The Worst of Times, the Best of Times: Growing Up in Winnipeg's North End

Fay Lando was Projects Officer at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food in Toronto.

During World War I, and immediately before and after, “more St. John’s graduates went on to complete Ph.D.s than from any other high school of the same size on the North American continent.”

It was the golden age for St. John’s High School in the North End of Winnipeg — an area thick with post-World War I East European immigrants.

This book sketches the childhood and careers of 18 North Enders, children of immigrants, who grew up during the golden age. All have made significant contributions in fields such as entertainment, law, politics, the arts and sciences; all are Jewish.

Monty Hall, Samuel Freedman, Bernard and Sylvia Ostry, Harry Freedman, and Leo Yaffe are some of the personalities who were asked what it was like growing up in the North End. In separate biographical chapters they recall the influence of educators like G.J. Reeve, Moishe Bloshtein, and Cantor Benjamin Brownstone. They reminisce about the places they remember: the shops along Selkirk Avenue, the Yiddish schools like the Penetz and Talmud Torah, and the local drug store where they met to socialize and to talk about restructuring society. That was the best of times. Many interviewed grew up knowing anti-semitism firsthand from the street, and some experienced it through the quota system at the Manitoba Medical College. That was the worst of times. Despite such difficulties and that of material poverty, they flourished under the influence of other forces: family love and the Jewish traditions of learning and justice.

This book will interest any North Enders, and particularly those who remember this golden era. For those without a Winnipeg connection, “Beginnings,” a chapter as long as any biography, provides a history of the Jewish community in Winnipeg’s North End to the outbreak of World War II, while the individual chapters add to the social history. The biographies are well written, generously sprinkled with direct quotes, and laudatory of the subjects’ positive achievements.

The “ethnic” North Enders of this book were often snubbed by the rest of society. In the eighties, “ethnics” of yesterday are called “visible minorities.” They should find these biographies a source of inspiration.