Ina's story of Sam and Bebe

THE
CIGLENS
AND THE
FOOTERONSKYS





FROM
THE RECOLLECTIONS
OF
SAMUEL AND BEBE
CIGLEN


EDITED BY INA GILBERT









PROLOGUE


These memoirs are dedicated to my grandparents, the parents of Bebe and Sam Ciglen. Bebe's parents were Faigle (Kasinsky) and Litman Footeronsky, whose sons changed their surnames to Litman. Sam's parents were Minnie (Reichelson} and Jake Ciglen. Each of these two women were left alone to fend for their children in little Russian villages, while their husbands attempted to get established in Canada. It was several years before my grandfathers were able to send for their families. Neither of their wives spoke English but when the time came, they set out bravely, with young children, across Russia, across the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to England, across the Atlantic Ocean to Canada and by train from Halifax to Ontario to finally reunite their families.
Because of them, their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great, great grandchildren have been able to enjoy, in peace and democracy, the fruits of the greatest industrial and technological changes ever to occur in a single century.


Ina Gilbert







SAMUEL CIGLEN'S
RECOLLECTIONS

Sam's Recollections include tales his parents told of their early years in Canada, his own recollections of being raised in small Canadian towns, his education and career notes. I wrote them from a rough draft of the family history that was hand-written by him before he became ill.












JAKE AND MINNIE CIGLEN, FROM RUSSIA TO CANADA
Jake Shimson Cyklin and Minnie Reichelson were born in small villages in an area of Russia that had been and is once again, Latvia. It is a long way from Kiev in the Ukraine. Had they not come to Canada it is unlikely that I would ever have met and married Bebe Litman. The Reichelsons were a well-to-do highly respected family. Their friends included the leading members of both the Jewish and Gentile communities. When Jake married Minnie they set up a home in the village of her birth.
They were the proud parents of three children when they heard rumours that Russia was preparing for war with Japan. The Reichelson family feared that Jake would be recalled into the army and die in this senseless war. They made arrangements to smuggle him out of Russia to America. Minnie's brother and two sisters were already living in Baltimore. However, the U.S.A. had cut off immigration. Canada was the next option.
Minnie's cousins, the Coopers, owned a successful hat and cap factory in Toronto. They agreed to help Jake get established in Canada. He spent his first month in Toronto with the Coopers. They taught him some English, how to use Canadian money and salesmanship. Jake was anxious to begin earning a living so that he could bring Minnie and their three children to Canada. He wanted to live in a small town rather than the city.
A month after his arrival in Toronto the Coopers provided him with a bundle of fabrics, needles, thread, buttons, etc. to sell to farmer's wives in the countryside. Because he knew so little English, they advised him to go in a north-westerly direction to Drayton, through an area settled by German-speaking Mormons. He travelled on foot. He had no money for a horse and cart. He was able to converse with the Mormon farmers because of the similarities between Yiddish (spoken by all European Jews) and the German language. He sold his entire bundle.
Upon arrival in the village of Drayton he presented his immigration papers to the village magistrate. This official anglicised Jake's name, changing it from Jacob Shimson Cyklin to Jacob Samson Ciglen. He liked Jake instantly, introduced him to the villagers and helped him get established as a merchant.
Jake, gregarious by nature, acquired friends and customers readily, both in the village and throughout the surrounding countryside. He was a natural salesman. He soon owned horses and a covered wagon from which to sell his merchandise. He rented and furnished a house, then wrote to Minnie, urging her to come to Canada with the children and assuring her that he was now able to take good care of them.
Emigration from Russia was forbidden at that time. Minnie and her three young children, Annie, Phil and Gert were smuggled out of Russia. Guides, known to her family, escorted them to a port on the Baltic Sea. They had to travel in very small groups that were fed and hidden at "safe" farms along the route. The family was often separated during the trek. Minnie, Annie and Phil reached the port several hours ahead of Gert. Minnie was sick with fear for her safety until a guide, carrying Gert in his arms, arrived. Once safely aboard the boat to England, Minnie, who had never travelled and knew how to speak only Russian and Yiddish, was on her own. From London, England, they took another boat to Halifax, then finally, a train to Drayton.
The reunion of the Ciglen family in 1901 coincided with the end of the Victorian era. News of Queen Victoria's death arrived by way of headlines in the newspapers delivered to Drayton by the same train that brought Minnie and the children. Jake often referred to the strange way in which the Queen's death was announced, "The Queen is dead, long live the King! "
Drayton, ontario
Minnie liked both her new neighbours and Jake's countryside customers. Annie, Phil and Gert were enrolled at the local public school immediately. They were soon fluent in English. Annie, the eldest of the three was exceptionally bright. Within one year after arriving in Canada, she won a first place medal in an oratory contest. For two years, a Mormon farm woman was Minnie's closest friend. She died prematurely of pneumonia. When Minnie gave birth to her first Canadian born child, a daughter, she named her Emma to honour this friend. Emma was born on March 14, 1903.
I was born on January 4, 1905. I was taken to Guelph for my circumcision. Years later, on a date with Bebe, I met my godmother for the first time. Bebe took me to meet her cousin Izzy Bossin. Izzy's mother-in-law, Mrs. Solway, was there. Upon being introduced to me, she hugged and kissed me like a long lost relative, then she utterly embarrassed me by giving everyone there a blow by blow account of my circumcision. Mrs. Solway was my godmother but she had not seen me since I was an infant.
The twins, Rae and Dave were born on September 8, 1908. Annie was sixteen years older than the twins, the same age as Bebe's eldest brother Jake. She helped mother by caring for the younger children and assisting with the housework until she married. Then her responsibilities fell on Gert's capable young shoulders.
Life in a Canadian village was vastly different from the Russian "shtettle" where Bebe was born. The house was two stories high. It was surrounded by flower beds filled with orange day lilies and a grass lawn. The bedrooms were upstairs, a kitchen and parlour downstairs.
A pump, in the back yard supplied well water. Minnie could fry or boil food on top of the wood burning stove and bake in its oven at the same time. An ice box kept food cold. A coal furnace supplied heat in the winter.
The house was close to the railway station. The children loved to wave to the passengers peering out the train windows.
Minnie and Jake put in a big vegetable garden. Their cows and chickens had the protection of a barn until the year that it was destroyed by a flood one spring. Emma recalls being rescued from the house by men in thigh high boots. The town had gravel roads. Sidewalks lined the block of stores in the town centre. The children enjoyed free education at the town school.
There were also similarities, a shed-like summer kitchen and an outhouse in the yard. The outhouse had a deep hole under it but it smelled no better than those in Russia. Minnie churned her own butter, made cottage cheese and bottled dill pickles, sauerkraut, other vegetables and fruit for winter use.
Jake and Minnie became naturalised Canadian citizens. They both acquired the facility to speak fluent English but neither of them learned to read and write their new language. Jake assisted in bringing other Jewish families to the Drayton area and helped establish them in business. He travelled extensively throughout Wellington County and neighbouring Grey county.

SAM'S RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS EARLY YEARS IN DRAYTON
After attending the graduation of two grandchildren, Jacqueline Rosen and Bradley Fleisher, at Guelph University, Sam suggested to Bebe that instead of returning to Toronto they travel up to Drayton. He had not been there since the family moved away in 1912. He hoped that seeing the town again would bring back memories of his childhood. Bebe agreed but, in jest, set one condition; they would also visit her birthplace, Borjenka, someday.
All the events described below were brought to mind during that visit to Drayton. The one place he could not revisit was the school, for it had burned to the ground and been replaced by a new building in another location. Sam stopped every older person on Main Street, hoping to find someone who recalled his family. Surprisingly, one person did recollect the name Ciglen.
I was five years old when my sister Annie married Harry Bain in Drayton's Town Hall. Everybody in town was invited to attend. Gert was maid of honour. Emma was the flower girl. Mama and Dad thought I was too young to participate. I thought otherwise. I sneaked out of the house. The street was so crowded with well-wishers that I could see nothing. The Town Hall was situated at the foot of a hill leading to the main street. Halfway up the hill I climbed a tree. My perch in the branches gave me a perfect birds-eye view of the procession. Later I sneaked into the Town Hall to watch the ceremony. By the time I was discovered my new fancy white outfit was a mess. I was in deep trouble with Mom and Dad. Annie and Harry moved to Toronto where Harry was the supervisor of a men's clothing factory. We all missed our big sister who was very much a second mother to us. At Annie's urging, she and Harry later opened a dress shop in Owen Sound and then a branch store in Hanover.
After Annie's marriage, Mama took me and Emma to Baltimore to visit her sisters and brother. One aunt had a swing in the back yard. It hung from the branch of a big tree. I was thrilled when our cousins pushed the swing high in the air, singing, "Up, up a little bit higher..." They also taught me to sing Yankee Doodle. Emma didn't fare as well. She fell off the swing at its highest point and lay so still for several minutes that Mama thought she was dead. However, she suffered no lasting effects from the fall.
Back home, some men working on the bank of the river that meandered behind Drayton's main street offered me pennies to sing my newly learned songs. When I finished my rendition they tossed the pennies in the river. I thought it was great fun to wade in to retrieve my reward! They thought it was very funny to make me wade into the cold water.
I sneaked out of the house on one other occasion in 1910. I heard Mama, Dad and the older children going outside in the middle of the night to see Haley's Comet. I didn't know what it was except that it would appear in the sky. The whole town, about 700 people, stood out on the streets that night. Again, from my low vantage point, I saw only the crowd. Most of the people in the village were scared. They feared the world was coming to an end.
I learned the meaning of stealing the day I and my best friend Kenneth Gibbs helped ourselves to an apple each from a barrel behind the grocery store. Ken's father, who owned the store next door, saw us munching the apples. He gave us an unforgettable tongue lashing. He let us know that what we had done was theft and that we could be jailed for this crime. Ken's father then loaned us money to shamefacedly pay the storekeeper for the apples. We swept his shop every day for a week to repay him for the loan. Although we were just seven when my family moved out of Drayton, Kenneth and I recognised each other instantly when we ran into one another at University, eleven years later. We reviewed our early years once again, in 1986, on the 60th anniversary of our University graduation.
Dad stabled his horses alongside the blacksmith's shop. He often took me there because I loved to see the horses. One day, while Dad and my brother Phil were talking to the blacksmith, I slipped inside the big horse stall. Phil was almost hysterical with fright when he saw me there. One of the animals was known to be a kicker. My head didn't even reach the horses bellies. I was calmly walking between their feet stroking their knees. Phil was sure they would never get me out without serious injury. However, the horses ignored me and I walked out the way I had gone in with no harm done. This near escape left no impression on me. I recall being scolded by Papa some months later for venturing too close to the horses at an auction sale.
I must have lived a charmed life. Another near disaster occurred when Dad took me with him to deliver a load of hay to the next village. He let me ride high on top of the load all the way there. When we stopped in front of the barn, a huge fork descended toward me to grapple the hay. The operator couldn't see me. I closed my eyes and screamed at the top of my lungs. I cried so hard that I didn't see the fork stop seconds before Papa reached me and lifted me down.
The baker's daughter was my favourite playmate. Our Dads kidded that we were girlfriend and boyfriend. One Saturday, Dad hitched a high-stepping horse to our buggy and drove me down to the bakery, presumably to play with my "girlfriend". The baker lifted his little girl into the seat beside me. Dad stepped down and handed me the reins. I drove my girlfriend through town, in high style. Our beaming fathers walking alongside. All the farmers and all the townsfolk stopped to wave as they did their weekly shopping.
Gert thwarted my first attempt at hockey. Some older boys let me play goalie for them at an improvised net on the icy road. The pucks were frozen horse manure. Gert came upon the scene and thought the boys were trying to hit me with the frozen manure balls. (Maybe they were!) She chased them away and destroyed the make-belief goal, ending the game.
Dad loved a good joke. He purposely walked down main street, on Halloween night to see the pranks pulled off by the local youths. He took me along one Halloween and we both had a hearty belly laugh when he saw that pranksters had managed to set a sleigh and a buggy atop the skating rink roof. Dad stopped laughing when he saw our own outhouse sitting in the middle of Main Street. I didn't dare admit that I had participated in these high-jinx.
Dad liked to stop in at the Queens Hotel for a glass of beer. Usually he left me outside. Once, when he saw that I was peering wistfully through the window he took me in and allowed me taste his drink. It was years later before I was finally convinced by friends to taste beer again.
Eventually all the houses in Drayton had running water. Shortly before we moved to Meaford I watched a well being drilled behind the stores on main street. It spouted like a geyser. This artesian well became the source of water for the whole village.
1912: THE CIGLEN FAMILY MOVED TO MEAFORD
In 1912, Dad decided to move the family to Meaford, Ontario. He rented a large house on Collingwood Street. It was on the third lot down from Main street and just two blocks from the Georgian Bay lakefront. Eventually he bought the house. Dad and Mama lived there for the rest of their lives.
The front entrance was sheltered by a deep covered porch. We could sit there and watch the various activities in the Town Square Park across the street and hear the town band play Sunday concerts from its gazebo-like band shell. The newly constructed armoury was also visible from the porch. Some years later a movie theatre was built next door to us on the lot closest to Main Street.
Two large rooms faced the street on each side of the front entrance. Each had a front window, shaded by the porch, and another to the side. A dark-stained wood staircase hugged the left side of the centre hall that led into the long, dark, panelled dining-room. The windows on the left wall provided very little light after the theatre was built. A door in the right wall led into a bedroom. In the right corner of the back wall another door led into a short hallway from the side door of the house. A small room off the hall, behind the bedroom, was used as Dad's office.
The kitchen extended across the entire width of the house except for a rear staircase at one end which led up to the bedrooms. A bathroom that had a pull-chain toilet, a sink and a bathtub was built into the landing a few years later. There was a water pump in the kitchen sink. The big wood-burning stove remained Mama's favourite even after Dad bought her an electric model. There was a shelf-lined pantry off the kitchen and a large summer kitchen as well. The upper rooms were laid out the same as the lower. The two large front bedrooms were reached from the front stairs. Doors to two small bedrooms were off a central bedroom over the dining room. Everybody had to pass through this bedroom to reach the bathroom.
The large barn out back provided stalls for the horses, room for two cows and chicken pens. It also had a large storeroom and shed space for the wagons, sleighs and buggy. The house was surrounded by a good size lawn with ample room out back for Mama's vegetable garden.
Before leaving Drayton, Gertrude, then fourteen and in grade eight at public school, secured certificates of standing from the Drayton school board for all of us to be sure that we would be put in the right grades in the Meaford school. It was a good thing she did! Emma was very small for her age. When she presented herself, her new teacher said, "You are too small to be old enough for this grade!" She pulled her certificate from her pocket. For months she kept it with her because the teacher continued to tease her about her size and age.
The move to Meaford was made by railway. The horses, the stable equipment, household furnishings and effects were all loaded on a freight car. We boarded a passenger car. At Allendale we boarded a different train to go to Meaford. The freight car containing our household effects was detached and switched to the Meaford train. It seemed to take very little time to unload in Meaford. The hard work of unpacking and reorganising fell on the capable shoulder's of Mama and Gert.
Our landlord, Hector Kingston, a well-known, highly regarded businessman, became a friend and advisor to Dad. He was very helpful in making introductions and assisted Dad in establishing a unique grocery business. Dad bartered with the farmers. He gave them staples such as flour, rice, and sugar in exchange for eggs, butter, vegetables, hides, sheepskins, furs, and metal parts from broken farm equipment. The latter were sold to scrap metal dealers. The townspeople, of course, paid for their purchases in cash. Dad was an entrepreneur par excellence. The Ciglen family flourished and became prominent members of the Meaford community.
Mama was a caring mother and a gracious hostess. She welcomed her new neighbours and our school friends into our home. Our home became a stopping off place for all Jewish travellers passing through Meaford. Gertrude who attended high school and worked as a clerk in the grocery store was also Mama's helper in both cooking and caring for the twins.
(According to recent comments from Emma, Minnie never developed the kind of close friendships with the women of Meaford that she had enjoyed in Drayton. She was an outsider in the "WASP", English-speaking, Meaford community. In the German-speaking, Drayton community she was accepted as a fellow European immigrant.)
Emma was musically inclined. She played the piano and danced. Mama tried to arouse my interest in music with violin lessons. When this did not appeal to me she tried piano lessons. From the piano in the big front room I could see across to the market square. The baseball and lacrosse played there lured me away from practice in summer, skating lured me in the winter. I was a good scholar and an active athlete but never learned to play music.
Regular auction sales were held on the market square Mama often purchased antiques at these auctions. I earned pocket money by donning a sandwich board advertising the auction. I walked up and down Main Street, wearing the boards, shouting the hour that the Auction Sale would begin. Selling the weekly newspaper was another source of income for me.
I had saved enough from my jobs to make my first bank deposit at the age of eight. Lillian Topp, a youngster about my own age, often accompanied her parents when they deposited the day's receipts from their general store. She took me to the Royal Bank and showed me how to open an account.
I excelled in mathematics. For this reason the principal suggested that I skip ahead a grade in school. Dad objected. He said every grade in school was put there for a purpose, to skip would be to miss part of my education.
When I was eleven my sister Annie insisted that I come to live with her in Toronto so that I could attend Hebrew classes and prepare for my Bar Mitzvah. I was not interested in Hebrew and returned to Meaford after staying with Annie for only one session. I never did have a formal Bar Mitzvah.
The most valuable lesson I learned in Toronto was how to fight in the back alleys. I had to defend myself against other lads who deemed it necessary to fight all Jews in the neighbourhood. Shortly after my return to Meaford I was affronted by two boys who were constant troublemakers. I succeeded in beating up both of them. Never again did they dare even to call me a derogatory name. Another troublemaker, Alf Brown, who lived across the street, called me names and challenged me to fight. I rose to the challenge. During the ensuing fight Al's mother emerged from her house and encouraged me to give her son a beating he would not readily forget. I did. Afterwards, Alf and I developed a friendship that lasted many years.
I didn't win every fight. Six weeks before the end of my final year in public school, I was forced into a wrestling match with another unfriendly neighbour. This boy was six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than me. He eventually squeezed me down to the ground. One leg twisted under me and broke. I was at home in a cast well into the summer. My teacher sent me lessons daily and supervised my final exams so I could write them at home. I topped the class and won a scholarship. It covered the costs of all the books that I had to buy for high school.
WORLD WAR ONE (1914-1918)
Early in the First World War the grain elevator at Meaford's harbour burned to the ground. Dad bought the machinery for scrap and agreed to clean up the mess. I organised a crew of children to gather the burned nails in baskets to be added to the scrap metals salvaged. Canada began manufacturing artillery and other war equipment. Current supplies of new metals were insufficient to meet the demands of the war industries. Scrap metals became a very valuable commodity. Dad redoubled his efforts to collect scrap metal from the farmers both for the income and as an act of patriotism. He shipped scrap metal by the carload to dealers in Toronto and Hamilton.
During the First World War, the British army sought volunteers for a Jewish battalion to serve in Palestine. Philip was then eighteen. He and his friend, Bill Cadesky from Owen Sound, joined up. After training in England, they spent the war on active duty in Palestine. Unfortunately, Phil contracted Malaria while serving there. The disease left him with recurrent migraine headaches. Walking was the only thing that relieved these headaches.
The following letter, dated June 26, 1919, was written by Phil from Bir Salem, Palestine.

My Dear Parents,
Your letter of May 14th received and was more than pleased to hear from you, and that you are in the best of health. At present I can also tell you I am in perfect condition and that am taking life as easily as the Army will allow.
I am sleeping on a cot or bed with as many blankets as I possibly need to make me comfortable, meals the best the Army can supply for a poor Tommy and have nothing to trouble me excepting my little work and my feeling of homesickness which is at the present very persistent. Of course I quite understand I should not take it to heart so much but still the yearning for my loved ones I left behind certainly over rules all my sense of understanding.
I hear on the 28th Peace is supposed to be sealed. I hope so as it will mean that a great number of troops will be relieved and we shall stand a much better chance to go home. Being we are Repatriation troops I think that we still stand a good chance of being home before December. If you could put in a claim for me on Compassionate Grounds ( Ed note: because of his Malaria ) I believe I could still have a much better chance of getting away. Have it made out by a Lawyer and get the Mayor and the chief of Police to verify it and send it through to the War Office and then it will be considered there. I think I will have a much better chance of getting away before the cold weather. Time is very short now so if you will do this then do it quickly.
I have not heard from Belle for a long time now so I begin to worry. I wonder what could be wrong with her.
I received a letter from Anna R. and N. Levine (small) and by their report everyone seems quite well and cheerful and to make he finishing touches it seems it only needs me. Well here's hope I shall be home in time to see the closing of the Summer sports. Of course it was not all a pleasure for me to be here while the different sports were progressing at home, but still I took it all with a good heart, but if I am not home to have a nice dance with you all this winter then I certainly shall be disappointed and angry with everyone concerned in keeping me out in this hole.
I suppose Dave and Rae will be a little displeased when they do not find letters for themselves but I hope they shall forgive me as I do a great deal of writing all day and I am in no humour to keep on doing so in my few leisure hours.
I expect to go on leave to Jaffa again in a couple of days. These leaves certainly eat up a lot of money, but still what good is my money, if I cannot buy myself a bit of pleasure. Just imagine a meal out here costs at least 80 cents and then of course when you are on leave you generally eat four meals a day and bed costs 10 pt or 50 cents so at the end of a perfect day it costs at least $3.70 besides what you spend otherwise.
I am going to buy a few nice souvenirs, Mother of Pearl and Silver which I shall bring home with me upon my return. I tried to procure an Ember necklace for mother but the people were sold out. It will cost about $12.50 but it is well worth it.
Now I have been in the better part of Palestine a while I can safely pass my opinion about it. It is one of the most fertile pieces of land I have ever seen. It is a treat to walk along the Orange groves and Almond groves and see the different growths. Oranges grow very plentifully and to look at the ground which yields these enormous crops it would certainly surprise you.
If they had a system of irrigation like they have in Western Canada or U.S.A. it would be the wealthiest and best country in the world. The only drawback we have here now is the people. They are a mean scurvy lot of cut-throats and would skin a flea for the value of the tallow. Of course the war has made it very stringent for them, but still if they knew a man was starving they would close their eyes and let him pass on unheeded. In this country they do not understand what love thy neighbour as thyself means.
The people in the modern colonies are not so bad, they are at least reasonable, but the remainder, God pity them.
I would just love to see a real American boys colony formed. It would show them up so badly they would hide for shame.
Those are my intentions upon my return to civilisation. I shall get about 50 to 60 young men of my mind together, all get married and go to Palestine and form one of the best Colonies it has ever seen. Of course that will not be for a year or so after my return, as I shall have to work myself up before I leave Canada. Well there is no use me pestering you with my intentions as they are too vague at present.
I was more than pleased to hear that most of the boys are back home again and I hope I shall join them in the merry making shortly.
I just saw Joe a few days ago and he sends you all his love also Ben M. and Bill C. (Ed. note: Bill Cadesky from Owen Sound) Ben is the only unlucky one among us as he is still a private but he looks much better than any of us. He is strong and as fat as an ox. He lost some of his foolish ways but he still sticks to cards. I try my best to break him off of it but nothing doing. He cannot lose much so I should worry, as long as he enjoys it.
Bill Cadesky looks fine. I hardly believe you would recognise him, he has got very much stouter and feels as fit as a lion after a meal. I am enclosing a snap of Joe to Emma. He looks fine on it. Emma I think has Joe's heart in her hands. He keeps on talking about her in his quiet way and I really believe there is something deep in his mind although he has never confessed to me. Since we are out here I have found him to be one of the best pals I have ever met and very quiet and sensible. In the Army a fellow can see the nature of a man more so than in civil life because friends here always disclose all secrets to each other and look for one another's sympathy. Believe me this life is certainly an experience for any young man and before he has had a taste of Army life he does not know what life meant to him while at home. Although this life is Hell on Earth, still I would not sell my experience for a Million Dollars as it has made a man of me and upon my return to civil life I shall know how to appreciate what a good home is. This letter I am sure will make you feel downhearted so I shall go into a different subject.
Write me what the fruit is going to be like this year. Is there any prospect in a little money in it?
Write me the prices of Scrap iron and hides, Rags, Apples for the coming season and anything that you may be dealing in. I would certainly like to know of anything in General.
Dad you write me such short letters it seem you are so busy you have not the time. Surely you can spare an hour some rainy day and drop me a few lines.
I have not seen rain in this country this last three months so if you do not get much mail from me you can see I am busy, but still I manage to spare a few minutes to write to you at least two to three letters a week. I would write you Jewish letters only you have not passed your opinion upon my writing so I thought I would discontinue until you wrote and asked me to write in Jewish.
Dear Mother, it was a surprise to me to see your signature in English so good. You are doing fine. Just you wait till I get home, I shall make you write English every day and then you shall be able to drop me a few lines whenever I am away on a holiday.
I already have an invite to Uncle Richelsons for a month or so upon my return but I do not think I shall stay there very long. My sole reason for going to Baltimore upon my return is to square matters with Belle and then I shall return either wedded or Separated forever. I hope for the former. You may think I talk too serious for a young man, but you do not want to forget I am over 21 and my roaming feeling has settled to one of a quiet peaceful life in a cosy little home.
Gee, but time does fly, I started writing this letter at 8 PM. and it is already 10 PM., so I had better close, with Love and best regards to all
Hoping this letter finds you all in perfect health and in best of spirits I remain,
Your Loving Son,
Phil
Address:
J5597 Sgt. Ciglen, P.
"B" Company.
38th Battalion., Royal Fusilier.
Bir Salem, Palestine

Special thanks to Phil's son, Gary Ciglen, for making this letter available to us.
Dad bought a Model "T" Ford from an executive at the Collingwood shipyard who joined the army. Dad didn't know how to drive. Since I was the eldest son still at home I was driving the car at age thirteen.

SPORTS AT MEAFORD HIGH
I became proficient in several sports. I learned ice skating and hockey wearing ancient skates retrieved from Dad's scrap metal pile. These antiques were merely blades that strapped over your regular shoes.
I played goal, right-wing and eventually was a defence man on our high school hockey team. I also played the right-wing position for the Meaford Junior O.H.A. team. During gym classes I became a good at basketball and played centre for the Meaford High school team. In the summer I played catcher for the Meaford baseball team. My sports involvement never interfered with my studies. I was the top student at Meaford High in every subject except art. In art I ranked second best.
MATRICULATION AT AGE 17 - TOO YOUNG FOR UNIVERSITY
At age seventeen I finished Senior Matriculation with honours and looked forward to entering the University of Toronto in the fall. I was thwarted when the University brought in a new rule requiring all entrants to be eighteen years of age.
The high school principal, Mr. Dundas, researched the entrance requirements and discovered a way for me to make up the lost year. If a student received an honour status (85%) in all twelve matriculation subjects he could enter the second year of any honour course, skipping the generalised first year of university. Only eight out of the twelve subjects offered were required for matriculation and I had written only eight exams.
If I wrote exams in all twelve subjects the next year and attained honours in all, as Mr. Dundas was sure I would, then I could skip the first year of university. I did as he suggested and won the $100.00 Carter Scholarship. Dad suffered a serious accident that winter that prevented him from working for a considerable time. The award money was essential to pay my university tuition fee.
The income tax law had just become effective. Dad wanted me to be able to do his books. He approached John Hammond, the town treasurer, a Chartered Accountant who also taught commercial courses at the high school. Mr. Hammond agreed to give me free tutoring in bookkeeping two afternoons a week after school. I attended classes in only the four new subjects during my extra year at high school. This gave me time to study bookkeeping. I learned Higher Accountancy so quickly that I was given a bookkeeping job in Meaford with Hector Kingston's firm that earned me another $150.00 toward my university expenses. The only drawback was that I missed basketball practice on those days.
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
I entered the second year of "Politics and Law." I excelled scholastically, once again, and shared the William Lyon Mackenzie Scholarship with J.J. Robinette. To earn money I did bookkeeping and taught English to immigrants. I became president of the Menorah Society to which nearly all Jewish students belonged and played both football and hockey for U.C. College. With all this extra curricular activity my marks dropped after first year but I remained one of the top five students.
EMMA AND ABE LEVINE
Emma and Abe Levine eloped in 1924. Abe was an unemployed bookkeeper. Annie sold them her Hanover store. Emma made it a great success. Abe kept the books. They were blessed with one child, their daughter Frances, in 1925.
Emma became very active in Hanover, the driving force in founding a theatre group for whom she both wrote scripts and performed. Emma and Abe eventually retired to Toronto to be close to Fran and Lowell and their two grandchildren, Nancy and Mark Biderman. They opened a dress shop that gave very personalised service to customers. Emma became popular as a model for T.V. commercials and a bit player in movies. Abe accompanied her and eventually was asked to participate in several movie scenes and commercials.
Annie and Harry Bain
Annie and Harry sold their Owen Sound store when their son Alex graduated from high school. They moved back to Toronto so that he could attend university and their daughter Muriel could meet a larger circle of Jewish friends. They created Elizabeth Ann Gowns, manufacturing ladies evening and wedding clothes. Annie's natural sales ability and Harry's manufacturing know-how were a successful combination.
OSGOODE HALL
I entered Osgoode Hall after graduation. Again my marks remained among the top five in my year but I failed to win a scholarship. In Corporate and in Bankruptcy Law I wrote almost perfect papers. My understanding of these areas of law was invaluable later in my practice.
I played on the Osgoode Hall hockey team. I was asked to join a professional team, the Saint Pat's (which later was known as the Toronto Maple Leafs). I considered law to be a preferable vocation and turned the team down. I also played football, tennis and, for relaxation at Hart House, billiards (snooker). There was never a dull moment.
To support myself I did bookkeeping for three loan societies and 25 or 30 businesses, updating their records two or three times a month. I developed my own shorthand for taking notes during lectures. I typed these notes, making three carbon copies, added my own references from books recommended by the lecturers, and sold the extra copies to fellow students. In the summer I became crew manager for door to door sales of electronic merchandise. General Electric produced an iron that they called a "Hotpoint". They promoted with the slogan, "Give the June bride a Hotpoint!" an easily remembered double entendre. I also sold life insurance policies and magazines. When I landed a job managing a bankrupt restaurant there was a big improvement in my standard of living, three meals a day instead of one.
While at Osgoode, I became a member of the Tan Epsilon International Law Fraternity. (At the time of writing his memoirs Sam was the last surviving member of the Lamban Chapter.)
BEBE
I fell deeply in love with Bebe the first time I met her and was determined that she would someday be my wife. We eloped three years later, on September 11, 1927. Bebe was twenty; I was twenty-two. We didn't want our families to have the expense of a wedding and I still had two years of school to complete before I would be a lawyer. We kept our marriage a secret until the Osgoode Hall New Year's Dance. My classmates were monopolising Bebe's attention. I had to announce that we were married in order to get a chance to dance with my own wife.
PHILIP CIGLEN, AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY, APRIL 5,1932
After discharge from the army my brother Philip joined our mother's family in Baltimore and persuaded Belle Stein to marry him. Philip opened and operated a grocery store. Their two sons Morton and Gordon (Gary) were born in Baltimore. The Depression caused his business to fail.
Dad urged Phil to bring his family home to Canada and assigned to him a business operation in Parry Sound. Phil acquired a truck and opened an office on the outskirts of town. He then rented a house near the waterfront and a store on the main street for Belle to open a ladies' dress shop.
Phil moved their furniture into the house and set it up while Belle and the boys visited with their grandparents in Meaford. Phil disappeared on April 5, 1932, the day of Rae and Oscar Newman's wedding.
The wedding took place in Toronto. Belle and the boys came to Toronto on the train with Mama and Dad. They brought all their clothing. Phil planned to take the train from Parry Sound and meet them at the wedding. They would all return together to live in Parry Sound after the festivities. Philip did not arrive for the ceremony. The reception started. Philip still did not appear. Worried, Dad called the house and office in parry Sound. There was no answer. He telephoned everyone he knew in Parry Sound. Nobody had seen him that day. Dad authorised the police to enter the house. Philip was not there. His truck was parked beside the house. The keys were in the ignition.
I accompanied Belle on the first train to Parry Sound. Morton and Gary returned to Meaford with Dad and Mama. The townsfolk in Parry Sound and the local police organised a search party. Belle and I joined it. Later, the R.C.M.P. and the Ontario Provincial Police also joined the search. They made a thorough investigation. They concluded that Philip had never left Parry Sound. A private detective was hired by the family. He, too, made an extensive investigation.
Philip had been living alone in the house. It was only a block away from the harbour dam. A path led from the rear door of the house to the dam. That night there was an invisible coating of ice on the massive boulders along the shore. The harbour was frozen over. It was evident that the path to the dam had been used. He ruled out foul play because there was no evidence of robbery or a break-in.
Because Philip still suffered from migraine headaches, and found that walking relieved them, the investigator concluded that Phil had a migraine attack that afternoon. He theorised that he walked down the path to the rocks, slipped and plunged through the ice. As Philip did not know how to swim and the water was freezing cold he was trapped under the ice and drowned. Every effort to locate his body was unsuccessful. The authorities believed his body was carried away, under the ice, by the strong local current. His body was never found. Belle and other family members hoped that Phil was alive somewhere, perhaps suffering from amnesia. For years, hospitals in Ontario called Belle whenever there was a John Doe case, alive or dead, that resembled Phil's description. Belle followed up every call, travelling to hospitals all over Ontario, only to be disappointed.
In 1947, fifteen years after Phil's disappearance, our hopes were raised by Mort Ciglen's father-in-law. Through his scrap metal business he had come to know the Ciglen family well and had often dealt with Phil. In a movie theatre news feature about South Africa he saw a man who looked like Phil. In great excitement he called my sister Annie. She decided not to raise Belle's hopes again unless Mort and Gary recognised their father. They could not identify the man. Belle was never told of the incident.
As there was no proof of Phil's death, it was seven years before Belle could collect on his life insurance policy. She opened a wool shop which later expanded to become the Ladies' Dress Shop in Meaford. The business was successful. She raised Morton and Gary alone and never remarried. I tried to fill in as a father figure for Morton and Gary, advising them and helping them whenever I could.
PERSISTENCE PAID OFF FOR JAKE CIGLEN
When Mort Ciglen retired from Ontario Hydro an associate presented him with a file of correspondence between Hydro officials and Jake Ciglen that began in August, 1932 and ended in July 1943.
Ontario Hydro and the Ontario Forestry Branch were both using a road across Jake's property at Trout Creek but neither were contributing to the maintenance costs of the road. A less persistent person might have given up on his quest for them to share the costs, but not Jake. In 1943 he finally received cheques from each in the amount of $256.63 which included $6.63 to cover the cost of registering a right-of- way from Jake to Ontario Hydro and what had become The Department of Lands and Forests.
Special thanks to Estelle Ciglen who brought this to our attention.

MY LEGAL CAREER
I was called to the bar on June 4, 1929. The market crashed in November, just five months later, throwing Canada and the world into the most severe economic depression ever experienced. We were expecting our first child. For a lawyer to make a living as a single practitioner was almost impossible. I became a partner with Henry Mortimer Finkle, a senior lawyer who had received the gold medal the year he graduated. Pat was born on March 24, 1930. Ina was born two years later on February 2, 1932.
In 1933, during the depth of the Great Depression, there was plenty of legal work, but the clients were usually broke. I could not earn enough to keep my family. We had two little daughters and Bebe was pregnant with Rhoda. I moved the family to Meaford where I rented a large home for $25.00 per month. The landlord, a partner in one of Meaford's grocery stores, gave me the job of collecting the store's bad debts to earn the rent money. He, and other merchants extended us credit at their stores.
For nearly two years I commuted between Meaford and Toronto. My speciality was corporation law. I studied the resource industries and became a specialist in this field. This brought several clients and I began earning modest fees although I had to work day and night. I moved the family back to Toronto. Within the year I was able to pay off all our debts to the doctor, the hospital and the merchants in Meaford. Eventually, Henry Finkle could not keep pace with my earnings. We dissolved our partnership.
I was invited to join the well-established Luxenberg Levinter firm that later became Factor, Luxenberg, Levinter and Ciglen and finally Levinter, Ciglen, Grossberg and Shapiro. I was honoured with the appointment "Queen's Counsel" in 1955. The partnership was dissolved after the Federal Government alleged that I had "counselled the avoidance of income tax" in 1959.
I was charged. The judge of the first preliminary hearing died of a heart attack the night before he was to hand down his decision. He had informed my counsel that, in his learned opinion, the Crown did not have sufficient grounds to make such a charge.
Another preliminary hearing was held. The result was that I was tried on the charge. I was acquitted. The Crown appealed the Judgement to the Supreme Court of Ontario. This Court reversed the acquittal and sentenced me to a term in prison.
I appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada without success. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court together with another Justice wrote a minority opinion that stated that the Crown had not proven a case against me. I was pleased that the most brilliant Chief Justice of the century, Bora Laskin, believed I was unjustly convicted, but there was no further court in Canada to whom I could appeal. I served eight months in prison.
After leaving the Luxenberg Levinter law firm, I formed a new law firm. Our offices were in the penthouse suite at the then brand new building, 125 Richmond St. W. This partnership included Paul Phillips (brother-in-law to Bebe's sister Rose), Abraham Greenbaum, my son-in-law Jack Gilbert, Harry Cravit and Jack Shayne. These partners stood by me during the many years during which these many trials and appeals took place. I resigned from the law firm following the Supreme Court of Canada's unfavourable decision. The Law Society of Upper Canada disbarred me in 1969. On the suggestion of the solicitor for Revenue Canada, I declared personal bankruptcy.
When I was released from prison I could not return to the practice of law. In spite of these horrendous set-backs, I became a successful Financial and Management Consultant. By the mid eighties, I had repaid the mortgage on our condominium at 15 McMurrich St. and provided for Bebe's future financial security.
Sam Ciglen died of prostate cancer on October 14, 1989. He is remembered with deep affection and respect by all of his family, his friends and business associates.


BEBE'S RECOLLECTIONS


Bebe's recollections include events that she personally remembers and stories she heard from her grandmother and mother. It begins with her life in a small, poor, Russian village, followed by a visit to her rich Zaideh Israel Footeronsky's home in the large city of Kiev, events during the trip to Canada, her family's first few years as immigrants in Toronto, growing up on Palmerston Avenue, her secret marriage to Sam, and raising three small daughters during The Great Depression. World War Two brought prosperity, then a baby sister for teen-age daughters who, by 1953, were all married and poised to begin a new generation.
Memory is like Pandora's Box, once stimulated, more and more past events creep to the mind's surface. Nana Bebe's Childhood, a book I wrote to appeal to children, includes a number of incidents that were told to me after I had completed this manuscript. On the other hand there are many interesting tales in these memoirs that are not in the children's book.






LIFE IN THE UKRAINIAN VILLAGE OF BORJENKA
I was five years old. I stood on my tiptoes to watch for my mother through one of the two small windows in the bedroom. My sister Rose, who was eight, watched through the other window. It was a morning ritual. When we saw her we raced to open the door for her. Two full water pails hung from the ends of a long wood rod that was strapped across her shoulders. Some of the water sloshed out of the pails leaving dark parallel lines across the bare mud. Little spirals of dust billowed behind her feet. She emptied the buckets into the water barrel in the summer kitchen, then returned to the well for more water. She made several trips every morning to get fresh water from the village pump across the square.
It was our only source of water for drinking, cooking, washing and general cleaning. Our house had no taps. We had no sinks and no bathroom. A large wooden tub, that was kept next to the water barrel, was used for washing clothes and for baths. Water was scooped from the barrel with my great grandmother's brass and copper pitcher. (It is one of the few treasures Mama brought with her to Canada and is still in the family, now converted into a lamp base.) Mama added boiling water from the tea kettle until the temperature was comfortable. Carrying water from the village pump was much harder in the winter so Mama made fewer trips to the pump and used the well water only for drinking and cooking. She melted snow for wash water.
We had no flush toilet. We used a "pish tepel", a ceramic potty at night and during bad weather. During the day and in warm weather we used the smelly outhouse that I hated. It was just a little wood shack with a box-like seat with a cut-out hole. The back wall was partly open below the seat. The village pigs would root around in the excrement. I thought that was why Jews wouldn't eat pork! I was afraid to go near the outhouse when the grunting pigs were there.
Mama was a beautiful, tall woman who walked with a long graceful stride. Her auburn hair, twisted into a knob on top of her head, shone bright red in the morning sun. She had never had her hair cut short, nor did she cover her hair as was the custom for Orthodox Jewish women when married. My father called her hair her crown of glory and refused to allow it to be cut for their wedding.
We lived with my widowed grandmother (bubah), Pesha Kazinsky, in a village called Borjenka in the Ukraine. Bubah Pesha was almost as tall as my mother. She too was beautiful with short even features. Her black hair fell to the floor in soft curls when my mother cut it for her once a month. She kept it only about an inch long so that no hair would accidentally show beneath the gathered cotton cap she wore indoors or the kerchief that always covered her hair outdoors. On special occasions, she wore a wig, made from her own maiden hair that had been shorn on her wedding day.
Bubah's home was one side of a double cottage built by her eldest son, my uncle, Maisheh Kazinsky, the carpenter. He and his family occupied the other side. Each family had two rooms, a bedroom in front and a kitchen behind. Both kitchens opened into a shared summer kitchen, an unheated shed that stretched across the back of the little building. We did not have to go outside to visit back and forth because a door joined the two kitchens. The cottage had a steep pitched roof covered in wood shingles of which my uncle was especially proud. Most village houses had straw thatched roofs that were a major fire hazard but his shingles could withstand occasional sparks from the chimney. A wide stoop across the front of the house served as a place to sit outdoors. I enjoyed many quiet hours there with Mama, while she shelled peas into a bowl on her lap and I nibbled them raw from the shells.
Uncle Maisheh had a red beard that was even brighter than my mother's hair. He had a little girl of about my age and several other children with whom I played. My aunt could read and write both Yiddish and Russian. That was quite unusual for a woman in a small village. She taught Ethel to read and write. They loved reading Russian novels together and read them aloud for my mother who could neither read nor write, except for numbers.
Our house was on one side of the village square. Directly opposite, on the other side of the square was a very large church. I could see the onion shaped church domes and their golden crosses through the windows when I lay in bed. Church bells woke me up early every Sunday. I would slip outside to sit on the stoop to watch the farmers tie their wagons to the picket fence surrounding the church. I wanted to see how the beautiful church looked inside. I never did. It was considered blasphemy for a Jewish child to enter a church. I never so much as walked through the gate in the picket fence.
The whole family slept in this one room. I, being the baby of the family, slept in a double bed with Mama. My sisters Ethel and Rose shared anther double bed. My Bubah and my brother Gordon each slept on a single cot. When my two eldest brothers came home on holidays, Jake slept on the cot beside the oven in the kitchen, David slept in Gordon's bed and Gordon slept on the big wooden storage chest. We had no dressers or closets. All our linens, extra blankets and clothing were stored in the big box. A large table with two benches and a chair sat in the centre of the room near the windows. They were used by my Papa for teaching before he went to Canada. Now, a Rabbi who rented the room during the day for teaching Hebrew and the Torah.
From the bedroom we walked into the kitchen. A window and a door leading out to the side of the cottage were on the right-hand wall. A long wood table with eight wood chairs stood near the window. To the left was the cot, a big stone oven and a door into Uncle Maisheh's. The door on the back wall led out to the shed. There were no halls. The walls were white-washed. The floor was packed earth that was covered weekly with clean sand from the shores of the nearby river. The kitchen was the centre of indoor activity until the Rabbi finished teaching his class, then the bedroom became our living-room. We lit coal-oil lamps at night because we had no electricity.
The oven, was used for all indoor cooking and to heat the cottage in the winter. It had two metal doors. The lower one was for the fire. The upper was for cooking. To fry food, mother would put some hot coals from the oven into a brassiere that she set just inside the opened upper door. If the oven was heated in summer the house became unbearably hot, so most meals were cooked out-of-doors. Mama rose before dawn to do any unavoidable baking, hoping that the house would cool down by evening.
Every Friday Mama made a week's supply of bread. During the hot summer months she prepared the dough, formed it into loaves, then took it to the baker to be baked in his big oven. The baker didn't use the oven Friday afternoon because he was preparing to close for the Sabbath, but the oven remained hot for many hours after his last cakes and loaves were removed at noon. Every Thursday night, Mama pounded onions into any left-over loaves of bread. Friday morning the delicious aroma of toasting bread and onions awakened us as she crisped the pounded loaves in the oven. That was my favourite breakfast!
The Friday-night-chicken was selected from our own hen house and taken to the schochet to be blessed, killed and drained. Mama flicked the chicken at the schochet's. If the liver was off colour Mama took it to the Rabbi to determine if the bird had been in bad health, if so, the bird could not be eaten.
After synagogue services Saturday (Shabbat) we lunched on leftovers and salad. Mama usually made a big pot of gefilte fish for the weekend. We sometimes caught sunfish in the river to boil in the fish broth for sweetness. All the fish we ate were caught in the river at the edge of the village. Home-made herring with cottage cheese, sour cream, bread and fresh vegetables was a favourite Shabbat dinner. For desert Mama served fruit and cinnamon rolls or airy sugar-coated "Kichel". Sunday morning Mama bought fresh hot bagels from the bakery.
In the summer kitchen we stored water, wood, coal and dried fruit, threaded on long strings, above vats of home-made sauerkraut. The cold cellar, dug out under the summer kitchen, was a scary dark hole in the ground. To get down into it Mama opened a door in the floor and climbed down a steep ladder. I was afraid to go down but would peer over the edge. Carrots, beets, potatoes, onions, and parsnips from our own vegetable garden were kept cool and moist underground.
I loved to watch as Mama sat on a stool in the summer kitchen, pushing the churn up and down to make butter. She also made cottage cheese and yoghurt from the milk of the cow that was tethered in our yard. She hung balls of cottage cheese in a little cavern behind the oven until they became firm enough to slice.
Mama did laundry and bathed us in the big washtub in the summer kitchen except in winter. Then, because the shed was unheated, we bathed in the kitchen. In midsummer, when heat made the summer kitchen unbearable, we bathed in the river. Mama and Ethel tucked up their skirts and scrubbed the dirt out of the laundry on some stones in a tributary of the Nieper River while Gordon, Rose and I played under the shade of the trees and built sand castles. I loved the beauty of the river and the bright green ribbons of colour formed by the farmer's fields on the opposite shore.
We spread the sheets to dry on the stiff reeds along the shore then Mama and Ethel bathed us and washed our hair in the river. We stripped down to our under pants and knee length cotton undershirts for our dunking. We had no bathing suits. Mama and Ethel took their weekly bath in the Micvah, the Jewish women's bath-house.
The village was very small. It had only a few shops, a synagogue and a Micvah. The pharmacist made and prescribed medicines. There was no doctor. When I was an infant I fell out of my high chair and dislocated my shoulder. Mama and my uncle rushed me by horse and wagon to the hospital in Kiev. I screamed in pain for the entire two hour trip. The doctor had to operate to relocate the shoulder. I still have the scar.
My Papa, Litman Footeronsky, emigrated to Canada when I was just four months old. He planned to get established, then send for the rest of the family. My eldest brothers were apprenticing in Kiev. Jake was learning to paint murals in fine homes. I don't know what trade David was learning.
There was always great excitement when Jake and David returned for Jewish holidays. I remember giggling and laughing as they tossed me in the air. They joined Papa in Canada as soon as they completed their training. I was about four when they left.
Nobody grew grass lawns or flower gardens around their homes. The roads were not paved and there were no sidewalks. The village was snow covered in winter, muddy in the spring and fall and dusty in summer. A very wealthy baron, who owned most of the stores and houses in Borjenka, opened his park-like gardens to the townspeople on Sunday afternoons. He even provided tea for everyone. My sister Ethel, nine years my senior, visited his estate regularly with her girlfriends. It was Ethel's responsibility to look after me when Mama was busy. She adored me and loved to have me tag along.
One day a fine lady stopped to talk to Ethel while we were at the Baron's garden. She commented that I was a beautiful child and asked about the rest of the family. When she learned that my father had gone to Canada leaving mother alone with six children she teasingly asked if she could take me home, "Surely your Mama will be happy to have one child less to feed and care for." she concluded. For months after this incident, I was afraid that Ethel might give me away to the lady. I could bring tears to my eyes just thinking how terrible it would be if I never saw my Mama and family again.
I often played on a long porch-like wooden walk, that fronted a number of stores. Bubah's grocery store and my great uncle's tailor shop were located there. His daughter, Mama's cousin, worked with him as a seamstress. She taught Ethel to sew on a foot operated, treadle sewing machine. Ethel soon became her assistant. Because of this early training, she had no trouble finding a factory job with a dress manufacturer when we arrived in Canada.

BUBAH PESHA KASINSKY
Buba Pesha, was a tall, beautiful woman with short even features. At age fourteen, she married Jacob Kazinsky, then seventeen years old. Young marriages were common then because unmarried men were drafted to serve in the army at seventeen years of age. Married men were not drafted. Most Jewish boys married very young to evade service in the army where no kosher food was available for them to eat.
I was told that my Zaideh (grandfather) Jacob, whom I never knew, had coppery red hair and a flaming red beard that raised eyebrows and roused speculation as to his ancestry among the usually dark Jews of the village. (During his infancy and even until the Communist Revolution in 1918, Pogroms were quite common. Groups of Russian youths, fired up on Vodka, attacked the Jewish sector of towns, setting fires, maiming the men and raping the women.)
Pesha gave birth to only three children, my mother, Faigle, and my uncles, Maisheh and Shaya. Jacob died, in his mid twenties, during The Great Cholera Epidemic. Peshah never remarried. She lived in the village of her birth, near her brother. She earned a living for her three children by running a small grocery store. My Mama had Pesha's even features and Jacob's copper red hair, with eyes and temper to match. She was quick to anger but it vanished as swiftly as it came. She was a loving, caring person.
THE MARRIAGE OF FAIGLE KAZINSKY AND LITMAN FOOTERONSKY
In 1889, parents arranged their children's marriages. At twenty-five years of age, my father, Litman Footeronsky, who lived with his parents in Brazilav, had just completed intensive Talmudic studies. He was still unmarried. At fourteen, my mother, Faigle, was of marriageable age. Litman's mother, Ethel, was a close friend of my grandmother Pesha Kasinsky. Ethel wrote to Pesha suggesting a marriage between their children. They arranged for Litman and his father, Israel, to travel to Borjenka so that Litman and Faigle could meet. Pesha and Israel would work out the marriage arrangements if the meeting went well.
Litman and his father, Israel, arrived a day early than expected. Faigle, who had been hopping fences in pursuit of a runaway goat, dashed into the house with her windblown red hair in disarray and her long skirt tucked up into her belt revealing the full length of her legs. A woman, in those days, would bare not so much as an ankle to a man.
Faigle, an uneducated teen-ager, was tongue-tied, both from embarrassment over her appearance and from being in the presence of this highly educated, soft-spoken, slim, blue-eyed, older man. Litman and Israel stayed for dinner after which the young couple went for an evening walk to get better acquainted. Israel, and Pesha chaperoned a few paces behind them.
Litman loved Faigle at first sight. My grandparents worked out a marriage agreement that required Pesha to supply the linens for the young couple and Israel to supply food and clothing for ten years. Although it was an honour to have an educated man in the family they both knew he would struggle to make a living as a teacher. Litman and Faigle were married six months later when her hand-made linens were ready.
The newlyweds moved to Brazilav where there was ample room at my grandparents' house. My father was the youngest and the last to marry. My grandfather, Israel, was tall and fair. My grandmother, Ethel, was a charming little lady with blue eyes and black hair. My father was also small, with black hair and blue eyes like his mother. From numerous pregnancies that terminated in early miscarriages, Ethel bore only three children.
The tall, fair, eldest son, Maisheh, was in partnership with my grandfather. They imported fine and speciality foods. He had two children when the newlyweds came to town. His blonde sister Brucha had just married their tall, handsome, blue-eyed cousin, Laser Bolasney, who swept her off her feet when he returned from three years of service in the Russian Army. Another sister, Malcah, was actually a cousin. She had been raised as a daughter after her parents died of cholera. Malcah and Brucha were close in age and inseparable. Malcah was married to Mottel Bossin. They had two sons and eventually had nine children.
Bubah Ethel died when Brucha was pregnant with her first child. She named the baby Ethel. Mama was pregnant with her third child. Soon afterwards both Mama and my aunt, Brucha Blasney, gave birth to baby girls who were named Ethel to honour Buba Ethel. Eight years later Maisheh had a second daughter who was also named Ethel.
Father taught and mother cared for their three children, Jake, David, and Ethel, born during their ten years in Brazilav. Although they had no family planning devices, Papa understood and used the rhythm method to space their children about three years apart. He had learned the system from his study of the Talmud. The food import business owned jointly by my Zaideh Israel and his eldest son, Uncle Maishe Footeronsky, supported all three families. Teaching was an underpaid profession and Papa couldn't earn enough to support his family.
THE FOOTERONSKY FAMILIES MOVED OUT OF BRAZILAV
All the Footeronskys left Brazilav at about the same time. Uncle Maisheh who now had four children, and my grandfather moved to Kiev to expand their business. The Bolasneys and the Bossins emigrated to Canada. (Zaideh Israel supplied their passage money.) They settled in Whitby, Ontario.
My parents moved our family to Borjenka to live with my Buba Pesha. She was living alone in one half of the double cottage built by Uncle Maisheh Kasinsky. He and his family lived in the other half. My mother's youngest brother, Uncle Shaya, lived nearer to Kiev. Gordon, Rose and I were born in Borjenka.
Uncle Ben and Aunt Brucha wrote glowing letters about Canada. Compared to life in Brasilav the house Ben rented in Whitby was like a palace. In my cousin Ethel's memoirs she recalls that their house in Whitby had a big wood-burning iron stove, a pantry and a pump for water. There was a living room, two bedrooms, an attic and a basement. All the rooms had wood floors and wood or plaster walls. The yard had three apple trees, a pear tree, a plum tree, a vegetable garden and room for a cow and chickens.
Brucha suggested that the young Jewish community in Whitby needed a teacher to educate their sons for Bar Mitzvah. As Papa was unable to earn a good enough living in Borjenka he accepted Zaideh Israel's offer of passage money to Canada. I was four months old when he moved to Canada.
Even in Whitby, Papa earned only enough to meet his own needs. There were only three other Jewish families there, eight children in all. He taught after their regular school day. Uncle Ben developed a severe cough and was advised by his doctor to leave the tannery and get work out of doors. He feared that otherwise the cough would develop into full blown tuberculosis
The Bolasneys and my Papa moved to Toronto. Uncle Ben bought a horse and wagon and became a vegetable peddler. He drove his wagon up and down the streets, selling produce to housewives from his cart. Papa found a factory job ironing, folding and packaging shirts. My brothers Jake and David joined him in Toronto when Jake completed his apprenticeship to an artist who painted wall and ceiling murals in the homes of wealthy Russians.
Mama took me and Ethel to Kiev see them off. She left Rose and Gordon with her brother in the village. She borrowed good clothing for Ethel and me but nobody among her relatives had suitable clothing to fit Rose or Gordon for a visit to Kiev. We stayed with Zaideh Israel, all of us sleeping in one room on feather comforters on the thick carpet. Papa asked the boys to bring a picture of the family with them to Canada. Zaideh took us to the photographer's Studio. He posed us carefully, Zaideh, Mama and me in front, Ethel, Jake and David behind. He told us to look toward the corner and stay very still. Then he hid his head under a black cloth, draped over a big camera. A flash of light followed by smoke frightened me to tears.
In Toronto, Jake found a good job painting billboards. Dave, at just fourteen, was too old to attend free public school and too young to get a job. He joined the Salvation Army so that he could learn to read and write English. A year later, when I was five, Papa and Jake had saved enough money to send for the rest of our family.
BEBE'S RICH UNCLE IN KIEV
A few months before emigrating to Canada we went to Kiev for medical examinations and to obtain our papers. We stayed with Uncle Maisheh Footeronsky, his wife, two daughters, two sons and Zaideh Israel. Uncle Maisheh had no desire to leave his thriving business for an uncertain future in Canada. He lived in a grand apartment with many balconies overlooking the walled cobblestone courtyard where wagons and even one automobile were parked. In Borjenka, the rich travelled by horse and carriage; in Kiev the wealthy were beginning to own cars. Some areas of San Francisco stir my memories of the streets of Kiev.
Because Jewish children were not permitted to attend Russian schools Maisheh employed a live-in tutor. Their cook, maid and governess also lived in the apartment. There were no spare beds. The servants pushed the furniture against the walls in one room and we slept on feather quilts on the thick carpet.
My aunt was always dressed in lovely outfits, complete with jewellery, even first thing in the morning. The furnishings were very gracious and the rooms contained many beautiful things. There was running water in the kitchen but the toilet was located in the outer hall to serve several apartments. I was fascinated to see the water fill the toilet-bowl when I pulled the chain that hung from the white ceramic tank on the wall above it, but, the room smelled worse than our outhouse I didn't stay in it longer than necessary.
My youngest cousin, another Ethel, was just a little younger than Rose and two years older than me. The three of us played together. My sister Rose and I attended our first movie in Kiev with cousin Ethel and her governess. As the movie scenes changed, I thought that the people disappeared into the wall. A few years later, in a letter from Uncle Maisheh, we learned that little Ethel died tragically during a fire in the same movie theatre, trampled by the panicked audience.
On our return trip to Borjenka we visited Mama's youngest brother, Uncle Shaya Kazinsky. His home was near Kiev but across the river. There was no bridge so we took the ferry boat, a very novel and exciting experience for me. Uncle Shaya was clean shaven with fair hair and light eyes. He did not look like a Jew. All that I can remember about his home is that it was upstairs. Uncle Shaya was a builder of fine homes in Kiev. It was probably through him that my brother Jack was able to apprentice to learn mural painting.
THE FIRE THAT DESTROYED HALF THE VILLAGE
We returned home with our tickets to Canada. They had been purchased for us by my Zaideh. My sister Ethel and my great aunt sewed new clothes for our trip. The night before we were to leave for Canada our house burned down.
Two villagers quarrelled. One of them set the other's house on fire. There was a high wind blowing that quickly spread the flames from one straw thatched roof to the next. Even the solid wood roof shingles, of which my uncle had been so proud, could not save our house from this raging inferno.
Mother awakened us and hastily tied our linens and as many belongings as possible into a sheet. She set me on top of the bundle, across the road in front of the church, told me not to move, then hurried back with Ethel, Rose and Gordon to try and save a few more belongings. When they returned I was gone. They called and looked around the church to no avail. They rushed back to the house thinking I must have gone there searching for them. As they approached, flames shot out of the door and windows. It was impossible to re-enter. They continued to search the streets asking if anyone had seen me. Nobody had. Finally they took the few possessions they had saved to my great uncle's house. It was not in the path of the wind driven fire. All night the family mourned and cried.
In the morning to their surprise and relief a farmer who lived some distance from the village brought me home. The entire village had heard that I had been burned to death in the fire so he had no trouble locating our family. His wife had found me fast asleep on their stoop when she went out to milk the cow. I don't know how I wandered so far away or why.
We stayed on with my great uncle until we had replaced our lost wardrobe. When we left, the entire Jewish community came out to see us off. I felt joyous to be going to Canada to rejoin my beloved older brothers and the father I had never known. I was too young to understand why everyone was weeping. My grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends all knew we would likely never see each other again. These were final good-bye hugs and kisses.
THE TRIP TO CANADA
We climbed aboard the train that would take us all the way to the Baltic Sea to catch the boat to England. As the train sped along a high hillside I thought the peasants in the distant fields below were animated toys. I begged Ethel to stop the train and bring me the dolls. Ethel and Mama roared with laughter at my request, then finally explained.
Crossing to England on the boat I was dreadfully sick. I could eat nothing and I was vomiting worms. When we docked in England I was so weak that mother feared I would die. I was carried from the ship on a cushion. Yet, I remember that before we could go through immigration we were showered and deloused. We enjoyed two weeks in England before the boat to Canada sailed. We stayed in a house that had a yard. I thought that the fish and mashed potatoes we ate in England were the best foods I had ever tasted. Gordon bought a black-skinned banana in the market and tried to eat it with the skin on. One chew, and he spat it out.
Mother and Ethel were very seasick on the crossing to Canada. Gordon, Rose and I felt great. We sometimes sneaked into the first class section. We were well dressed in our new clothes and very attractive children. Passengers bribed us with chocolates and other sweets if we could remember new English words. After meals, we ate all the deserts that other passengers could not finish. We stepped into Canada plump and happy.
THE FATE OF THE FOOTERONSKIS AND KASINSKYS IN RUSSIA
After the Communist Revolution, Uncle Maishe Footeronski wrote that many things had improved. His children were permitted to attend the Russian Gymnasia (university). His two sons were studying engineering and his surviving daughter was in medicine. Maishe Footeronski and his family were still content to remain in Russia. We were unable to contact the families during or after World War Two. We assumed that all the remaining Footeronskis were slaughtered by the advancing German army.
My sister Ethel visited Russia in the eighties. In Kiev, she attempted to locate any Footeronskis that might have survived. However the tour group was so closely guarded and the telephone system so antiquated and inadequate that she was unable to make any contact. She was not permitted to make a side trip to Borjenka where she was born. I suspect that Borjenka became or was absorbed by Chernobyl and that because of the military aspects of the area travel there was forbidden to foreigners.
Ethel remembered how to speak Russian. She found the Russians very friendly, particularly when they found out that she was raised in Russia. They were proud to show off all the improvements that had occurred since the revolution. She, being a staunch believer in Communism all of her life, credited the progress to Communist rule. One day she had a very long conversation with a lady physician who happened to be sitting on the same park bench. In a gesture of friendship the woman removed a ring from her finger and gave it to Ethel as a parting remembrance.
BEBE'S FAMILY IN TORONTO
It was the year 1912 when we arrived in Toronto. We all slept in one room at Aunt Brucha's house on Saint Andrews Street, near Augusta Avenue. I was amazed that all the houses had trees and grass, so different from the mud of Brojenka. Mama was delighted by the gas stove, the sinks, the toilet and most of all the big bath tub with running hot water.
Aunt Brucha had three daughters close to my age, Ethel (Pimm), Anne and Rose (Shulman). Aunt Malcha, who lived nearby also had a daughter my age, Fay (Mendelson). We became close friends and remained so all of our lives.
On our first day in Toronto, Anne appointed herself and her four year old sister Rose to show me the neighbourhood. They picked up a piece of gum someone had spit out on the sidewalk and instructed me to chew it because all Canadian kids chew gum. Anne took us across Spadina Ave. to go to the synagogue. There was a wide sloped band of smooth cement or marble bordering the synagogue steps. We had a wonderful time using it as an improvised slide. Papa came searching for us and gave both of my cousins a smack on the backside for venturing across Spadina. Even then it was a wide, busy, dangerous street to cross.
How did Mama acquire the money? She was an uneducated woman. She could not read or write. She had no trade. Yet, after Papa left, she purchased odds and ends of merchandise that a farmer's wife might need. With a pack on her back, she walked from farm to farm, selling her wares. When she had saved a fair amount of money she made private loans to people she could trust and was repaid with interest. She couldn't read but she could count!
Papa rented a flat on Kensington Ave. Papa told Mama that he had bought enough second-hand furniture to set up a home. Mama told him, "I didn't come all the way to America to live with somebody else's shmutz." She was a feisty lady. She added, "There must be some way that we can buy new furniture without paying for it all at once. I brought some savings with me." They went to Levinter's furniture store on Queen Street. Mama struck a deal and purchased five rooms of furniture, bedding, linens and everything they needed to set up housekeeping. Mama laid out the down payment because Papa had spent all his money on the second-hand furniture.
We moved out of Aunt Brucha's house. Mama and Papa had there own room with a double bed and a cot. I continued to sleep with Mama as I always had. Mama tucked me into the big double bed every night. I couldn't understand why I always woke up in the cot!
Mama was a tall, beautiful, thirty-six-year-old redhead. When our landlord came to collect the rent he was very attracted to her. He tried to make sexual advances. Because of this, she kept me in the house on the day she expected him to collect the rent. She did not want to be alone in the house when he arrived. He offered me pennies and suggested that I go to the corner store to buy some candy. Mother winked at me. I knew why I was home. I refused his bribes. We didn't live there very long, partly because of the landlord's advances and partly because Mama found a bigger apartment on Dundas St.
Later we rented a house on Augusta near Grange Ave. Gordon, Rose and I went to Ryerson Public school. Ethel, who was fourteen, was too old for free public school. She had been taught to read and write Yiddish and Russian by our aunt in Russia. She learned English from a boy named Saul, the son of a woman who had become Mama's friend. Not only did he teach Ethel, he also dated her. Often they took me along with them to movies.
One day, Mama took me with her to visit her friend. Saul was home and offered to show me some pictures in his room. He sat me on his lap. As he showed me pictures in an album he slipped his hand into my underpants. I was embarrassed and slid off his knee and ran back to Mama. She asked, "Why are you running away from Saul? He's always so good to you!" I was just five. I didn't know what to say so I just held onto Mama. I didn't know it was a bad thing he had done. I just thought it was a dirty thing for him to do. I didn't want anyone touching my privates! Mama never questioned further. I didn't tell Ethel either.
At school. I was determined that nobody should ever call me a Greenie. The Canadian born kids would taunt us by chanting,
"Greenhorn, popcorn,
Five cents a piece,
July, July,
Go to hell and die!"
It was the last line that really scared me. I didn't want to die. I listened very carefully to my teacher. I was the only one in my family who had no accent and the only one to receive a full elementary school education.
Neither of my parents ever became fluent in English. Most of our neighbours and shopkeepers were immigrant Jews. They had little need for English in their daily lives.
Mama also loved the Jewish Theatre. Papa was not interested. She took me to see all the productions. After the show Papa met us to walk us home.

GREENHORNS
Mama asked me to come home extra early from school whenever the coal delivery was expected. She needed me to explain to the driver where to put the coal. We used two different kinds of coal. The small coal was for the basement furnace, the course for the stove in the hall from which pipes extended to heat the upper floors.
One day, I forgot that I was supposed to come straight home from school. When I arrived, the coal had already been delivered. I asked Mama how she managed to tell the driver where to put each size. She told me what she said to him. I laughed and laughed, speculating on what the English speaking driver must have thought when she told him, "Come, I vise you vee to shit the groise and vee to shit the kleine." Translated, this mixture of broken English and Yiddish meant, "Come, I show you where to pour the big and where to pour the little."
Unfortunately, because Papa never spoke English, he could not communicate with my own children who never learned Yiddish. If Sam had spoken Yiddish well we would have used the language at home. Our girls would have learned from hearing it spoken. He had a Litvak accent and many of the few words he did know were different than those spoken by my Ukrainian Jewish family. If Mama had not died before Sam and I were married she would probably have taught them Yiddish. Papa didn't have the knack of playing with toddlers.
Although Papa was well educated, he never taught Mama to read or write Yiddish. Years after she died I asked him why. "She didn't need it," he replied. "I enjoyed reading to her."
Every night we sat in the kitchen, Papa reading the newspaper aloud, Mama listening, me between them. I was particularly attentive when he read the serialised romance novel. The stories were always about the tragic romance of a beautiful, young immigrant girl. One typical story had a heroine, newly arrived from Russia, without any family. She finds work in a dress factory. The owner befriends her. He falls in love with her. She is fond of him and grateful for his kindness, but he is considerably older than her. She confides to him the story of her past. He realises that he is actually her father. He had emigrated to America ahead of his wife and infant daughter. By some quirk of fate he lost contact with his family. His love becomes that of a father for his lost daughter and all is well.
Mama also loved the Jewish Theatre. Papa was not interested. She took me to see all the productions. After the show Papa met us to walk us home.
OUR FIRST PASSOVER
During our first celebration of Passover in Canada, some non Jewish boys almost spoiled this special holiday by throwing horse manure through our open window. My brothers ran out, caught them and beat them up. They were so impressed by this that they apologised and became my brother David's closest friends. They got David a good job in a shoe factory.
EARNING A LIVING
Mama wanted the family to go into the retail grocery business but my father was indignant, "You want me to wait on Yentas (gossips)?" he said.
He and my brother David had jobs in a clothing factory. Papa was able to get Ethel work there too. A very pretty but plump girl by the name of Bessie became Ethel's close friend at the factory. She brought her home one day and my brother Jake fell in love with her. Jake worked as a billboard painter for a large advertising company. David had trouble finding a steady job. Gordon, Rose and I attended school until we were old enough to work. then Gordon worked in the garment industry sewing buttonholes.
GORDON'S PROBLEM WITH HIS NON-JEWISH APPEARANCE
After school Gordon sold papers on the street and in hotel bars. A "happy" bar customer offered him some non kosher food. Gordon refused. He explained that he was Jewish. The customer would not believe that this short featured, blue eyed boy could possibly be Jewish. He forced Gordon to reveal his circumcision to prove it.
The next day, the bar customer was there again. When he saw Gordon he asked the man on the next stool if he thought Gordon was Jewish. The new customer said he thought not. He cajoled him into a bet. Gordon was again forced to pull down his pants so that the "shikker" could win the bet. That was the last time Gordon sold papers in that bar.
Gordon retained his short featured good looks. As a teenager he was sought after by all the girls. At nineteen a severe bout of Spanish flu changed his life. All of his hair fell out and never grew back. He was so embarrassed about his baldness that he stopped dating girls. He lived in the house on Palmerston for his entire life depending upon my sister Rose to cook his meals and do his laundry. He loved children and it was a pity that he never had the joy of marriage and his own family.
OLD WORLD MEDICINE
At age six I had a very near brush with death. I was playing dress-up with some friends outside. A little boy found some rusted corset stays among the old clothes. He hit me with one several times until it scratched my skin. The scratch led to blood poisoning. Those were the days before the development of anti-tetanus serums and antibiotic drugs.
Boils erupted under my arms. I developed a high fever. I couldn't eat. I grew so weak and listless that Mama borrowed a baby carriage to take me to the hospital for treatments. The boils had to be lanced and drained nearly every day.
One day she discussed my illness with a neighbour who had been a chemist in Europe. He suggested that she apply poultices of warm castor oil to the boils, changing them every half hour. She stayed up all that night treating me. By morning the pus was literally pouring out. I was scheduled for surgery again that afternoon. When the doctor examined me he said it wouldn't be necessary. I was cured. Mama's English was too limited to explain to him how the cure had come about.
THE FAMILY NAME CHANGED FROM FOOTERONSKY TO LITMAN
David was my favourite brother, always full of fun. David found it hard to settle down to the mundane reality of earning a living in a dull factory job. One day he took some gold coins my mother had saved and ran off with some chums to see the United States of America. They soon ran out of money and were caught and arrested for riding in a box-car on a train. The American authorities were going to deport him back to Russia. Papa immediately applied for Canadian citizenship so that David could be sent home to Canada. Litman was translated to Louis by the immigration officers. The name on Papa's passport was Louis Footeronsky.
Jake, David and Gordon decided that Footeronsky was too long a name and took my father's first name, Litman, as a surname. Papa refused to change his name. Ethel, Rose and I remained Footeronsky because it was assumed that we would all marry and change our names anyway.
The difference in names between brothers and sisters was confusing. We all became Litman's in usage although not officially. Mother became known as Mrs. Litman too. Papa was always called Mr. Footeronsky. My wedding certificate shows that Bebe Footeronsky married Samuel Ciglen.
WORLD WAR 1: DAVID JOINED THE ARMY
World War 1 began in 1914 and ended in 1918. When David's friends turned 18 they decided to join the army to see the world. They convinced him to do the same. He lied about his age (he was still seventeen) and became a soldier. Before their unit was shipped overseas to fight, David purchased life insurance. He assured Mama that no bullet would ever find him, but if it did, she was to use his life insurance money to buy a house.
A special delivery letter and a small parcel arrived one day. I was the only one home. The letter said David was killed in action. The parcel contained his medals and personal belongings. I didn't tell Papa or Mama because I didn't want Mama to be more unhappy. I couldn't bear to see her cry. I was just nine years old. I had often arrived home from school early to discover Mama sitting alone in the kitchen crying. I didn't want her to be more upset so I threw both the letter and the parcel in the garbage. They didn't know for months that David was killed in action. Only when a letter came to Papa from the government, telling him he was entitled to David's insurance, did he discover that David was dead. I told him about the first letter. This was the only time he ever raised his voice to me. "You foolish child!" he shouted, "How could you do such a thing?"
THE HOUSE ON PALMERSTON AVE.
Papa used the money from David's insurance policy to buy a house on Palmerston Ave. By this time my brother Jake was married to Bessie and my sister Ethel was married to Abe Temkin. The married children returned to the fold paying room and board.
Jake and Bessie moved into the two-room flat on the second floor. Ethel and Abe had a bedroom. Gordon and his boyfriend, Max, who had no parents, shared another bedroom. Max became like family. He was raised with us. Rose and I shared a bedroom up on the third floor. Everyone shared the main kitchen, living-room, dining-room and the bathroom, on the second floor. There was an extra toilet and sink in the basement.
One of the attic bedrooms was very large. It had a bed in every corner. If someone was having hard times my Mama would let them sleep up there, without paying rent, until they got on their feet. In those days, if distant relatives arrived from Europe, you opened your house to them. They slept on the floor if you did not have enough beds. You shared your food with them and helped them in all ways until they found jobs.
HAND-ME-DOWNS
To save money Mama made most of our dresses. She bought bolt ends of fabric on sale. One such bargain was a cotton fabric with large black polka dots on white. From it she made dresses for herself, Ethel, Bessie and her baby Esther. I thought they all looked awful in the big black polka dots and never in my life did I ever wear polka dots.
Mama often made dresses for Rose and me from the same fabric. A year after I had outgrown a dress I was given an identical hand-me-down that had been made for Rose. One day, when I was nine, I saw two dresses that Rose had outgrown hanging on the clothes line. I knew they were destined for me. I hated those two dresses and I hated always wearing hand-me-downs. I snatched them off the line and gave them away to a poor friend at school who said they would be perfect for her sister.
Mama told her sisters-in-law, our neighbours and the owner of the grocery store and the butcher's wife about the strange theft from her clothesline. I spotted my friend's sister wearing one of the dresses in the school yard one warm spring day. I looked for Rose and took her to a far corner of the yard so that she wouldn't recognise the "stolen" dress. I lived in fear that my "theft" would be discovered. When Rose inevitably did see the girl wearing one of the dresses, she remarked to me that it was the same fabric as we had worn two years ago, but never guessed that it was her own old dress!

BABY-SITTING
My friend Charlotte and I loved to baby-sit for Hannah and Harry. It was a great place to "play house" with real live babies. One day, after the two infants were tucked into bed for their naps, Charlotte and I were sitting in their parents bedroom wondering what game to play next. I picked up and opened an unusual box and discovered it was full of pale yellow balloons. I showed it to Charlotte. We decided that Hannah and harry really spoiled their children to buy so many balloons at once, and it was not even a birthday! We tried to blow up the balloons but they wouldn't stretch. I said, "They look like cow's tits." We decided to play farm. We blew up five and tied them to a laundry line in the bathroom. Hannah was the first to discover us when they arrive home. She asked what we were doing. We told her we were playing cow. She roared with laughter and called, "Harry, Harry, you must come upstairs and see the cow." Hannah was laughing so hard she was holding her sides. Harry's deep laugh joined in. They sent us home without attempting to explain the special balloons. They moved soon afterwards. Years later I met Hannah at a wedding. She asked, "Do you still think French Safes are cow's tits?"
JAKE AND BESSIE
When Jake and Bessie had their first child, Esther, they decided that they wanted a home of their own. They bought a house on Grace Street. Jake turned each of the mahogany panels in the hall and dining room into translucent portraits of ladies emerging from the grain pattern of the wood. Above the high panels in the dining room he created rural scenery.
Mama and Papa walked to Jake's every night to see their granddaughter. Mama never walked with my father during the daytime. She felt awkward because she was nearly a head taller than him. When they married they were about the same height, but she was not fully grown. She said she grew inches with every child. She was about 5'8" or 5'9". He was not more than 5'1" tall. A tall, stout neighbour, much bigger than Mama, walked past our house with her little husband. Mama asked me, "Do I look as funny walking with your Papa as she does when walking with her husband?" Papa didn't mind Mama's height but she did mind that he was shorter than she was. I never thought of Papa as short except when he was walking beside Mama.
Bessie's second child was a retarded son, Mottel. I loved him dearly and succeeded in teaching him to walk when he was four years old. When another baby boy, Ephraim, was born eleven years later, Bessie was unable to cope with both the new baby and her big retarded child. Mottel was sent to a special institution for retarded children. He died from pneumonia a year later.
Esther Litman married Ben Greenglass. Bessie said, "Why pay rent to strangers?" They moved into the third floor flat of the Grace Street house. Ben worked on the trains selling sandwiches, cigarettes, etc. to the passengers. Esther and Ben raised their two daughters, Phyllis and Janet there. As they both worked, they needed Bessie.
Jake developed an incapacitating hernia after heroically reaching out to save his fellow mural painter when he slipped from their platform on a billboard they were painting, six stories above the corner of Yonge and Bloor St. The day after the hernia was surgically repaired he developed a blood clot that caused heart failure. Freddie was just nine years old. Bessie was grateful that Esther and Ben Greenglass, and their daughters, Phyllis and Janet lived upstairs. The families remained together in the house on Grace Street until after Bessie's heart gave out many years later. Esther and Ben moved their family to the suburbs. Just when life seemed to be improving Ben became blind and Esther had to work to support the family.
Freddie Litman is married to Yvonne. They have two daughters, one of whom was brain damaged due to oxygen deprivation during her delivery. Esther's daughter Phyllis is married to Lawrence Caplan. They have a daughter and a son. Janet is married to Jerry Kosky.
ETHEL AND ABE TEMKIN
Ethel and Abe stayed on at Palmerston Ave. even after their son Laible was born. Abe was a very bright man, very well read. His library went to a University in California after his death. When Abe caught me reading cheap gazettes he said, "Bebe, what are you reading that trash for?" He gave me reading lists of good books that I took out at the Public Library and it was through Abe that I educated myself in good literature. When Rose married Jack Phillips, they too lived at the house.
Ethel was unhappy with Abe because he was always at meetings, a fervent communist. Ethel and Abe separated after my mother died of cancer. Abe went to New York. He became indispensable to the Communist Party there. Eventually he remarried and moved to California. I think if he had stayed in Toronto they would have made up. Ethel and Lable lived on in the house on Palmerston in the little flat. Rose became a second mother to him as Ethel was working full time.
Russia was not a good place for the Jews. The young Russian Jews, who left before the revolution, thought Communism would create Utopia. All people would be treated alike. There would be no institutions of religion, no religious discrimination or persecution. Ethel was a staunch supporter of the communist ideal all her life. She felt the institutions of religion use people. Even as she was dying, she wanted nothing to do with the synagogue. There were no prayers read at her funeral.
Lable and Hilda Temkin have three sons. Mitchell and his wife Sara Weber adopted a daughter from Guatemala. Stephen and Bridget Bradie have no children so far. Robert is unmarried.
ROSE AND JACK PHILLIPS
Rose and Jack had two sons, David and Freddie. David had three children with his first wife, Fay. David remarried, but died a few years later from lung cancer at age forty nine. Fay is happily remarried. Their daughters, Leslie and Darlene, are married to two brothers, Alan and Neil Carson. Each family has several children. Their son, Billy Phillips, and his wife Marianne also have several children. Fred married Dorothy Caspari. They had two sons and one daughter. They divorced and Fred remarried. He is currently divorced again.
MY FIRST JOBS
After I graduated from public school, that in those days included grade eight, I took a summer course at business college to learn typing. A new law requiring children to remain in school until age sixteen had been passed but would not come into effect until fall. If I was already working the law would not apply to me. My parents thought Public School was sufficient education for a girl and the family needed the extra income that I could earn as a secretary. I was the only one in my family to get even a full public school education. My sister Ethel, being past public school age when we came to Canada, had a private tutor after work to teach her to read and write English.
My brother Jake had a friend who opened a millinery factory. He hired me as secretary. My job entailed typing an occasional letter, preparing cheques and answering the telephone. There was so little work for me to do that I was bored. I thought decorating hats looked like great fun and asked my boss if I could assist the girls in the back when I was not busy. I sat close to the office door so that I could hear the telephone. It was soon apparent to the boss that I had a special talent for applying hat trimmings. He hired a book-keeper to take my place in the office and I became full time in the factory.
After some months there I saw an advertisement for a trimmer, offering a higher wage, in a very exclusive establishment that specialised in beautiful hand-made hats. I applied as an experienced trimmer. I was unaware that trimmers had to shape the hats as well as sew on ribbons and flowers. Fearing that he would think me a liar when he discovered I couldn't do the whole job, I told my new employer that I had been offered a job elsewhere for $20.00 a week, $4.00 more than he was paying. I expected he would tell me to take the other job. I would be spared the embarrassment of being called a liar. To my surprise he matched the fictitious wage offer making my pay $2.00 higher than that of my supervisors. I stayed and taught myself how to shape hats by observing the other employees. Nobody realised that I was not fully qualified. I loved millinery work.
ALL FAMILY INCOME WAS SHARED
On pay-day we each turned all of our wages over to Mama. She gave us back enough for carfare and necessities. She pooled our money for upkeep of the house, food and clothing. We gave according to our ability to earn and received according to our need.
We all shared in the housework. There was a sexist division of labour which to me seemed unfair although I never said so. Mother took great pride in the wood floors in the house on Palmerston Avenue. Rose and I, on our hands and knees, stripped and applied fresh wax to them before every Jewish holiday. While we girls were scrubbing floors or ironing Gordon's shirts, he lay out in the sun enjoying the best part of the day. This I privately resented. Gordon polished the floors, rhythmically pushing the polisher back and forth until the wood glowed. I thought his job was great fun. Mama laid down the law. We obeyed. There were no quarrels between us over the division of labour. We were a close, caring family and enjoyed a lot of laughs together.
HOW BEBE MET SAM
My best friend was celebrating her eighteenth birthday. Each of her girlfriends brought an escort to the party. I invited a tall, very handsome boy. He had to work late and was therefor meeting me at the party. Peggy Caplan had invited Sam Ciglen, whom I had never met. He introduced himself and wouldn't leave my side for the rest of the evening. Even after my date arrived Sam continued to monopolise me. Sam escorted me home. From that evening on, he was constantly visiting our house. My mother thought he was wonderful. I thought he was nice, but I was very "taken" with Lou Soles because he was such a fabulous dancer.
One evening, when I had a date with Lou Soles, Sam arrived at our house at 6:00 p.m. Mother invited him to stay for dinner. I broke my date, telling Lou that Lil had taken sick and I had to work late at the hat shop in her place. Lou decided to surprise me and take me out for ice-cream after I finished work. He arrived at the shop at 10:00 p.m. Lil was there, I was not. That was the last time he asked me out.
I was very fond of Sam but he still had five years of schooling ahead of him. We had decided that we would both date others. I did but Sam didn't. After the incident with Lou Soles I gave up and accepted Sam's love and his fraternity pin.
BEBE WAS NINETEEN WHEN HER MOTHER DIED
Despite early symptoms it was a long time before mother was diagnosed as having uterine cancer. By then there was no cure. Father made her breakfast in bed before leaving for work. Usually he cooked cream of wheat, oatmeal or kasha making a large pot for the whole family. My mother died of cancer in October 11 when she was forty eight and I was nineteen. After mother died, Ethel and I took on the role of cleaning and cooking for the family.
Mother kept a strictly Kosher home. Some time after her death we told my father we wanted to eat bacon at home. He said he didn't mind our using bacon but we had to buy a separate pan for frying it. Except for the bacon we continued to keep Kosher. He himself would not eat it. We said he should taste it. He replied, "I'm sure it's good but I've lived my whole life without it and I can still go on without it. But you're a different generation and if that is what you wish it's okay."
Father was very knowledgeable about food from his years of studying the Talmud. He always used olive oil on salads because he said it was the oil that is best for health. After retirement he went to the synagogue every day to argue Talmud. When we questioned him about this religious fervour he said, "Where else can I find my contemporaries?"
Russian Jews were typically less strict about Orthodox customs than other European Jews. One Saturday afternoon, Papa sat smoking under the plum tree in the yard. A friend came to visit. He said to Papa, "You attend synagogue everyday. I assume you are a very religious man. Why, then, do you smoke on the Sabbath?" Papa replied in Yiddish with a saying that translated means, "It's for a fool to ask and a wise man to understand."
Some time after my mother died we suggested to my father that he consider remarrying. "There were many nice widows available. You might enjoy their companionship." He replied, "If you've lived with beauty you don't settle for less."
SEPTEMBER 11, 1927: SAM & BEBE'S ELOPEMENT
When I first met Sam's parents they told me that they were very concerned that Sam was monopolising my time because he still had years of schooling ahead of him and couldn't possibly consider marriage for a long time. (If he were to marry before completing law he would need a rich man's daughter whose family could afford to support a young couple.)
By the summer of 1927, Sam and I had been going together for about three years. He didn't make enough money that year to pay both his tuition fees and room and board. Before that summer, Sam had a room in the home of his sister Emma's mother-in-law, on Beverley Street. Mrs. Levine decided to sell her house and move into a bungalow with her daughter. Sam then rented the extra bedroom at Jack Philips' parent's house.
In August, Rose and Jack got married. They needed a private bedroom. They had no money to rent a flat. Jack had been sharing a bedroom with his younger brother. Rose shared a bedroom with me. The only option was the room rented to Sam. Again he was without lodging.
As Ethel and Lable were at Camp for the summer, their rooms were vacant. Dad moved into our house until Ethel came back. Actually he didn't sleep in Ethel's bedroom at all; he slept in mine because I was afraid to sleep alone.
After Rose got married, I had a bedroom of my own for the first time in my life but I was afraid to sleep alone. When Rose and I shared the room she slept in the double bed and a was supposed to sleep in the single bed. It was near the door and I was afraid that somebody would open the door and get me, so I slept with Rose in the double bed. If Rose and I had a fight she made me sleep in my own bed. As soon as she fell asleep, I dashed to her bed, slid in and curled up to her fast, before that imaginary something in the hall could reach me.
Note: Bebe has retained this fear. Speaking of the present she said, "I will never get over the fact that I am living in this place by myself, that I turn off the lights at night and go to sleep. I never thought I could do it. The other night I made something to bring for dinner at Phyllis's. As usual the kitchen was a shambles by the time I was through cooking but I was exhausted and took a nap. When I got home at 11:00 o'clock I cleaned up the kitchen. Martha (the cleaning lady) was coming in the morning and I didn't want her to see this mess. I was afraid she would take one look, turn around and walk out. Even if Sam was in his study, when he was alive, I was afraid to be alone in the kitchen late at night because it was next to the entrance door. "
Editorial note: All good Jewish mothers clean up before the cleaning lady arrives. Martha, a long-time loyal employee would never have walked out!
Gordon knew we were sleeping together but thought nothing of it. He figured we were just modern kids ... it pays to try before you buy! When Ethel and Lable returned from camp she and I decided that Sam would pay an extra four dollars a week toward room and board. My father didn't know. Papa shared an attic room with Gordon since Mama's death. He would never have walked into my room. It was considered improper for a man to see anyone other than his wife in a state of undress. He thought that Dad slept downstairs on the couch. Dad ate at our house, but Papa considered that natural since we were going together and his family were out of town.
When my mother's aunt, Malcah Bossin, told my father that it wasn't right for Sam to be staying at our house, we decided that we would get married for the sake of propriety. However, we would not tell the family or our friends because we did not want Papa to feel obliged to make another wedding party. Sam's sister Emma had set a precedent when she eloped with Abe Levine three years earlier. I was twenty years old. Sam was twenty-two.
OUR WEDDING
After Dad paid his Osgoode Hall fees he had just enough money left to pay a Rabbi. We called a Rabbi down the street and asked him to have the necessary witnesses. The Rabbi asked if I was pregnant. He couldn't understand why we would marry secretly. We explained that it was a matter of finances. His wife placed a white scarf over my head. Two neighbours were called in as witnesses and we were married. I wore a new dress for the occasion.
THE WEDDING SUPPER
We were invited to join Gert for supper to see her new apartment. She didn't have her furniture yet. There were only two chairs in the kitchen. One of us sat on the radiator, the other two on the chairs. Gert served us borscht, blintzes and fish for supper. We couldn't stop giggling wondering what she would do if she knew we had just been married that afternoon.
THE SECRET IS TOLD
Sam's mother was coming to town in January. We wanted her to be the first to know we were married and to tell her in person. We decided that after we told her we would tell the rest of the family and friends. Once we decided to tell, Sam could not contain himself. At a dance sponsored by the Balfour Club, of which Sam was a member, he confessed that we were married when a young man paid too much attention to me.
MARRIED LIFE
Although we sometimes got a little careless about protection it was nearly two years before I became pregnant with Pat. After Sam was "Called to the Bar" in 1929, I began to worry that I was infertile. I adored babies and wanted to start a family. I saw a doctor who told me that my womb was tipped and made some suggestions. I became pregnant the following month. Within a few weeks I had such severe nausea that I couldn't tolerate the smell of food being cooked. I had been cooking for the whole family since Rose married but could not carry on. We decided it was time to have a place of our own. We moved into a brand new apartment building, "The Montclair Apartments", on Bathurst St. just north of St. Clair.
Sam collected unpaid bills for the landlord and his fee was applied to the rent. In spite of the reduction, when he came by to collect, I often lied and said Sam was out because we didn't have enough money to pay the balance.
The apartment had one bedroom, a kitchen, a living-room and our greatest joy, a bathroom that we didn't have to share. Palmerston had only one bathroom for the entire family. (The only day I enjoyed the luxury of a tub bath on Palmerston was Saturday. After scrubbing floors, soaking the bedsprings in boiling water, then wiping them with coal oil to prevent lice, cleaning the entire house and doing laundry, Ethel and I hogged the bathroom for an hour. We soaped and rinsed with a hand shower, then filled the deep tub and soaked together lying head to foot in the hot water.)
The kitchen had cupboards for dishes, a modern new Moffat electric stove and refrigerator. (On Palmerston I cooked on a hot coal-burning stove and a three-burner gas range that sat on a counter. A large chunk of ice, cut from lake Ontario in winter and stored in hay so it wouldn't melt in summer, was delivered to our ice box once a week.) There was room for a table and four chairs.

Sam's Dad took us to a furniture factory owned by a friend who was willing to accept payment "a dollar down and a dollar when you catch me." We bought our living room furniture there. My brothers bought us an oriental style rug. Gert and Mike bought us four place settings of good china. Rose and Jack contributed the pots and pans. They all paid for the gifts they had given us on monthly payment plans.
The living room had a built-in Murphy bed for guests. It dropped down from a wall closet. As soon as we were settled, Jake Ciglen came to town on business and stayed over with us. In the middle of the night we were awakened by a loud cry from him, "Oy gevald!" (Oh My God!!) We rushed into the living room. The bed was folded up into the wall with Sam's dad squeezed helplessly, upside-down against the wall. For the balance of the night Sam and hid dad slept in the bedroom and I curled up on the couch.
PARENTHOOD
Our first daughter, whom we named Faigle Pesha after my mother and my grandmother, was born March 24, 1930. Rose and Jack were living in a little flat on Grace Street. Rose gave birth to their first child early that summer. When her breasts became ulcerated I fed both babies. Consequently, her son David always held a special place in my heart.
The house on Grace Street, where Rose and Jack rented a little flat caught fire. All of their possessions were destroyed. Rose believed that their landlady had set the fire to collect insurance. Jack and Rose had no insurance. They moved back to Palmerston, into the room we had once shared. Rose and Jack raised their two sons David and Freddie on Palmerston with their loving extended family, Papa, Gordon, Ethel and their cousin Laible.
After I stopped nursing Pat, your Uncle Mike recommended something for birth control. He believed in it because he and Gert had been using it since they got married. The Depression had deepened and we couldn't really afford more children then. We used it, but I became pregnant with Ina instantly. Aunt Gert never did conceive, probably because she was bolemic. They adopted a baby girl, Marilyn, some years later.
Someone recommended something equally ineffective after Ina was weaned. I became pregnant with Rhoda. I gave birth to three children during the worst four years of the depression.
MERTON STREET AND THE DAY WE NEARLY SUFFOCATED
While I was pregnant with Ina, we moved to Merton St. Our friends, Sid and Rosabel Druckman, cousins of Mike Miller, were also expecting a baby. We decided to rent the upper and lower of a brand new duplex, at the north end of the city, on Merton Ave. The Druckmans took the lower; we took the upper.
We all were nearly suffocated there by coal gas fumes from the furnace. Ina was only three weeks old. I was nursing her. Pat was outside in the playpen. Rosabel's sister dashed upstairs for help. Rosabel had telephoned her to come and baby-sit because she had a terrible headache. When she arrived, she found Rosabel unconscious on the stairs.
I realised that it might be a furnace problem and called your Dad at the office. He arranged for the police to escort him to get home fast from downtown. The police called the fire department. They arrived about the same time. It took the firemen a long time to revive Rosabel. We were afraid she was dead.
After this near tragedy, the Druckman's moved away. Much as we enjoyed their companionship we were glad to see them go because Rosabel always came up to our place for breakfast and lunch and our budget was already stretched to its limit.
A PRENATAL GOLF LESSON
During the summer of 1931, Sam decided that we would take up the game of golf. Sam had been one of the top hockey players on the University of Toronto team. (He turned down an offer to play professional hockey with the team that became the Toronto Maple Leafs.) Perceiving that there was some similarity in the handling of a hockey stick and a golf club Sam took on the role of teaching me. I received a resounding whack in my slightly distended belly when I watched too close as he demonstrated the golf swing. I became a respectably proficient and most enthusiastic lifelong golfer. Ina, having had the rudiments of the game knocked into her at such a crucial time in her development, became one of the top lady golfers at our club until she decided, in 1972, to devote her time (even in the summer!) to the creation of paintings instead of score cards.
OUR FIRST CAR
Dad always expected to make good money, even when times were bad. Dave Ciglen bought a car to do door to door selling. After several months, he had no success as a salesman and couldn't meet his car payments. He had borrowed the money for the down payment from Emma and couldn't repay her either.
Sam took the car and the responsibility for the payments. The car was involved in a collision the night before Ina was born. Fortunately it was not severely damaged and Sam had insurance to cover the cost. We really couldn't afford the car. Sam sold it to someone in exchange for a mortgage and signed the mortgage over to Emma. She eventually retrieved the full amount she had loaned Dave when the mortgage matured.
THE CAR ACCIDENT
Early on the slippery evening of February 1st, a car skidded through a stop sign and smashed into our car. Sam was driving. I was beside him, big with a child that was already several days overdue by my doctor's calculations. Dad saw the car skidding, told me to duck, then swerved so that the car would hit us in the rear rather than crash into the door beside me. We sustained no apparent injuries, but, as a child in the other car suffered a severe gash on the forehead, we all went off to the Toronto General Hospital. The gash was stitched. The doctor suggested that I remain in the hospital for observation because of my advanced pregnancy.
Ina's birth, twenty-four hours later, was normal except that I experienced no labour pains. As she was my second child I assumed that only the first birth is difficult. The birth of Rhoda, twenty-one months later, disproved my theory. Then, looking back, I concluded that a religious stranger, doing a mitzvah (good deed), had cast a spell on me. He stopped by my hospital bed to wish me well. His parting words were, "You will have this baby as easily as a chicken lays an egg." I did!


MEAFORD
By the time I became pregnant with Rhoda, the Depression was so bad that Sam couldn't support us. Meaford's lawyer, Mr. Wilson was retiring and offered Dad his practice. No sooner had we made the move than Dad constantly had work in Toronto. He came up only on weekends.
During the week he sometimes slept on the living room couch on Palmerston and at other times stayed overnight at the steam bath. He still was not earning enough money for us to live on. We owed money to every business in town; the grocer, the drugstore, the landlord and the utility companies. I was embarrassed to walk down the street. We borrowed money from Oscar to pay the doctor when Rhoda was born.
In spite of having so little money we had help in the house. Local farm girls were happy to work for room and board to relieve the financial strain on their parents. They were grateful for a small allowance. Kay Rid (whose mother made baked goods daily for the Meaford Bakery) was a wonderful mother's helper. The children loved her. When all three girls came down with whooping cough one summer, and were quarantined for six weeks, Kay's mother offered to take care of them for two weeks. It was a great break for the girls and me. They called her Grandma Rid and spent most of their time playing with leftover dough.
I had time to enjoy sports and afternoon social life. I learned to play golf on the nine-hole course near Meaford. I played badminton. I belonged to a knitting club. As I was the wife of a professional I was invited to be a hostess and hold open house once a month for the ladies of the town. As we could not afford to supply the refreshments I found an excuse not to participate. Had I been Christian I might have been very happy there, but, being Jewish I always felt that I was considered different. People were very nice to me but felt sorry for me because I couldn't go to Church.
Sundays were very difficult for Pat. Her playmates across the road dressed up in their Sunday best and traipsed happily off to Church and Sunday school. How could I explain to this not-quite-four-year-old child why she couldn't go too? I wanted to raise my children among other Jewish children.
Sam and his family were very well liked in town. Their house was always open to their friends. The piano at the Ciglen's was often the focal point for the young people to gather while Emma played and led the singsongs. By the time we moved to Meaford they were all married, and had left town. Only Dave and Belle (Phil's widow) remained.
Until I met Sam's parents I had never met an elderly immigrant Jewish couple who spoke English to each other in the privacy of their home. As I had no accent, Minnie was delighted to discover that I spoke Yiddish! We both loved Yiddish humour and enjoyed many laughs together as we traded stories. Minnie came from a highly respected well-to-do family. She could read and write Yiddish perfectly. Whenever I visited a Jewish bookstore in Toronto I selected novels to bring to her. Belle's mother also brought books when she came to visit. She and Minnie would take turns reading aloud to one another as they rocked on the large front porch.
I was lonesome and unhappy in Meaford. In December, 1934 Dad borrowed money from friends to pay movers to take us back to Toronto. We moved into 165 Lawrence Ave. West. We left Meaford owing money for coal, electricity, rent and groceries. Later on we paid off all the bills.
RAISING OUR FAMILY IN TORONTO
Dorothy Dyson, a seventeen-year-old, freckle-faced redhead from a Toronto working class family, became our mother's help. The children adored her. She left us five years later to marry a farm boy she met in Meaford at Passover. We and the girls were invited to her June wedding in her father's back yard. She missed the children so much that she asked if she could have them at the farm for a month that summer.
Pat turned five in March, 1935 and attended John Wanles Public School in September. The Kasdans up the street had a son, Marty, the same age. The children became inseparable buddies. When other children began to tease them about being girlfriend and boyfriend, they found a back route to school to avoid them.
The kindergarten teacher lived a few doors away from us. Because the enrolment was light in the fall of 1936 she asked if I would like Ina to attend. I expected that Ina would spend two years in kindergarten because she would not turn five until February. Instead, she graduated to grade one with her classmates.
There were very few Jewish families living in the North end of the city. We ourselves had no belief in the Orthodox traditions although we celebrated Passover at the Ciglen's Seder in Meaford. On Christmas, our children hung their stockings by the fireplace and Santa brought them presents just as he did for all our neighbours' children.
Pat was in grade two the day that she came home crying that someone had called her "a dirty Jew". She said, "I told them I'm not dirty. I had a bath last night. But they kept on calling me a dirty Jew!" We decided to join McCaul Street Synagogue where Pat and Ina attended the Synagogue School once a week to learn about their Jewish heritage. The young Rabbi, Reubin Slonim, was a brilliant progressive thinker whose sermons we enjoyed. When he left a few years later we dropped our membership.
OUR SECOND CAR
Our income had improved and Sam once more bought a car. Dad was so impatient when he tried to teach me to drive that I decided to take lessons and surprise him. I told my sister Rose about my lessons on the telephone. Pat overheard and reported to Sam that, "Mummy goes out with a man in a little green car every morning."
I did learn to drive but was always nervous about backing the car down the drive in the narrow portion between the houses where steps projected from the side doors. Our neighbour, a fat policeman, offered his assistance. He got stuck behind the wheel, when he was unable to open the door in the narrow spot to reach the lever that adjusted the seat. After that incident, he reminded me to adjust the seat to fit his girth every time I needed his help.
THE COTTAGE
The car gave us new freedom. In the summers of 1936 and 1937 we rented a furnished cottage on Lake Simcoe in Belle Ewart. Sam commuted on weekends. It had water in the kitchen but no bathroom and no electricity. We had a wood burning stove for cooking, an icebox to keep the milk cold and coal oil lamps for light. There were ceramic potties in each bedroom so that the children did not have to go outside to the outhouse if they awakened during the night. A patch of lawn led down to a little dock in the lake. The water was shallow and warm with a sandy bottom. It was an idyllic way to spend a summer. Our relatives thought so too. They arrived on our doorstep unannounced every weekend and I found myself preparing meals for a dozen instead of five. Belle's son Gary was our cottage guest for a whole month.
A severe polio epidemic swept America in the summer of 1937. Families with children remained at the Lake until the first frost in October. A neighbour at the Lake, father to three children, drove their young maid to Toronto to spend a week with her family. Soon after she returned, she became sick with polio. She recovered well and his children did not catch the crippling disease, but he did. Polio was far more severe for adults. He died.
The summer of 1938 was extremely hot. Houses had no air conditioning back then. The cottage we had enjoyed for two summers was not available. To escape the suffocating heat I took the children down to Sunnyside beach almost every day. If Sam needed the car I took them by bus and streetcar to The Jolly Miller swimming pool in Hog's Hollow at the foot of Yonge St.
In the fall, our landlords advised us that they were returning to Toronto and we would have to move. We rented a brand new house on Avenue Rd. The girls transferred to Allenby Public School. Sam and I joined Fairmount Golf Course.
WORLD WAR TWO
September brought World War 2. Cadet classes were formed at all the schools. Gas, sugar, coffee, and other imported foods were rationed. Sam joined the Queen's Own Rifles reserve unit. He would have joined the regular army if they accepted men his age! As the young men went off to war young women worked in factories. Household help became very scarce. One memorable housekeeper chose to live in our basement room where she raised birds.
The Eglinton Hunt Club, less than a block from our house, became a military training centre. Twice a week it was used for cadet training. As Pat and Ina approached their teens they gawked out the front window at the cute boys passing in their cadet uniforms.
In 1941 we joined the Holy Blossom Temple so that the girls could attend Sunday school and meet other Jewish children. That summer we sent them to Balfour Manor Camp. The Granovsky's gave us a special deal. It cost only $250 for all three children for the nine week summer camp season. I spent the summer on the golf course!
We purchased, 32 Whitmore Ave., a house in Forest Hill Village, when Pat graduated from public school in 1943. Although we did not get possession for a year, Pat was able to attend Forest Hill Village high school where the student body was about thirty per cent Jewish. We moved into the "Village" during the summer of '44. Ina, having skipped a grade as well as starting school a year early entered high school. Rhoda attended the "North Prep". Phyllis, our last try for a son was born in November 1945. Pat, Ina and Rhoda all became second mothers to their baby sister.

THE POST WAR YEARS
The years flew by with the girls enjoying high school dances, parties and proms. Elsie Palter, a respected child psychologist, opened Camp Kawagama in 1944. We sent the girls there. The camp occupied a wooded peninsula that could be reached only by boat. Programming was far superior to Balfour Manor. The girls loved it there.
At sixteen, Ina took a job as a Junior counsellor at Camp Ogama, where she met her future husband, Jack Gilbert. They made their relationship official when he gave her his fraternity pin on her seventeenth birthday. Pat spent her young adult summers at Art Schools. Ina spent her eighteenth summer in Israel.
Pat and Ina attended the University of Toronto after high school. Rhoda went to the Ontario College of Art.
Pat became engaged to Burt Fleisher and they were married in front of four hundred guests at the holy Blossom Temple in June, 1951. Sam insisted on inviting every client as well as all our friends and relatives. Sam arranged for Burt to become a stock broker.
Ina and Jack were married in August 30, 1951 in our living-room. They were planning to marry in December but moved their wedding date up because our doctor recommended that Ina should spend a few weeks out of the ragweed belt to alleviate a very severe bout of hay fever. Jack and Ina honeymooned in Florida. They lived with us for a year. Ina still had two years of university ahead of her and Jack had to complete two years of Osgoode Hall.
I never suffered the empty nest syndrome. My hands were full with our young school-age daughter and a succession of grandchildren. Pat's son David was born May 12, 1952, making Phyllis a six-year-old aunt. Rhoda married Sid Rosen in autumn of the same year. Sam gave Sid a job managing a restaurant in Windsor Ontario. They presented us with our first granddaughter, Taffi, ten months later.
When we moved to Bayview Ridge Rd., in 1955, Phyllis kept us young. We were grandparents who still attended Home and School meetings. On Sunday afternoons in the summer the wading pool in our garden overflowed with toddlers. Pat and Burt brought David, Bradley and Sylvia. Ina's daughters, Deborah, Cindy and Tracey joined the splash party. Rhoda and Sid kept a watchful eye on Taffi, Jackie, Lennie, Simon and Stevie.
Phyllis often baby-sat her young nieces and nephews. She married Steve Wengle at age eighteen. The nieces and nephews became baby sitters for her four children, Alan, Melanie, Jamie and Heidi.
Sam was too busy being a breadwinner to give our daughters much attention. He was too involved with his own legal problems to spend much time with our grandchildren. But, when the great grandchildren came to visit he took great delight in playing with each new baby and they all responded with laughter and love.
When Sam died of cancer in 1990 we had fifteen grandchildren and fourteen great grandchildren. At the time of writing this story I have fifteen great grandchildren. I leave it to my daughters and sons-in-law to fill in the details of their own youths for their children and grandchildren.