Reuven Lexier, a Toronto orthopaedic surgeon, recently published this handsome 150-page volume that documents his family’s experience in Canada from the moment his great-great-grandparents, Shimon and Chana Lechtzier, settled in Winnipeg with their four sons and two daughters in 1882. Lexier spent about 10 years gathering the 196 photographs, archival documents, newspaper clippings and memorabilia…
Tag: toronto
Victoria Day: Celebrated author Bezmozgis writes, directs film
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David Bezmozgis, celebrated author of the prize-winning book Natasha and Other Stories, was on skates in North York Centennial Arena recently, along with a camera crew and a group of teenaged actors in skates and hockey uniforms. All were involved in filming a scene from Victoria Day, a feature film that Bezmozgis is directing, based…
Exodus Decoded features Toronto’s Indiana Jones
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Toronto filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, in conjunction with Ontario-born film producer James (“Titanic”) Cameron, has produced a slick new two-hour television documentary about the Biblical Exodus that has more offbeat theories than The Da Vinci Code and more wizardry than anything you’ve ever seen in Harry Potter. The Exodus Decoded, which is scheduled for viewing on…
Conversation with screenwriter Len Blum
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Sitting in the study of his Forest Hill home, Len Blum hands the visitor a paperback copy of Howard Stern’s scatalogical memoir Private Parts, whose cover bears the promise, “Soon To Be A Major Motion Picture.” Then Blum — the 45-year-old, award-winning screenwriter who commutes regularly between Toronto and New York — admits that he’s…
Rafi Aaron on Osip Mandelstam
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This year’s Jewish Book Fair (2006) features Toronto poet Rafi Aaron, whose few published volumes to date have traveled surprisingly far and gained impressive renown in the world. On November 12, Aaron and friends are due to present a celebration in words and music of the life and poetry of Osip Mandelstam, the legendary Russian-Jewish…
Hana’s Suitcase keeps on travelling
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A child’s suitcase that was abandoned by its owner at a German death camp during the Nazi era has become the unlikely epicenter of a remarkable literary success story stretching from Toronto to Tokyo and touching many thousands of hearts around the world. The small, brown, slightly tattered suitcase is clearly marked as the property…
Obit: sculptor E. B. Cox (1914-2003)
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From the Globe and Mail, 2003 E. B. Cox, a much-admired Toronto-area sculptor who prided himself on achieving artistic and commercial success without ever taking a penny in government grants, died last summer at the age of 89. E. B. was a young associate of some of the Group of Seven with whom he went…
Tulchinsky’s Five Books of Moses Lapinsky
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Sonny Lapinsky, the memorable hero of Karen X. Tulchinsky’s engaging novel The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky (2003) is a Toronto boxer who wins the world middleweight crown at Madison Square Gardens in 1948 and again in 1954. Like a champion boxer, the novel itself has impressive staying power and seems nowhere near ready to leave…
Morley Torgov & The War to End All Wars
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Sitting in his elegant apartment in midtown Toronto, novelist-lawyer Morley Torgov explains why his latest novel, The War To End All Wars (Malcolm Lester Books) took him 17 years to write. Whenever he felt challenged about the direction of the story, he’d put the manuscript into a drawer, sometimes for a year or more at…
Teleky’s The Paris Years of Rosie Kamin
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Toronto writer Richard Teleky has won a prestigious literary prize — the Harold Ribalow Award for the Best Novel of the Year on a Jewish Theme — for his first novel, The Paris Years of Rosie Kamin (1999). The award, which includes a $1,000 cheque, is administered by the American Jewish organization Hadassah, which published…
