I used to be a young nerd, now I’m an old one. When I went to public school the word wasn’t even in the dictionary. After Dr Seuss used it in one of his books, it took on the negative implication of an awkward socially inept person. But ever since the term was used to describe Bill Gates, it gained a positive connotation of a person good at scholarly activities. I was no Bill Gates but I was a nerd. I liked school.
We were all children of immigrants. The east end of Regina where we lived was already multicultural even before Trudeau coined the phrase. My parents were neither social climbers nor were they strongly competitive and I became relatively non-competitive in all ways but academically. I participated and enjoyed sports activities but I got my ego rewards when the report cards came out.
We lived in a rented 3-bedroom two story semi-detached house at 1872 Ottawa Street in Regina. My mother Frances (a.k.a. Frima and Fanny) was an enterprising woman and to help cover expenses she rented out one bedroom with board to a deaf mute who was a friend of a friend of the family. The Shtimmer (Yiddish for “the silent one”) was a long-term guest in our house and we all learned to communicate with him using hand motions similar to a mime. At one time a daughter of my mother’s sister from Winnipeg, Bertha Shnier, shared the second bedroom with my sister Ruth; I slept on a cot in my parents’ bedroom or on the chesterfield downstairs. Bertha was about five or ten years older than my sister at the time so she exposed us to the frivolous 20’s with it’s flappers and dances of the day like the Charleston. Today in her late nineties Bertha Kliman is alive and well and living in Winnipeg.
My kindergarten to grade six was done at Earl Grey School, a building left over from World War I, which was kitty corner from our house. A kid with polio and I used to vie for who would stand first in class: one month he would and next month I would. Grades 7 and 8 were at Thomson School a few blocks away and there I had M. J. Coldwell as a teacher who later became famous as leader of the socialist C.C.F. party, the predecessor of the New Democratic Party. I had socialist leanings in those days but I’m not sure whether it was his influence of simply my youth. I think Rousseau said that if you’re not a socialist when you’re young you have no heart; and if you’re not a conservative when you’re old you have no brain. Coldwell, an excellent teacher, was forced to resign when he became active in politics.
Our street was a collection of middle class multicultural families of the day. Friends are made easily at that age and I can still recall some: Mike Berzuck who used to drive me home from school on the handlebar of his bike (I didn’t have a bike). Stanley Abrams, a good friend whose father had a jewellery store, which made them upper class. Abel Schwartzfeld was another good friend whose father had a ladies-ware store, a big family, a big house and a big mortgage. During my war service overseas Abel and I spent several enjoyable leaves together. Peter Muscovitch (a.k.a. Moss) lived at the end of the block; his father had a tinsmith shop but the family was considered lower class because the parents were more dysfunctional than the rest of us. Peter was one of the good friends that I managed to keep in contact with to his dying day. Sammy Hamer lived across the street and I remember him as an entrepreneur; he used to play the slot machines in the convenience stores, (yes, slots were legal in Regina at the time) and he was the one who lined me up with my first job at the Regina News Agency counting out and distributing magazines once a week to kids who delivered them on their routes. Sammy’s family, whose mother was known on the street for her psychological problems, was also considered dysfunctional. But despite these handicaps both Peter and Sammy went on to successful careers. We all belonged to a thriving AZA club, sort of a Jewish Boy Scout group that had an excellent softball team. I played second base.
The Beth David
Synagogue was also on Ottawa Street two blocks from our house and our fathers
would congregate there on the High Holidays. I still remember as they
left at the end of Yom Kippur how they would wish each other “may you live
another year”. I understand the greeting better now than I did then. It
was an orthodox synagogue and I had my Bar Mitzvah there; it was a religious event
without any party afterwards. I got a few fountain pens.
At Central Collegiate High School I loved algebra and physics, which again made me suspect. I also made the ‘midget’ basketball team and played a mean right forward, so I guess I wasn’t a total nerd. I even played tackle on the junior football team until my best friend Stanley Abrams broke his shoulder in the second game of the season and my folks made me drop out. I won an award in Grade XII for Proficiency in Mathematics and later an Isbister Scholarship at the University of Manitoba. I did not appreciate stuff like Shakespeare until a good Scottish teacher in Grade XII got through to me. History I just could not relate to; too much memory-work. I regret that very much today. Perhaps it was the teacher. Regina College, a junior college now called University of Regina, was the only post-secondary school in town at the time and I went there for my first year of University. When I went to university in Winnipeg I gradually lost touch with the dozen or so friends I had in Regina although later our paths crossed now and then. I have a 1935 photo on the wall, the Regina AZA Chapter with 18 shining young teenagers including me. Today when I run down the list I count only three that are still alive. Life goes on.
Mine was the generation that lived through the Great Depression with the stock market crash of 1929, and the drought and dust storms on the prairies in the 1930s. In those days Dad had a new and used clothing and furniture store on the East side of Broad Street near the CPR underpass and occasionally I would help out there. Since it was hard to make a buck in those days we all learned to save money better than we learned how to make it and habits like that are hard to shed. Businessmen reacted the same way which made the Depression last even longer. In 1935 it took its toll on my father’s business and he gave it up and took a job working for a friend in a general store in Assiniboia, SK. My mother kept the house in Regina until I went off to University in Winnipeg, and then she moved out to join Dad. Soon afterwards they bought a store in the small town of Rockglen and for the first time they managed to accumulate a bit of money. Dad then bought a movie house in another small town in Saskatchewan, Central Butte, where they stayed until they had accumulated enough money to move back to Regina and buy a house and a Convenience Store across the street from Victoria Park on the corner of Osler Street. Because I spent so little time with my dad in those my formative years we really did not have much of a chance to talk to each other. Later during the war when I was in the RCAF he did come out by train to visit me in Vancouver and that was the one time I remember we had some private time together and got to know each other a bit. He was about 52 at the time. He never did talk to me about his childhood or his early days on the farm.
Both my parents were virtually immigrants from Russia and, although they insisted I go to University, they were not able to give me much guidance but neither did they insist I become a doctor, dentist or lawyer nor did they suggest I go into business and make a lot of money. I say virtually immigrants because my father, Frank, was born in Montreal shortly after his parents disembarked from the ship. His father, Leib (or Levi) Pelenovsky, emigrated from Russia with his wife and four children in 1890 to farm along with other Jewish immigrants on a settlement near Wapella, which is now in Saskatchewan but at that time it was still the North West Territories.
My dad was the youngest child and the only son. I remember my mother taking us to visit grandparents who lived in a small house a block or so away; my father’s mother had died several years earlier so I never really new her. Leib was living with his third wife at the time. In later years, like a good grandchild, I would visit him at aunt Rose’s suite in the Clayton Hotel that my uncle owned at the time. Uncle Bill was a business associate of the Bronfman boys during prohibition days and as a result was fairly well off. In those days he had a big house on Victoria Street. When I visited grandpa at the hotel I was already in my late teens and I would try to be a good grandson and talk Yiddish to him, but he would always tell me to talk English so he could better understand me. Mother had only her youngest sister Bertha Silverman living in Regina, but father had three sisters there in those days. Fanny Brotman with six kids, Beckie Kahn with three, and Rose Natanson with two daughters, so we had a fairly large extended family. At time of writing only Meta Brotman Williams, Rissell Kahn Felson, David Kahn, and Rita Natanson Lupovich are still alive. The only one who came back into my life in later years was David and his family when he and his wife moved to Oakville in about 1990.
I also remember my mother taking us to Winnipeg by train several times to visit her father and mother Michael and Pearl. Mother’s youngest brother Morris who was married to Aunt Sarah lived there as well as Clara, her late brother Abe’s widow. Abe died young and Clara married Peretz Baker and she was bringing up his four kids as well as her own three. We used to stay with them on Matheson Avenue in the north end of Winnipeg and Ruth and I got to know Hi, Sula and Davie Bernstein that way as well as Davie Baker and his sibs. Grandma and grandpa had a store in the northwest part of Winnipeg but what I remember most about grandma Pearl was that she was a smoker when it wasn’t the thing for women to do. Mother’s sister aunt Anne Rose and uncle Roy moved to Oklahoma where they raised two girls, Esther and Lil.
I recall, when I was a teenager, a trip by train to Melfort to visit mother’s sister Sarah Shnier and family. Sarah was my mother’s older sister and the relationship was a close one. The Shniers later moved to Emerson and I remember that move vividly because they came by car and stopped off at our house one night; ten kids and all dead tired. They spent the night in our house, where I don’t know. Some years later they moved to Winnipeg, twelve kids by then; and their descendents are now scattered across Canada and the U.S. with a good concentration in Toronto,
Mother’s oldest brother Harry moved to L.A. and on one of our trips to California in the 60’s we visited him on our way back from a Burbank studio where we saw a taping of Let’s Make A Deal that Monty Hall had invited us to.
With such a large mispucha we all learned to appreciate the
value of family at a young age.
I majored in Mathematics (Actuarial Science) with a minor in Economics. Money was scarce and although my parents paid my tuition, I lived in residence and worked in the kitchen for 25¢ an hour (30¢ for dirty work) to pay my board and room. (I now do similar work in our kitchen at home and don’t get paid.) I was “rushed” by the Jewish fraternities but did not join because I thought I couldn’t afford to. I would have had much more fun if I had. Instead I learned to work and study, and that has been my main source of fun and pleasure ever since. I lived in residence on campus and during classes and lunches I mingled with many of the Winnipeg Jewish girls and boys who came in by streetcar every day. At that age my hormones were raging and I did date whenever I got up enough nerve to phone a girl and ask her out. My uncle Morris was good enough to lend me his car occasionally for a Friday evening date.
After my first year at University our Actuarial Professor, my first mentor, tried to place us all in summer jobs at the Great West Life Insurance Company. Another Jewish student and I were told ‘confidentially’ that they would take all but the Jewish students; such discrimination was not uncommon in those days in medicine and dentistry but we were surprised to find it there. It was enough to influence me to change my major to Statistics. Dr. Cyril Goulden, head of the Federal Experimental Farm in Ottawa and the [Grain] Rust Research Laboratory on campus, a competent statistician, offered such a major and I leaned in that direction, continuing with Mathematics and Economics for my B.A. degree. I published a couple of papers jointly with Dr Goulden and I would call him my second mentor.
When I graduated Dr Goulden recommended to Dr J Ansel Anderson, the Chief Chemist of the Grain Research Laboratory that he hire me as Chief Statistician. We were still in the depression years and jobs were still scarce so my job at the GRL was not a civil service job. Dr Anderson, my third mentor, managed to get a grant from the National Research Council each year to cover my $110.00 a month salary as Laboratory Statistician. The Laboratory monitored the quality and protein content of the hard red wheat crop each year to maintain Canada’s superiority in the world wheat market. I stayed there until I joined up in 1941. Together David Baker and I joined the RCAF as radar technicians in December of that year. If we had not volunteered we would have eventually been drafted into the Army and would have had to spend the rest of the war not overseas but in some remote isolated part of Canada. That was the compromise Mackenzie King made at the time with Quebec. We started out as AC2’s (Air Craftsman 2nd Class) and ended up 4 years later as Flight Lieutenants.
