From the Toronto Star, February 19, 1912 Shall Dancing Be Allowed in Civic Halls on Sunday? The Caretaker Could Not Put a Stop to It Mild weather has anticipated the action of the City Council in prohibiting Sunday tobogganing, but the Lord’s Day observance question is to the fore in another aspect. Is dancing to…
Tag: JEWISH TORONTO
Hucksters versus housewives in Kensington market (1925)
by •
Note: This is an early and very colourfully written article about what would become a city institution, Kensington Market. It is described as being in “the Ward,” but technically it lies outside of the Ward’s unofficial western boundary of University Avenue or McCaul Street; what the author really meant to say was that it was…
New book offers pieces by Kayfetz, Speisman on Toronto Jews
by •
Toronto publisher Now and Then Books’s latest title — Only Yesterday: Collected Pieces on the Jews of Toronto, by Benjamin Kayfetz and Stephen A. Speisman — is a prolifically illustrated book featuring 18 evocative articles by two notable historians of Toronto’s Jewish community. Culled from a variety of sources, the pieces in Only Yesterday focus…
Toronto’s first Jewish nurse writes of early Toronto
by •
Memoirs of Dorothy Goldstick Dworkin In the following article, the former Dorothy Goldstick relates her experiences working as a nurse and midwife in Toronto’s fledging Jewish community from 1907 to 1911, when thousands of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and the Russian Pale were arriving in the city each year. Below, Dworkin profiled in 1968;…
Police Raid Matzah Factory (1909)
by •
From the Toronto Star, November 4, 1909 ◊ This article reflects two problems sometimes faced by members of the city’s Jewish community in regard to the police. The first is selective enforcement of the law, seemingly targeting the Jews (and certainly other minorities probably even more). The second is the specific Sunday blue laws that meant…
Toronto’s junk trade worth $10 million a year (1913)
by •
From the Toronto Star weekly October 4, 1913 Some men who began with the bag over their shoulders now worth around $1 million — Old iron sold to the foundaries to be recast — Bones made into glue, fertilizers, and used in refining sugar – Paper and rags go to the Mills — Nothing is…
From Post Office Manager to Prison — A Tale of the Ward
by •
◊ The following newspaper stories tell of young Joseph Gurofsky’s rise from assessment clerk to bank manager in Toronto’s “Ward” neighbourhood where mostly “foreigners” reside — and how, one fall day, he was drawn into a violent street fight with some Italian ruffians that led to his trial and short imprisonment. Somewhat grandiosely and inaccurately, the…
Hebrew Sick Benefit Society Souvenir Booklet (1935)
by •
The following pages are from the souvenir booklet published by the Hebrew Sick Benefit Society of Toronto in 1935 upon the commemoration of its 35th anniversary. It contains many greetings, advertisements and other items from individual members, often listing family names and other details about family history. Most of the pages are in Yiddish. Each…
Toronto Pioneers — the Robinsons and Franklins
by •
From the Canadian Jewish News, May 3, 1963 by Mordecai Hirshenson Who was the Mrs. Elisa Robinson who bequeathed more than a half-a-million dollars to nine Jewish institutions in her will which was probated recently? Not many Jewish Torontonians of this generation can recall her and her husband, nor their parents. But in the smaller…
How Synagogues Are Named
by •
From the Globe and Mail, September 17, 1955 Have you ever wondered about the meaning of those mysterious looking clusters of Hebrew letters inscribed over the doorways of Toronto’s synagogues? Only rarely is an English translation provided side by side, for like so many names, they have acquired a personality and identity of their own…
