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Smith, Stewart

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1908-1993

Stewart Smith was born in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. His father, A.E. Smith, was a social gospel church minister in Brandon and leader of the Winnipeg General Strike in 1919. In 1923, Stewart moved to Toronto and began organizing. The following year he accepted an offer from the CPC to become the National Secretary of the Young Communist League. In 1926, he attended the Lenin School in Moscow and was later appointed to the Political Bureau of the CPC. In 1937, he was elected alderman on the Toronto City Council as the first communist elected to office in Toronto’s history. In 1946, he was elected to the Board of Control. Stewart was a prominent member of the Labor-Progressive Party of Ontario and served as party leader between 1951 and 1957. He resigned from the Communist Party of Canada in 1957.

Salsberg, J.B.

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1902-1998

Joseph (Yosef) Baruch Salsberg was born in Lagow, in the Opatow district of Radom Gubernica, (now Poland, then under Russian rule) in 1902. He was the son of Sarah-Gitel and Abraham, a baker who worked in Canada as a junk peddler after immigrating in 1910. In 1913, the Salsberg family immigrated to Toronto to join Abraham, and settled Toronto’s Jewish district on Cecil Street. J.B. quit school at age fourteen and acquired a trade in the textile industry; he later joined the United Hatters, Cap, and Millinery Worker International Union and became a union organizer. He married Dora Wilensky (1901-1959), a social worker who would later head Toronto Jewish Family and Child Services. Salsberg organized in Toronto, Montreal, New York, and Chicago and became a key figure in the Worker’s Unity League, the Canadian Friends of the Soviet Union, and the Communist Party of Canada. He was elected to Toronto City Council as an alderman of Ward 4 in 1938 and 1943. Between 1943 and 1955 he represented the St. Andrew riding in Toronto in the Ontario Parliament as a member of the Labor-Progressive party. Due to his criticism of the Soviet Union, he was expelled from the CPC in October 1956. In 1959, he founded the New Fraternal Jewish Association. Following the end of his political career, he continued to write and speak on Leftist and Jewish topics.

Penner, Norman

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1921-2009

Norman Penner was born in Winnipeg, into a Mennonite family from Ukraine. He is the son of Jacob Penner, a revolutionary socialist and organizer of the Winnipeg General Strike, and Rose Shapack, a Russian Jewish immigrant. His parents met at an address by Emma Goldman. His father was a founder of the Social Democratic Party of Canada and the Communist Party of Canada and was elected to Winnipeg city council in 1933. As a child, Norman became a celebrated orator with the Young Pioneers. After high school, he worked as a full-time officer of the Communist Party of Canada from 1938 to 1941. He enlisted in the Canadian Army and served overseas during World War II. After returning to Canada, he became National Youth Director of the Communist Party. He unsuccessfully ran for office in the 1951 Ontario election and the 1953 federal election. He broke from the Communist Party in 1957 and later returned to school, earning a doctorate from the University of Toronto. He became a Political Science professor at York University’s Glendon College until his retirement in 1995.

Lipshitz, Sam

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1910-2000

Sam Lipshitz was born on 14 February 1910 in Radom, Poland. He was sent to live with an aunt in Montreal at age 17, where he joined the Jewish Cultural Club of Montreal. He joined the Young Communist League while working at the Jewish Public Library. He was dismissed from the library following the 1929 Hebron Massacre because he aligned himself with the Soviet interpretation of the event. He married Manya Lipshitz on 20 January 1930 and they settled in Toronto. He became editor of Der Kamf (later renamed Vochenblatt) in 1932. He was appointed secretary of the party’s Anti-Fascist Committee in 1933, became head of the Jewish National Committee and sat on the Party’s Central Committee from 1943 to 1946. He was arrested and briefly detained in the Don Jail with Tim Buck and fourteen other party leaders in 1942. He joined the executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress in 1943. Through the Congress, he was sent to Poland in 1945 to report on the condition of Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust. He and Manya visited the USSR in 1956 and shortly following their return, they resigned from the Communist Party. Sam went on to a career as an editor, author, and printer.

Lipshitz, Manya

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1906-1996

Manya Kantorowicz was born in Bialystok, Poland in December 1906. The youngest daughter of nine children; her mother was a baker, and her parents were secular Jews in the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) tradition. She developed an early interest in Communist politics. At age 13, she left Bialystok, Poland and joined the Twelfth Children’s Work Commune in Vitesbsk, Russia; and entered the Teachers’ Seminary there in 1923. In 1926 she immigrated to Montreal where her brothers had earlier settled. She joined the Young Communist League in Montreal immediately following her arrival. She married Sam Lipshitz on 20 January 1930. They moved to Brunswick Street in Toronto, and she began a 25-year career teaching Yiddish and Jewish History at the Morris Winchevsky School, operated by the United Jewish People’s Order (UJPO). In 1977, Manya published a memoir of her recollections of Jewish life in Russia and immigrating to Canada, titled Bletlekh fun a shturmisher tsayt. It was published in translation as Time Remembered: A Jewish Children’s Commune in the Soviet Union in the 1920s (Toronto: Lugus Publications, 1991).

Kirzner, Sarah

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1917-

Sarah Kirzner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Toronto. Her parents were from Warsaw, Poland. Her sister immigrated to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and her brother immigrated to Saskatchewan at age 16, where he became involved in Leftist politics. She became involved in the Young Communist League at age 18, when her brother encouraged the group to recruit her. She became involved in the Office and Store Employees Union, fighting for a $12.50 per week minimum wage. At the YCL, she met her husband Paul, and became leader of the Toronto YCL group named for Norman Bethune. After being disillusioned by Communist politics, particularly following the Hitler-Stalin Pact, she left the Communist Party officially in 1956.

Sarah Kirzner was the wife of Paul Kirzner.

Kirzner, Paul

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1914-2006

Paul Kirzner was born into a secular Jewish family in Toronto. His father was active in the Bundist movement, and one of the founders of the Toronto Cloakmakers’ Union in Canada. He joined the Young Communist League in 1932. He later formed a small company which distributed Soviet films. In 1940, he joined a closed group of the Communist Party of Canada and the Labour League. In 1949, he was a delegate of the UJPO to the Canadian Peace Congress. He was an original member of the New Fraternal Jewish Association, founded in 1960, though he later became less active due to a disagreement about Israel. He was an active member of the NDP and served on the provincial council and was treasurer of the Toronto area council.

Paul Kirzner was the husband of Sarah Kirzner.

Kashtan, Rose

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1913-[prior to 2005]

Rose Eizenstraus was born in 1913. Her parents were socialist atheists, and she was raised in the Toronto Jewish community. At an early age, she became involved in the Young Pioneers. In 1939, she was Tim Buck’s private secretary. Rose was one of the founding members of the New Theatre Group in Montreal. In Toronto, she was involved in the Belmont Theatre Group and the Theatre of Action. She performed in the notorious play, Eight Men Speak, in the role of Zelda, during its sole performance at Toronto’s Standard Theatre on December 4, 1933.

Rose was the wife of Dave Kashtan.

Gershman, Joe

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1903-1984

Joshua (Joe) Gershman was born in Sokolov, Ukraine, in 1903. In 1921, he was sent to Winnipeg to find his father who had immigrated earlier. He found work as a fur dyer, and soon joined the Communist Party of Canada. With the Party, he founded the Kompartey (the National Jewish Committee of the Communist Party). He was a union organizer in Quebec for the Industrial Union of Needle Trades Workers. Between 1937 and 1972, Joe was the editor of Der Kamf (renamed Vochenblatt in 1940), the Yiddish communist newspaper.

Kashtan, Dave

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1912-2005

Dave Kashtan was born in Montreal in 1912. His parents, Dasha and Solomon Kashtan were born in Ukraine. Fleeing tsarist antisemitic oppression, they settled in the Mile End neighbourhood in Montreal where his father worked as a labourer, and later opened a small grocery store. He left school at age 13. He became interested in Communism at a young age through the influence of his brother Bill, who later led the Communist Party of Canada. Dave joined the orchestra of the Young Pioneer Club, playing the mandolin. He briefly found work as a steamfitter, until he was compelled to leave the trade due to his health. In 1929, he was appointed organizer of the YCL. On 19 January 1931, the Montreal Council of Unemployed held a meeting at the Labour Temple; the meeting was raided and its five speakers, including Dave and Fred Rose, were charged with sedition. Dave was sentenced to one year imprisonment at the Bordeaux Jail. Dave was also an active member of the Workers Sports Association of Canada and was appointed national secretary. In 1938, he was appointed national secretary of the Young Communist League. During the 1953 Canadian Federal Election, Dave ran unsuccessfully for the York Centre riding, as a member of the Labor-Progressive Party. He left the Party in 1960.

Dave was the husband of Rose (Eizenstraus) Kashtan.

Hershkovitz, Al

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1913-1995

Al Hershkovitz was born in Poland and immigrated to Canada in 1921. He was raised in a secular Jewish home; and joined the Young Communist League in 1931. He left school at age sixteen to earn a living, finding odd jobs in the fur industry. He soon joined the Fur Workers Union and became an activist in the Communist Party of Canada. He was elected business agent by his union in 1946. He retired in 1985.

Carr, Sam

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1906-1989

Sam Carr was born as Schmil Kogan in Tomashpil, in Russian Ukraine in 1906. His family enjoyed privileges within his community, as his father was an accountant to a large sugar refinery. In 1919, the sugar refinery was attacked in an antisemitic pogrom, and his father was killed. Sam fled to Romania, where he joined the Romanian underground and distributed radical leaflets. He immigrated to Canada in 1924, living in Regina and Winnipeg before settling in Montreal. Upon arriving in Canada, he joined the Communist Party of Canada. In 1927, the Party sent him to Toronto. For two years, Sam trained at the Lenin School in Moscow. Returning to Canada, he was appointed national organizer for the Canadian Communist Party. In 1931, he was arrested under the Sedition Act, and spent 28 months in Kingston Penitentiary. He was arrested in 1949 in the aftermath of the revelations of espionage during the Gouzenko Affair. He was charged for allegedly helping Soviet embassy officials falsify a passport. After his release from prison, he did not rejoin the Communist Party of Canada, but remained a committed Marxist through his work in other Leftist organizations, including the United Jewish People’s Order.

Borchiver, Ruth Ann

  • RC0908
  • Persoon
  • 1927-2007

Ruth Ann Borchiver was a social worker and psychologist. Her father, David Biderman, joined the Communist Party of Canada in 1921. She grew up speaking Yiddish and attended leftist shules. As a teenager, she briefly taught Yiddish at the Morris Winchevsky Shule in Toronto before pursuing a career in social work. She was head of Jewish Child and Family Services until the late 1950s. In 1991, she completed a Doctor of Education in applied psychology at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation, based on interviews with former members of the Communist movement in Canada, was titled: “A Social-Psychological Analysis of Millennial Thought in the Communist Party of Canada: 1921-1957.

Janes, J. Robert

  • RC0114
  • Persoon
  • 1935-2022

Joseph Robert Janes was born in Toronto in 1935, middle son of Henry Franklin Janes, a pioneer in public relations, and his wife Phyllis Hipwell, an artist. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1958 with a B.A.Sc. in Mining Engineering, his undergraduate thesis winning the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Award in the Petroleum and Natural Gas Division. After work as a petroleum engineer for Mobil Oil (1958-1959) and a research engineer for the Ontario Research Foundation (1959-1964), Janes return to the University of Toronto to study geology under J. Tuzo Wilson and to attend teacher’s college. He also taught high school mathematics, geology and geography for the North York Board of Education (1964-1966). Janes graduated with a M.Eng. in Geology in 1967. After further graduate studies in geology at McMaster University, he then lectured in geology at Brock University (1968-1970), conducting an innovative field course across Canada.

Thereafter, he completed the first year of a Ph.D. program at Queen’s University in association with Brock University but, in 1970, decided instead to become a full-time writer. His early work consisted of books and other media presentations on the topic of geology for grade-school children, senior high schools, universities and the general trade market. He also wrote travel and other articles and supplied photographs for newspapers and periodicals, often with a geological focus, and sold geological specimens to schools under the name Rocks and Minerals of Canada. He later turned to writing children's novels and, ultimately, mystery novels for the adult market. He is now world-renowned as the author of the St. Cyr-Kohler mystery series. He has received grants from the J.P. Bickell Foundation, the Canada Council, and the Ontario Arts Council. Janes has long been concerned with the environment and politics, especially in the area of his home in the Niagara Peninsula. He also has an interest in Stephen Leacock, a cousin of his paternal grandfather. J. Robert Janes and his wife Gracia (Lind) Janes have four children. Janes died on February 28, 2022.

Moses, Daniel David

  • RC0892
  • Persoon
  • 1952-2020

Daniel David Moses is an award-winning poet, playwright, and essayist who is of Delaware descent. He grew up on a farm on Six Nations lands near Brantford, Ontario, and he has a B.A. from York University and a M.F.A. from UBC.

Daniel David Moses is known for his original voice and his ability to portray a thriving, “organic” native culture in his plays, eschewing the tragic motif often apparent in depictions of native people. His plays include Coyote City (1988), Big Buck City (1991), Almighty Voice and His Wife (1991), and The Witch of Niagara (1998), and Moses’ works of poetry include Delicate Bodies (1980) and The White Line (1990). He has been a writer-in-residence at various institutions including Theatre Passe Muraille, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the University of British Columbia, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Windsor, the University of Toronto (Scarborough), the Sage Hill Writing Experience, McMaster University, and Concordia University. He has also served on various boards relating to native culture and the arts, including being a founding member of the Committee to Re-establish the Trickster. Moses passed away on 13 July 2020, at the age of 68.

Harold Saville

  • RC0923
  • Persoon
  • [18??]-1950

Born in England, Harold Saville emigrated to Hamilton, Ontario just before the outbreak of the First World War. When war broke out he returned to England and enlisted first in the Cavalry and then in the Air Force. He served with the RAF and was shot down, but survived. He returned to Hamilton where he lived until his death in 1950.

Fraser, Sylvia

  • RC0084
  • Persoon
  • 1935-2022

Sylvia Fraser, novelist and journalist, was born in Hamilton, Ont. on 8 March 1935, the daughter of George Nicholas and Gladys Olive (Wilson) Meyers. She married Russell James Fraser on 30 May 1959. She was educated at the University of Western Ontario and began her career in journalism at the Toronto Star Weekly. She worked there until the magazine folded in 1968. She published her first novel, Pandora, in 1972 and has published several novels since then as well as works of non-fiction such as My Father's House (1987). She has also been a contributor to Saturday Night.

Fraser has been a guest lecturer at the Banff Centre (1973-1979, 1985, 1987-1988), Writer-in-Residence at University of Western Ontario (1980), a member of the Arts Advisory Panel to the Canada Council (1977-1981), a member of the cultural delegation to China (1985), an instructor at the Maritime Writers' Workshop (1986), and Vice-President of the Writers' Development Trust.

Fraser passed away in Toronto on 25 October 2022.

Gray, Charlotte

  • RC0922
  • Persoon
  • 1948-

Charlotte Gray is a British-born Canadian author of non-fiction, specifically literary biographies and works about Canadian history. She has published 11 books and numerous articles.

Born in Sheffield, England in 1948, Gray went on to read history at Oxford, graduating in 1969. Following the completion of a post-graduate diploma at the London School of Economics, Gray embarked on a career in journalism, writing for The London Daily Standard and editing Psychology Today (UK edition).

In 1979, Gray immigrated to Canada, where she became a freelance magazine writer. From 1986-1993 she served as Ottawa editor for Saturday Night magazine, contributing articles for monthly issues of the magazine. In 1997 she shifted her focus to book-length works, releasing her first biography, Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King, to critical acclaim.

Gray’s non-fiction books have won or been shortlisted for most of the major non-fiction awards in Canada, including the Governor-General’s Award for Non-fiction (shortlisted, 1998), the Trillium Award (shortlisted), the Nereus Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Award (shortlisted), the Canadian Authors Medal for Non-fiction, the Canadian Authors Award for Canadian History, the Donald Creighton Award for Ontario History, the Ottawa Book Award, the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-Fiction Crime Book, and many more. Gray’s first five volumes were best sellers, and several of her works have been adapted for television, including Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Trail (1999) and Gold Diggers: Striking it Rich in the Klondike (2010).

Gray appears frequently on radio and television as a commentator, and in 2004 participated in CBC’s The Greatest Canadian television series as an advocate for Sir John A. MacDonald. Since 2005, she has also held an appointment as Adjunct Research Professor in Carleton University’s Department of History.

Additional noteworthy accolades of Gray’s include honorary doctorates from Mount Saint Vincent University, the University of Ottawa, Queen’s University, York University, and Carleton University. In 2007, she became a Member of the Order of Canada, and in 2009 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

List of Gray’s non-fiction books:

Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King (Penguin Viking, 1997)

Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Trail (Penguin Viking, Canada and Duckworths (UK) 1999)

Flint & Feather: The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (HarperCollins Canada, 2002)

Canada: A Portrait in Letters (Doubleday Canada, 2003)

The Museum Called Canada: 25 Rooms of Wonder (Random House Canada, 2004)

Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell (HarperCollins Canada and Arcade Publishing (US), 2006)

Nellie McClung (Penguin Canada, 2008)

Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike (HarperCollins Canada and Counterpoint (US), 2010)

The Massey Murder: A Maid, her Master, and the Trial that Shocked a Country (HarperCollins Canada, 2013)

The Promise of Canada: People and Ideas That Have Shaped Our Country (Simon & Schuster Canada, 2016)

Murdered Midas: A Millionaire, His Gold Mine, and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise (HarperCollins Canada, 2016)

Lewis, Stephen

  • RC0919
  • Persoon
  • 1937-

Stephen Lewis is a politician, humanitarian, global activist, diplomat, and public speaker. He is a Companion of the Order of Canada, was named “Canadian of the Year” by Maclean’s in 2003 and has received countless awards and recognition for his humanitarian work in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Stephen was born in Ottawa on November 11, 1937. He is the son of Sophie and David Lewis, the former leader of the federal New Democratic Party. He is married to Michele Landsberg, author and columnist for the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, with whom he has three children, Ilana Landsberg-Lewis, Avi Lewis, and Jenny Lewis.

Stephen received post-secondary education at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. Before he could finish his degree, he entered politics and was elected to the Ontario Legislature in 1963 as a member of the New Democratic Party.

Between 1970 and 1978, Stephen was the Provincial Leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party. Following his political career, he became involved in broadcasting. He received the Gordon Sinclair ACTRA Award for broadcasting in 1982 and his CBC radio documentaries were published as Art Out of Agony: The Holocaust Theme in Literature, Sculpture and Film (Toronto: CBC Enterprises, 1984).

In October 1984, Stephen was appointed as Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. He chaired the committee which drafted the five-year UN Programme on African Economic Recovery and the first International Conference on Climate Change in 1988. In September 1986, the UN Secretary General appointed Stephen as his Special Advisor on Africa.

In July 1988, Lewis resigned from his ambassadorship. He continued to act in a personal capacity as Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on Africa.

In May 1992, Stephen was appointed as Special Advisor on Race Relations to the Premier of Ontario. In 1993, Stephen joined the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Group on the Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing in September 1995.

Between 1994 and 1996, Stephen was coordinator of a two-year study commissioned by the UN on the impact of armed conflict on children, led by Graça Machel.

On October 25, 1995, Stephen was appointed Deputy Executive Director (External Relations) of the United Nations Children’s Fund. He resigned January 6, 1999.

In 1998, Stephen was selected by the Organization of African Unity to participate on the International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events. Between 1999 and 2001, Stephen acted as Consultant to UNAIDS, UNIFEM, and the Economic Commission for Africa.

Between 2001 to 2006, Stephen was appointed as the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Stephen is board co-chair of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, a charity he co-founded in 2003 that supports community-based organizations working on the frontlines of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa. From 2007 to 2021, he was co-director of the advocacy organization AIDS-Free World which he co-founded with Paula Donovan.

Stephen is the author of Race Against Time (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2005), a publication of lectures delivered during his Massey Lecture Tour.

On July 1, 2006, Stephen was named McMaster University’s first Social Sciences Scholar-in-Residence.

Stephen holds 40 honorary degrees from Canadian and American universities. His first honorary doctorate was given at McMaster University in 1979.

Seymour, Edward E.

  • RC0030
  • Persoon
  • 1940-?

Edward E. Seymour, prominent labour organizer, was born 30 July 1940 in Port aux Basques, Newfoundland. He was raised in Sydney, Nova Scotia and attended Sydney Academy prior to moving to Ontario in 1958. He received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Waterloo in 1974. He is the author of An Illustrated History of Canadian Labour 1800-1974 (1976, 2nd ed. 1980) and Illuminating the Past Brightening the Future: An Illustrated History International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 353 1903-2003 (2003).

Mr. Seymour’s trade union experience dates back to 1962 when he became a member of Lodge 1246, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. From 1970 to 1977, he was the Canadian Education and Publicity Director for the Textile Workers Union of America. In 1977 he was the national representative for the Communications Workers of Canada (CLC). In 1986 he established Solidarity Consulting, a consulting firm for unions. He was also a partner of Resolutions Unlimited (established in 2000), a firm that focuses on the resolution of harassment and discrimination in the work place. Mr. Seymour served many times on arbitration boards for a number of unions.

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