..HHAARRBBOORRDDIITTEE.. (Founded 1979) 286 Harbord Street, Toronto Ontario, Canada M6G 1G5 A Newsletter published for former students and teachers of Harbord Collegiate Institute Issue No. 54 Spring 2006 - Editor: Paul McIntyre ('50) - - Layout Editor: Jennifer Cui - Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.harbordclub.com/ WHY A HARBORD CLUB? 1) To establish and maintain a sense of common identity among former students and teachers of the school 2) To share news from Harbordites everywhere 3) To provide funds for prizes, awards and scholarships in all grades of the school 6 |Page 1 | HARBORDITE | Spring 2 K | .TABLE OF CONTENTS. Editorial ·······································································································3 The History Of The Harbord Club ································································4 Harbord Remembers···················································································· 9 Honor Roll of the Fallen – World War II····················································12 War Memorial Donors················································································12 Featured Article··························································································14 Hilkka Marie Filppula··············································································14 3rd Annual Dinner ····················································································· 17 John B. Braithwaite ····················································································20 Morley S. Wolfe ·························································································21 Class of 1955 Harbord C.I. Reunion ···························································23 Class of 1956 Harbord C.I. Reunion Info····················································24 Class of 1957 Harbord C.I. Reunion Info····················································24 Class of 1981 Harbord C.I. Reunion Info····················································24 Our WWI Soldier is Rededicated································································25 World War I Monument Rededication························································27 Our Readers Write······················································································31 Interview of Henry Petroff ·········································································40 Dr. May Cohen ···························································································44 Morton Katz ·······························································································46 Biography ···································································································47 Saul Cantor ······························································································47 Rosario Marchese ····················································································48 Murray Laufer ·························································································50 Obituaries ···································································································51 Dr. Elle Cass···························································································51 Harold Soupcoff ·····················································································52 News···········································································································56 Bertha R. Shvemar··················································································56 Harbord Students Who Received The Order of Canada ······························56 Our Students Write ·····················································································57 Officers of Committee members·································································59 6 |Page 2 | HARBORDITE | Spring 2 K | .EDITORIAL. As a young person I was taught the homily that "There are three sides to every issue, your side, my side and the right side." Hopefully, in my childish way, I understood this to indicate that it is easy to make judgmental errors because most of us believe what we want to believe and have difficulty in accepting contrary opinions. The following is subject to that understanding. I might never have read Mordecai Richler's, "This Year in Jerusalem" first published in 1994, if my brother had not left me half his library, when he moved to Victoria. The reading was a rich personal experience for me. It painted a picture of Israel with which I was mostly unfamiliar. It was interesting to discover that Richler and I were both born on 1931and therefore grew up, or partially so, during the Great Depression, (a misnomer if I ever heard one) and the years of the Second World War. This meant a degee of poverty for both of us but I think not sufficient to dim the spirit. It was also interesting to discover his family background in the Hasidic faith. His maternal grandfather, Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg, born in Poland in 1859, was a celebrated Hasidic scholar, as well as a writer of playful short stories and as a scribe, or sofer, "would have written his Sefer Torah with the quill of a turkey feather on parchment." He describes his growing up years in Montreal; how by happenstance he found friends in' and joined, Habonim, "a world organization of Socialist Zionist youth." He recounts in a very human way his experiences on three trips he made to Israel in 1948, 1962 and mainly in 1992, setting out many conversations there with relatives, old friends and various other people, both Jews and Arabs. To my mind, it is a serious insightful work written with great fairness, objectivity and as you might expect, remarkable humour and irony. It may even be more pertinent today than it was when it was first published over ten years ago. In any event, for this Shagetz it was a wonderful read. Incidentally, while we were visiting a friend in Fort Lauderdale she invited a Jewish couple who lived next door for dinner. So in the course of conversation I mentioned reading the book and asked if they had read it. Not only had they not read it, they didn't seem to have heard of Mordecai Richler. So then I asked them if they had heard of Wayne and Shuster and they hadn't heard of them either. So much for the irrelevance of Canada and Canadians. Regarding the World War II monument we must all agree that our work will be far from complete until it is established. Please be sure to read Murray's article and respond as you are able. 6 |Page 3 | HARBORDITE | Spring 2 K | .THE HISTORY OF THE HARBORD CLUB (1978-1999) By Julius Molinard (’36) Harbord Street Collegiate Institute, as it was originally called until 1912 when Street was dropped from its name, was the second high school to be built in Toronto after Jarvis Street Collegiate Institute, the first, that had become so overcrowded by 1890 that another high school was needed. To meet the need the Board of Education purchased pasture land from Alex Manning and in 1890 began construction of the new building which opened its doors in January 1892 to170 students. It too soon became so overcrowded that the Board decided to restrict enrolment to those living within the boundaries of Avenue Road, Queen's Park, Simcoe St. in the east and Dufferin St. in the west. Harbord St. was then a dirt road that became a sea of mud in bad weather and wood planks served as a sidewalk. Across the road from the school was a farm where cows were raised. One of our centenarians recalled seeing cows occasionally enter the school grounds. A slaughter house was located somewhere in the vicinity of Palmerston Blvd. The community surrounding the school was an invaluable adjunct of Harbord which "has always reflected the changing social conditions and shifts in ethnic population in the area around it. From its inception in 1892 to the present day, the school has been finely attuned to the ebb and flow of the various nationalities as they waxed to a majority status or waned to a minority one."[1] The student body was a microcosm of the greater Toronto area. The school was originally Wasp and from 1892 to 1907 there were no more than seven Jewish students. When Willie Zimmerman, the principal architect of the Harbord Club, entered the school in the fall of 1928 the school was half Jewish. When he graduated five years later it was probably 85% Jewish. From about the mid- twenties to the late fifties the school saw an influx of Jews who formed a significant body and brought honour to Harbord academically. They came from the Jewish district around the Bathurst and Spadina area and were joined later by the sons and daughters of Portuguese & Italian immigrants who lived intermingled with Jews in the rectangle near Harbord around Grace, Manning and College Streets. In 1971 there were 29 ethnic groups in the school population of 1,100 students. Jack Harryman, head of the Modern Languages, noted in 1978 that “a new era is dawning in the ethnic distribution of students at Harbord. For the first time in 24 years I have a student named Smith." [2] With the enrolment of an increasing number of students of Chinese background, the curriculum was enriched with the introduction of courses in Cantonese and the formation of a Chinese Club. In 1997 about 25% of Harbord students were of Oriental background. Thirty-eight languages are officially listed as the first language spoken at home. The standards have always been high from the beginning and