From Growing Up Jewish: Canadians tell their own stories (1997) My earlier recollection goesback to the very early 1920s, sitting on the stoop of our dry-goods store on Spadina Avenue and Baldwin Street (southeast corner), watching the Sunday evening church parade go by. These were the strollers emerging from two nearby Christian churches, the Western Congregational Church, just…
The following passages have been excerpted from The Rise of the Toronto Jewish Community, by Shmuel Mayer Shapiro (1877-1958), the late editor and publisher of the Toronto Yiddish newspaper, the Hebrew Journal. After surfacing in a synagogue archives in 2009, his unpublished manuscript was illustrated with some 90 rare and historic photographs and illustrations and…
This beautiful and huge stained glass window was made for Toronto’s then-new City Hall at Queen and Bay streets when it was constructed in the late 1890s. The window seems to depict in pictorial form some of the ideals of the city: “The union of commerce & industry.” Virtues cited along the top of the windows…
Opening of One-fare Trip to the City Limits Hailed With Joy / Triumph for Adam Beck / First Cars with Notable Passengers Made Run over New Rails / Triumphal Procession Up Yonge Street / Joy Expressed at Town Hall From Toronto Evening Telegram, Friday November 3, 1922 Everybody living in North Toronto seemed to be…
From The Toronto Evening Telegram, July 11, 1928 The T. Eaton Co. have called for tenders for the demolition of buildings in the block bounded by Yonge, College, Bay and Buchanan streets. All of the buildings are structures which have been erected for years and their destruction means the removal of old landmarks, the former…
Today Forest Hill residents are just beginning to endure the noise and traffic jams associated with the construction of the proposed Eglinton Avenue LRT: after all, no gain without pain, right? This newspaper story from 1928 describes another noisy and disruptive mechanical operation that was evidently required to remove the “hill” from Forest Hill. *…
From the Globe and Mail, 2001 Harry Barberian, who began his culinary career as a short order cook in a circus railroad dining car, and went on to found the landmark Toronto steakhouse that bears his name, has died after complications from abdominal surgery. He was 71. His restaurant, Barberian’s, specialized in steaks — New…
It has been 25 years since Canada’s leading publishing house McClelland and Stewart brought out A Basket of Apples and Other Stories by Shirley Faessler, a book that quickly won critical acclaim for its lively and colourful re-creation of the world of the Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants in the Kensington Market neighbourhood of Toronto in the…
From the Canadian Jewish News, April 5, 2014 Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew, by Stuart Ross (ECW Press) I hadn’t heard of Stuart Ross before reading Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew. I was therefore surprised to find that we are “landsleit” — both from Bathurst Manor — and that he is quite prolific, with more than a dozen books…
Suffering was Terrible — Little Children Lay Naked on the Bare Earth — Their Parents Half-Clad, Lay Beside Them — No Breeze in Narrow Alleys From The Toronto Star, July 4, 1911 If you really want to appreciate what a heat wave means, go through “The Ward.” You will see sights there that you have…
