From the Canadian Jewish News, April 8, 2020 Note: I compiled this quiz for the Canadian Jewish News, and it ran as the cover story on the very last issue that was published. Answers appear below. ♦ QUESTIONS 1. What wartime Canadian novel dealt centrally with Jewish characters and themes and won a Governor General’s…
Marriage By Rabbi Held To Be Invalid He Was Not A British Subject at Time He Performed Ceremony Globe, January 15, 1925 (Canadian Press, Montreal) — Because a rabbi who conducted the ceremony was not a British subject, Mr. Justice Bruneau, in the Superior Court today, handed down judgment annulling a marriage conducted ten years…
From the Canadian Jewish News, May 22, 1970 The Montreal Jewish community is still discussing the relevance of the Jewish Defense League to this city following the recent successful meeting at the Sheraton Mount Royal Hotel. Theme of the meeting, sponsored by the Quebec branch of the League, was: A Jewish Survival Rally. The introduction,…
From the Canadian Jewish News, 1996 David Rome was born and spent his first ten years in Vilna, the “Jerusalem of Lithuania.” This tells us much about his love of books and writing, his search for deep roots in Canadian Jewish life and his overall ahavat Yisrael. When they came to America, his family settled,…
An Actor Struts and Frets Across the Yiddish Stage No More By S. H. Abramson From the Canadian Jewish Standard, January 1937 The recent passing of my old friend Joe Gordon at the Mount Sinai Sanitarium, after an illness of six years, brings to mind a host of memories. During my last visit to Joe…
Hard to believe, but there were Jews in Toronto and probably Montreal as well who were drawing monthly pensions from the U.S. government as late as 1925 for their participation as soldiers in the American Civil War. An index of Civil War pension recipients indicates that some 4,966 veterans of America’s most sanguinary conflict filed…
Stanley Diamond, a semi-retired Montreal businessman who ran a company that manufactured decorated ceilings, has become a medical-genealogical detective in a bid to defuse what he calls a “ticking time bomb” and prevent potential suffering and death caused by thalassemia, a genetic disease. Common among Sephardic Jews, Greeks, Italians and other Mediterranean peoples, the gene…
In Place d’Armes, an historic square in Montreal’s Old City, two opposing shrines — a loftily-domed church and a classically-pillared bank — face off against each other, potent symbols of the durable dialectic between religion and commerce that has helped shape this dynamic French-and-English-speaking city founded on an island in the St. Lawrence more than 350…
A special summer of activities highlighting Montreal’s historic Jewish community kicks off June 15 (2000) when a musical version of Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz premieres at the Saidye Bronfman Centre in this famously bilingual city. As it happens, the musical is also bilingual: it’s in Yiddish, with simultaneous English translation available for…
Insect chop suey, sauteed crickets, and pizzas slices loaded with mealworms were among the hors d’oeuvres served recently at a cocktail party at the Insectarium, a Montreal museum devoted to insects. As a master chef fried locusts in a wok, guests sampled cricket-stuffed mushrooms and acras, a Caribbean pasta dish liberally sprinkled with mealworms. For…
