From Canadian Jewish News, November 2015 Ever since the great exodus of Montreal Jews to Toronto began some 40 years ago, the Toronto Jewish community has undergone continuous growth while Montreal’s has been in slow decline, so that today there may be approximately twice as many Jews in the Greater Toronto Area than in the…
By Henry Papernick From the Beth Tzedec Bulletin, 1976 The downtown area of Toronto bounded on the north and south by College and Queen Streets, and on the east and west by Yonge and University, comprises what is probably among the highest priced real estate in Canada. But at the turn of the century it…
In Memorium: Irving Ungerman, born February 1, 1923, died October 27, 2015 From the Beth Sholom Bulletin, June 2010 Irving Ungerman remembers the way it was growing up in the old Kensington market neighbourhood and being attacked by bullies because he was Jewish. “Guys used to hit me all the time — I was a…
From the Canadian Jewish News, April 2015 Having recently marked its 25th anniversary, the organization Jews for Judaism continues to counter the activities of missionary groups in Toronto that deceptively target Jews for conversion. However, Christian missions to the Jews are certainly nothing new in this city. In the era before the First World War, a…
From Beth Sholom Bulletin, Summer 2014 Barnet Markson, who died in March 2014 just three weeks shy of his 100th birthday, was a founding member of Beth Sholom Congregation. Born in Toronto in 1914, Barney became a pharmacist and built a store, Markson’s Pharmacy, at the corner of Westover Hill Road and Eglinton in 1945,…
From the Canadian Jewish News, Spring 2015 In a series of articles in the Canadian Jewish News about four decades ago, the late CJN columnist J. B. Salsberg reminisced with great affection about the “Apter Shteeble” in downtown Toronto that he had frequented in his youth during the First World War. The Apter Society —…
From Canadian Jewish News, April 2015 Toronto architect Benjamin Brown (1890-1974) designed many elegant edifices across the city, including the Balfour and Tower Buildings on Spadina Avenue, the former Primrose Club on Willcocks Avenue, the former Beth Jacob Synagogue on Henry Street, the Hermant Building (eastern tower and annex) in Dundas Square, and scores of…
From the Canadian Jewish News, February 2015 In late 1947 and early 1948, representatives of the Canadian garment industry organized what became known as the Tailor Project, a plan to select more than 2,200 skilled tailors from the Displaced Person camps of Europe and give them jobs and housing in Canada. The Tailor Project had…
When Dr. Daniel Drucker of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital receives the US$150,000 Manpei-Suzuki prize for groundbreaking diabetes research this February (2015), he will be only the latest in a long parade of medical researchers at the world-famous institution to be recognized for their excellence. A researcher engaged in a different sort of quest — probing…
The following is an abridgement of a talk that Bill Gladstone gave to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Canada (Toronto) on March 28, 2012. Definition A landsmanshaft is a group consisting, at least initially, of Jewish immigrants who came from the same village, town, country or region in Eastern Europe or the Russian Empire. The…
