New Start

We arrived in Halifax on March eleventh, 1951. Later, I took some English courses and the following is an essay which I was required to write for one of them:

My First Impressions of Canada

We landed in Halifax on a cold morning in March. The wind, which had caused us much trouble during the sea voyage, was still blowing hard and the chill was penetrating. The formalities at the customs did not take too long. The immigrants were again ready to go, this time by train. Our next destination was Montreal. After the first excitement of being in the new country settled down we tried to gather our impressions. These impressions were not exciting. All we could see was an endless forest or a hilly landscape covered with snow. The little towns we passed, the frame houses, even the cars--everything looked to us small and forgotten. And the endless space! After crowded Europe, where cities are close together and boundaries are frequent, Canada looked like an uninhabited country.

The first days in Montreal were not joyful. We felt lonesome and forlorn. Everybody tried to find friends or relatives. I had none and I had to learn the new life the hard way. Everything was a problem--to find a dwelling (with two children!), to find a school for the kids, to get a job. It was hard. But now I understand that every newcomer had the same problems. As the time passed, the sun melted away the dirty snow from the backyards of Jeanne Mance Street and the cold wind turned into a mellow breeze bringing the smell of spring. Everything turned brighter and warmer. The big problems, which seemed to be impossible to solve a couple of months earlier, disappeared one by one: we got a house, the children were at school, I got a job, we found new friends. The future started to look brighter.

In reality it was not so simple. It took quite a time for me to get established in Canada. Even the first step--to get a room--was a problem. A friendly taxi driver found a room for us to rent as subtenants in an apartment in Montreal but we were chased out of there the next morning when the landlord found out that we had two children. We got another room and finally we rented an apartment together with Lotte and Oscar Jason. The apartment was on Park Avenue in Montreal. It was a very unhappy time.

A couple of weeks after our arrival I became ill with jaundice. It took a long time before the doctors established its cause. It was infectious hepatitis. After I had spent several weeks in the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal the doctors decided to operate on my gall bladder. As it turned out the hepatitis was complicated by gall bladder trouble. The operation was successful but it took me a long time to recover.

I was in the hospital for two or three months altogether and all the problems then shifted to Gita's shoulders. She had to earn some money, she had to look after the children and to take care of me. My partnership with Sroel and Isaac was dissolved immediately after our arrival in Canada. Before the war they had been in the lumber business and to make money in Canada they did not need Meyer Kron. They turned back to the lumber business and established themselves in Pembrooke, Ontario. While I was still in the hospital their younger brother, Hirshel, suggested that he and I look for a business in my line.

Gita and Lotte, in the meantime, tried to set up a restaurant in our house on Park Avenue. There were some Lithuanian Jews who tried to help them in their endeavor by becoming customers to lunch but, being too generous with their servings, the enterprise became a losing proposition. Gita next got a job in a glove factory where she had to work very hard. It was piece work and she used to bring work home. This consisted of pulling the gloves on a form and was, physically, very strenuous. In Montreal we met several people who were originally from Lithuania and some of them were very helpful to us, especially Jeanie Goldwater and her brother, Max. Max used to visit us and always brought goodies for the children. They helped us get Ruth to a school and Leo, who was five years old then, into a Cheder--an old-time Jewish religious school. Gita had to spend the whole day at the factory and, after Cheder, Lotte would look after Leo. Later, when Lotte got a job in a grocery store, Leo used to just sit on the high front steps after school watching the traffic and waiting for mother to come back home. Once he lost patience and decided to explore the geography of the area. He got lost in the park where he stayed until the police found him hiding there.

Shortly after I got out of the hospital Gita was at a party at the house of a friend of ours. She told him about her job and he suggested that, instead of working so hard in the factory, she should attend the Jewish Hebrew Teachers' Seminary in Montreal where she would get a subsidy, as a student. equal to the amount she earned in the factory. As a result Gita joined the Seminary. That was a turning point for her. Her previous Hebrew education was extensive and, as a result, she was the best student in the school. She found that she was really suited to teaching and felt from then on that that was the profession for her.

While I was still resting in bed after returning home from the hospital Hirshel found a dilapidated tannery in St. Martine, Quebec, which was for rent for an affordable amount of money. It belonged to a Mr. Moskovitch of Montreal. We rented it on a monthly basis. We bought an old Plymouth but soon discovered that it was a lemon. Then we got a station wagon which we used as both private and company car. We called the company "Victoria Leather", purchased some sheep skins from Canada Packers and made leather from them which was accepted by some slipper and glove factories. The enterprise could, perhaps, have continued as a lucrative proposition but it was interrupted by the severe Canadian winter. When the first cold came everything froze solid and, with our inadequate experience and knowledge of local conditions and my still-poor health, we couldn't see any way to continue.

In the meantime we got wind that somewhere in central Canada there was a Province named Saskatchewan, a name we had never heard before. We found out, too, that there was a city called Regina and a CCF government which was looking for someone to run the government's tannery in Regina. Through a lawyer who had connections with some of our friends in Montreal--his name was Shumacher--we found out that the information was correct and Hirshel and I took a trip to Regina by train. We had a third partner, Dave Plaw, an old friend of mine whom I had known in Europe. He was also a tanner. Dave came to Canada before the war and was well-established here. He lived in Kingston. Ontario.

In Regina, we got in touch with the head of the government, the well-known socialists Tommy Douglas, and the head of the government financial department, Mr. Blakeney, now the Premier of Saskatchewan. There was a hearing at city hall which resulted in our receiving the permit to operate the tannery. We started operations under the name of Continental Leather, Ltd. Besides the money we invested, which was not much, the government gave us a large operating loan.

I left Montreal in March 1952. Gita and the children stayed there until the school year was over and I got more or less established in Regina. I found a basement suite which we moved into in July. Hirshel later brought his wife and boy out. He and I drove from Montreal to Regina in our station wagon which we filled with pickled sheepskins. It was an awful drive through endless prairies covered with snow and we arrived at our destination in a driving storm. Our families came several months later by train.

The government's tannery was in bad shape. The machines were rusty and it was quite a job to get the place running. However, when we put out our first leather a couple of months later and sent some samples to Winnipeg, which was supposed to be our best market, it was received with great approval from the shoe and glove factories and it looked to us as though we had started off on the right foot.

I usually spent my time in the tannery while Hirshel was the salesman. The salary we took for ourselves was pretty low and Gita had to take a job. She applied to the Hebrew school but at that time there were no openings so her first job in Regina was as a chambermaid in a middle class hotel that catered mostly to farmers who came to town during the winter. She cleaned rooms, scrubbed floors and did all the work connected with that kind of a job. When she finally received word from the school that there was an opening it was a great surprise to both the hotel manager and his clients. They didn't know until then that she was Jewish or that a Jewish woman could work so hard. Actually, this was her first job as a teacher in a school but she was appreciated immediately. The children loved her and the parents and the management of the school appreciated her energy and teaching abilities.

It was a hard start for us but after a year of steady work it looked as though we were going in the right direction. Our course, however, was suddenly interrupted when, on the first of May, 1953, a fire broke out in the factory and everything went up in flames. It was a great shock to us. We tried to persuade the government to rebuild the tannery but they were no longer interested. Hirshel and I were left without a business and the question now was: "what to do?" It was a terrible situation because there were no other opportunities open to us then. We dissolved our partnership and Hirshel decided to go East where the rest of his brothers were. That was actually better for him than continuing to look for a business with me.

He decided to become a taxi driver in Montreal and managed, remarkably, to do very well without knowing either English or French. In the back of his aggressive mind, though, he always had much more ambitious goals than just being a taxi driver. When I met him later he was in business as a building contractor and he showed me, when I was in Montreal in 1967, the blocks of houses he was constructing and the apartment houses which belonged to him. Nevertheless, he met a tragic end. When I passed through Montreal a year later and tried to get in touch with him I found out that he was dead. I never was able to find out how he ended his life. His brother told me at that time that he had committed suicide but later I heard that he was involved with the Mafia and was murdered. His three brothers also passed away early. My ex-partners, Sroel and Isaac, were both healthy and energetic men. Both died several years ago, however. Just lately I read in a Toronto paper that the youngest brother, Philip, died from cancer.

When Hirshel and I dissolved our partnership I went looking for a job. One time I visited a Mr. Steinkoff, a millionaire who had been a customer of ours in Winnipeg. He was the owner of Canada West Shoe, one of the largest shoe factories in Western Canada. He told me that he had a tannery, the J. Leckie Company, in New Westminster, which was near Vancouver, and suggested I go there for a couple of months and see what I could accomplish. He offered me one hundred dollars a week, which was an attractive salary at that time, and I got stuck there for ten years, from 1954 to 1964. After the end of the school year Gita and the children joined me in New Westminster. By then, 1954, Ruth had finished high school and Leo was eight years old. Naturally, Gita started to look for a job immediately and that same summer she was accepted at the Beth Israel Religious School. We moved to our house at 340 West 13th Avenue in Vancouver in September of 1954 and have stayed there until now - twenty-six years.

The six months before my family arrived in British Columbia I lived in the Russell Hotel in New Westminster. I was working on an uncertain basis in the J. Leckie Company tannery and it was a very trying time for me. Looking at the illuminated windows in downtown Vancouver every night I used to ask myself, "Who needs me here?" It took a very long time before I started to feel that I belonged here. The work in Leckie's small establishment was uninteresting and unpleasant in comparison with the wonderful conditions I used to have in Shavli. Besides, to be assistant to a person who knew much less than I did and who was unpleasant in his character was very trying. The main worry, however, was whether or not the job was permanent. Thus I was partly relieved when Steinkoff offered me steady work at the Leckie tannery. The pay was not great but it was enough for us to survive on. I was also promised a car by Steinkoff and, in July, 1954, when classes were over in Regina, I rented a suite in New Westminster, flew to Winnipeg to see my boss and discuss plans for my future employment and also to receive the promised car. When I finally got the car it was a Saturday afternoon in mid-July. I refused to move from Winnipeg without insurance on the car so Steinkoff tried to get an insurance company to cover me. It was almost impossible on a hot afternoon in July- After many calls he finally got an agent and we applied for insurance by phone. Then I drove the car, with dealer's license plates on it, to Regina. From there I drove, with Gita and the children, through the winding roads of the Cascade mountains which were considered very dangerous to drive over at that time. I was relieved when, after three days and two nights of travelling, we arrived at our suite in New Westminster. We were tired to death so we parked the car in the parking lot of the building, unpacked hurriedly and went to sleep.

Next morning, when I wanted to use the car again, it was gone. It had been stolen. I was terribly upset, especially because there was no written insurance on it.

When the stripped car was found six weeks later it had no tires, no battery, no lights - nothing. This incident felt like the last straw in the miserable chain of events in which we had been entangled since our arrival in Canada. However, the insurance company paid for the damage and that problem also passed.

Gita insisted that we should not spend a minute longer than necessary in New Westminster. The Hebrew schools, where the children would attend classes and where Gita wanted to look for work, were all in Vancouver. We tried to get a house in Vancouver and succeeded on September first, 1954.

That was the beginning of our new life in Canada. The prospects for the future were blurry and we had to proceed with daily life without a definite plan. I tried various things until I finally got established in my present firm, B. C. Fur.

There has been no risk to life or safety since coming to Canada but I have had many anxious moments trying to establish financial security for myself and my family. It took more than ten years before I started to feel a little secure. Gita contributed much toward this, working steady as a Hebrew teacher.