THIS Golden Anniversary book was published in 1938 to mark the first 50 years of the Beth Hamidrash Hagadol Chevra Tehillim of Toronto, which was founded in 1887 and moved into the McCaul Street Synagogue about 1905. In the early 1950s it merged with the Goel Tzedec Congregation on University Avenue to become the present Beth…
THE following is the beginning of The House of the Living, a “long” short story by Bill Gladstone. It is a romance-mystery of Jewish genealogy. Genealogist David Lazarus assists a married lady named Sarah Blum to discover what happened to an uncle who disappeared from her family, and changes his life in the process. Originally…
THE following article, which appeared in the Toronto Star of January 8, 1912, summed up the various violent calamities that took the souls of 102 Torontonians during the past year of 1911. The article is reprinted in its entirety: 102 VIOLENT DEATHS IN TORONTO IN 1911 Suicides and Drownings Numbered 26 and 25 Respectively —…
This aerial photograph of Toronto was taken in 1910, when the science of flight was in its infancy. Note that the pilot is visible in the early biplane, which took off from the Aviation Park in Weston. The photo was obviously taken from a second plane, flying nearby. This poor reproduction doesn’t reveal much of…
Although most of the old Mount Sinai Hospital on Yorkville Avenue is gone, a prominent architectural firm has agreed to restore the only wing of the hospital still standing. The wing, built as an addition around 1928, was used as a nursing home after Mount Sinai moved to its present location on University Avenue in…
There were bull-frogs in the creek on the other side of Wilson Heights, Jackie told us: monstrous bull-frogs, the biggest he had ever seen. He had brought one home like a warrior returning from battle with a spoil. But he said the granddaddy of them all, the Moby Dick of bull-frogs, was still in the…
As the “people of the book,” wherever Jews live, they will always find a dealer who can provide them with sforim — Hebrew, Jewish and religious books. Before the turn of the century, rabbis and scholars brought with them numerous sacred books, and from time to time, a shipment of books would arrive here. Barenholtz…
THIS article, by an unknown writer, is reprinted from the Toronto Telegram of July 7, 1928, along with the photo, restored from the microfilm. The photo at bottom, with an earlier view of “Old Bay Street,” has been added. DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN . . . the Temple Building used to loom up on the west…
From the Toronto Daily Star, August 11, 1917 Toronto Jews Foster the Higher Education Schools Many, and No One Is Neglected Among the City’s 35,000 Hebrews AND LIBRARIES TOO Hebrew and Yiddish Taught, and a Yiddish Paper is Published Although the Jewish population in Toronto forms but one-sixteenth part of the entire city’s population, there…
The Toronto Star Weekly of February 12, 1916, carried this report on the Jewish Free School sponsored by Jewish philanthropist Edmund Scheuer. Making Good Canadians Out of Girls of Jewish Birth Splendid Work Being Done at the Jewish Free School Tolerance for Creeds of Others Taught Loyalty to King and Country Strongly Emphasized. The Jewish…
