that is home…
◊ Cynthia Gasner, who died in Toronto on November 9, 2022, touched the lives of many. This profile of her appeared in The Canadian Jewish News in 1986 after she was honoured as one of nine “Women of Valour” by State of Israel Bonds, Women’s Division. From the Canadian Jewish News, 1986 An admitted “super…
by Ben Lappin (from Commentary, 1955) Spadina Avenue, the main street of the needle trades in Toronto, looks very much the same as it did ten, twenty, thirty years ago. The same kind of old-fashioned haggling still goes on between the employers and the handful of tense harassed business agents – former pressers, operators, and…
by Irving B Rosen, MD, FRCSC Society doctors, like Harley Street specialists, evoke the image of the sought after, affluent doyen of their calling, courted by the high and mighty, who never question their high fees. Toronto had its society doctors who held sway for about fifty years from about 1900 to 1950. I became…
Note: In 2012, Beth Lida commissioned Bill Gladstone to write a detailed history of the congregation since its founding in 1912. While the 44-page booklet is now out of print, it is still available in PDF format, and easily downloadable for free from the link below. From the Introduction: In Toronto, as in many cities…
