Part Of

Joseph Baruch Salsberg fonds

Level

Fonds

Fonds

92

Material Format

multiple media

Date

1914-1993

Physical Description

1.2 m of textual records (2 v.) and other material

Admin History/Bio

Joseph Baruch Salsberg (1902-1998) was a labour leader, political activist, politician, insurance salesman, and journalist. He was also active in various Jewish organizations, including the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), the Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto, and the New Fraternal Jewish Association. He is well-remembered by contemporaries, such as Sam Lipshitz, as a “champion of the people," committed to social justice, the plight of the working class, and the preservation of Jewish culture.

J. B. was born in Lagow, Poland on November 5, 1902 to Abraham and Sarah-Gittel Salsberg. Abraham immigrated to Toronto in 1910 and J. B. followed with his mother and two younger sisters in 1913. They settled at 73 Cecil Street. Abraham and Sarah-Gittel had additional children in Canada: Nathan (b. 1915), Reuven (Bob or Robert, b. 1917), Betty, and Thelma. Abraham worked as a peddler in Toronto.

J. B. briefly attended Landsdowne Public School, but dropped out around 1916, against his parents' wishes, and took a job in a leather goods factory to contribute to his family’s income. J. B.’s parents had hoped he would become a rabbi and, despite his full-time employment, J.B. continued to study Torah with scholars at the synagogue on Centre Avenue.

In 1917, J. B. decided to pursue the ideas of Zionism and socialism and, abandoning his plans to become a rabbi, became involved in establishing the Young Poale Zion organization, a Labour Zionist youth group dedicated to secular aims. Around 1922, J. B. was made secretary general of the Young Poale Zion of America in New York, where he worked for one year. Shortly after returning to Toronto, he became the organizer for the Hat, Cap, and Millinery Workers Union of North America in Chicago. J. B. married Dora Wilensky in 1927.

In 1926, J. B. joined the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). He was an active member of the CPC for 30 years, serving as the head of its Trade Union Department for two decades. In 1929 he was suspended from the party for one year as a dissenter. In 1932, he became the Southern Ontario District union organizer for the Communist Workers' Unity League.

It was as a member of the CPC that J. B. entered electoral politics. After a series of failed bids in municipal and provincial elections between 1935 and 1937, J. B. was elected alderman of Ward 4 in Toronto in 1938. He only held the position for one year. He was re-elected to this position in 1943, beating out Nathan Phillips, before being elected to the Ontario Legislature as the representative for the St. Andrew riding. J. B. sat as member of provincial parliament for the Labor-Progressive Party (the provincial wing of the CPC) for 12 years. For several years, he was the only elected Communist in North America. As MPP, he helped create legislation banning discrimination in public places and introduced a bill that would ensure fair employment practices in the province. He lost his seat to Allan Grossman in 1955 and unsuccessfully ran in the federal election later that year. Remembered by journalist Gordon Sinclair as “one of the best debaters in the house," J. B. was well-respected by members of all political parties. Out of admiration for J. B., Conservative Premier Leslie Frost named Salsberg Township in Northern Ontario in his honour.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, J. B. had grown increasingly concerned about reports of Soviet antisemitism and privately urged party leaders to pursue the issue. In 1956, when Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev exposed the transgressions of Stalin’s regime, J. B. went to Moscow as part of a CPC delegation. After meeting with Khrushchev himself, it became clear to J. B. that antisemitism was indeed a problem in the USSR and that his efforts to probe the situation were being stonewalled.

J. B. publicly expressed his concerns about Soviet antisemitism in a series of articles published in the Vochenblatt from October 25, 1956 to December 13, 1956. He finally left the Communist Party in 1957. However, he remained a member of the United Jewish People’s Order (UJPO), a Communist Jewish fraternal organization.

Entering the business world, J. B. established the Model Insurance Agency Limited in 1957, where he served as president for several years. In 1959 J. B.’s wife, Dora, passed away. Around this time J. B. also resigned from the UJPO, along with other members who felt the organization needed to be more critical of the Soviet Union. They founded an alternative, non-Communist, left-wing Jewish organization, the New Fraternal Jewish Association, where J. B. served as president for several terms and edited its publication, Fraternally Yours.

In his later life, J. B. was active as an executive member of organizations, such as the CJC and the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. He was the first chairman for the CJC Ontario Region’s Soviet Jewry Committee and the Committee for Yiddish. He also began writing an award-winning weekly column for the Canadian Jewish News. J. B. was awarded the CJC’s Samuel Bronfman Medal for distinguished service, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Toronto’s Ben Sadowski Award of Merit. A strong supporter of Israel, he was involved in the creation of two Israeli medical centres that are named in his honour. He also helped establish the J. B. and Dora Salsberg Fund and the J. B. Salsberg Fund for Yiddish at the Jewish Foundation of Greater Toronto. J. B. passed away in 1998.

Custodial History

The records were donated to the OJA in a series of accessions. Material from accessions 1991-5-4 and 1992-9-4 were donated by J. B. Salsberg. The remaining material was donated by his estate after his death.

Scope and Content

Fonds consists of records documenting J. B. Salsberg's personal, professional and Jewish communal activities. The bulk of the records are textual and relate to his membership in the CPC (later LPP), election campaigns, and Jewish communal work. Included is correspondence; photographs; reports; political writings; certificates; agendas; pamphlets; brochures; booklets; flyers; campaign literature; campaign notes; posters; newspaper clippings; press releases; articles; transcripts; speeches; telegrams; political platforms, briefs and submissions; statements; constitutions; resolutions; newspapers; meeting minutes; bulletins; periodicals; notebooks; notes; course guides and outlines; medallions; pins; plaques; donation receipts; event invitations and programmes; lists; blank employment applications; a school test; a study; a coin; a drawing; a sketch; an audio cassette; and a delegate card.

Records are arranged into the following five series: 1. Personal ; 2. Labour Zionism and union activities ; 3. Political career ; and, 4. Jewish community involvement. There are also four files and one item attached directly to the fonds.

Notes

Physical Description Note: Includes 53 photographs, 7 medallions, 11 pins, 4 posters, 2 plaques, 1 sketch, 1 drawing, 1 audio cassette, 1 desk name plate, and 1 coin.

Physical Extent Note: Fonds was reduced from approximately 7 metres to 1.5 metres. The culled material consisted primarily of published books, periodicals and pamphlets that had been collected by J. B. Salsberg. For further details about what was culled please view the accession records.

Associated Material Note: Queen's University Archive also has a J. B. Salsberg fonds, 14 hours of interview tapes with J. B. Salsberg and records of the UJPO are held by the Multicultural Historical Society of Ontario (MHSO).

Name Access

Salsberg, J. B.,1902-1998

Subjects

Labor leaders

Politicians

Related Material

For additional records in OJA's holdings, see: Ben Kayfetz fonds 62, series 8, file 2 ; accession 2008-11-2 ; accession 2004-1-4 ; and oral histories AC 71 and AC 226.

Creator

Salsberg, Joseph Baruch, 1902-1998

Accession Number

1991-5-4

1992-9-4

1998-2-2

1998-12-5

2004-5-28

2010-4-1

Source

Archival Descriptions

Part Of

Philip Givens fonds

Level

Fonds

Fonds

51

Material Format

multiple media

Date

[192-]-1990

Physical Description

1.35 metres of textual records (20 vols.) and other material

Admin History/Bio

Philip (Phil) Gerald Givens, QC, (1922–1995) was a Canadian politician, judge, police commissioner, and active Jewish communal leader. He is is largely remembered as the fifty-fourth mayor of Toronto.

Phil Givens was born in Toronto, the only son of Hyman and Mary Gevertz (Gewercz). As a youth, he attended Harbord Collegiate and graduated from the University of Toronto in political science and economics in 1945. In 1947, he married the former Minnie “Min” Rubin. They had two children together: Eleanor and Michael.

Givens graduated as a lawyer from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1949; however, shortly thereafter, he decided to enter politics, running as a municipal school board trustee in 1950. In 1951, he was elected as alderman for Ward 5, serving in this capacity until 1960, when he was subsequently elected as a controller.

Givens was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1962.

Following the sudden death of Mayor David Summerville in 1963, Givens was appointed by City Council as the mayor of Toronto and was officially elected to the position in 1964, winning a close race against Allan Lamport. As mayor, Givens was automatically a member of the Metropolitan Toronto Executive and Council, the Metropolitan Toronto Police Commission, the Consumer’s Gas Company Executive, the Toronto Hydro Commission and the governing boards of Toronto’s major hospitals.

Givens was publicly seen as an affable and populist mayor, but his tenure was not without controversy. His support for the construction of the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts and his decision to acquire Henry Moore’s bronze sculpture The Archer for the new Nathan Phillips Square were both highly controversial during his term in office. In particular, the Moore sculpture sparked intense controversy and public debate amongst council members and citizens alike, because traditional and representational public art pieces were the norm in Toronto at the time and The Archer sculpture was considered expensive, bold, and unrelatable. The controversy surrounding the statue’s purchase was still partly to blame for Givens’ 1966 election defeat to William Dennison. Ultimately, the sculpture was purchased with privately solicited donations and has become one of Toronto’s beloved and recognized landmarks.

Givens ran for the House of Commons of Canada in the 1957 and 1958 federal elections but was defeated in his bid to become member of Parliament for Spadina. In 1967, Givens entered national politics for the second time, winning a seat as a Liberal in Toronto’s York West riding. In 1971, he stepped down before the end of his term to campaign for a seat in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Again, running under the Liberal banner, Givens won his seat in York-Forest Hill. In the 1975 provincial election, he was re-elected as a member of Provincial Parliament in the Armourdale constituency.

In 1977, Givens retired from politics and was appointed as a provincial court judge and chair of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Commission, serving in both capacities until 1985, when he left the Commission but continued in the judiciary as a civil trial judge until officially retired from public life in 1988.

In addition to his political career, Givens also worked briefly as a current affairs commentator for local radio broadcaster CHUM 1050 AM.

Givens was an ardent Zionist and a prominent leader of several Jewish communal organizations. He was the founder and first president of the Upper Canada Lodge of B’nai Brith and sat on the executives of the Canadian Jewish Congress, the United Jewish Welfare Fund, the Talmud Torah Eitz Chaim, the Zionist Organization of Canada, the Toronto Zionist Council, Jewish National Fund, State of Israel Bonds, and the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. He was chair of the United Israel Appeal-Israel Emergency Fund in 1967 and the United Jewish Appeal-Israel Special Fund in 1968. From 1973 to 1985, he was the national president of the Canadian Zionist Federation. In the 1990s, he served as the national chairman of the Committee for Yiddish of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

Givens was the honouree of the Jewish National Fund’s Negev Dinner in 1968. He received the Human Relations Award from the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews in 1969 and the Award of Honour from the Toronto Regional Council of B’nai Brith in 1972.

Givens was also known to be a passionate sailor and was a member of both the Royal Canadian and the Island Yacht Clubs in Toronto.

Custodial History

The records were in the possession of Phil Givens until they were donated to the Archives in September 1990 by his wife.

Scope and Content

Fonds consists of records documenting the personal, professional and communal activities of Phil Givens. The bulk of the material is graphic and most of the photographs relate to his tenure as Mayor of Toronto and to his Jewish communal work. The records also include general correspondence, speeches, campaign material, scrapbooks, cartoons, certificates and awards, biographical writings, audio and visual materials and artifacts. The records have been arranged into nine series representing Givens’ various roles and activities and have been described to the file level and item level when necessary. These series are: 1. Personal life; 2. City of Toronto Alderman; 3. City of Toronto Controller; 4. City of Toronto Mayor; 5. Metropolitan Toronto Police Commissioner; 6. Provincial politics; 7. National politics; 8. Legal career; 9. Jewish communal service.

Notes

Physical Description Note: Includes ca. 915 photographs, 14 drawings, 1 print, 1 presentation piece, 27 objects, 4 DVD’s, 4 videocassettes and 1 audiocassette.

Physical Extent Note: Fonds was reduced from 5.5 m of records to 2.6 m of records. Please see accession record for further details regarding the records that were culled.

General Note: Previously cited as MG6 B

Associated material note: City of Toronto Archives: “Philip Givens fonds” (fonds 1301) and Series 363, Sub-series 2 “Mayor' Office journals” (fonds 200). Library and Archives Canada: “Correspondence and subjects” series (R4942-1-1-E) in the Stuart E. Rosenberg fonds (R4942-0-X-E); Henry S. Rosenberg fonds (R3946-0-9-E); Jewish National Fund of Canada fonds (R4347-0-1-E), “Subject series: Givens, Judge Philip G. – Toronto” (R4347-7-4-E); “Correspondence, memoranda, minutes, reports” series (MG31-H67), Zdzislaw Przygoda fonds (R6257-0-0-E) [Sir Casimir Gzowski monument committee records –chaired by Phil Givens]; B'nai Brith Canada fonds (R6348-0-9-E); Canadian Zionist Federation fonds (R9377-0-6-E).

Name Access

Givens, Phillip, 1922-1995

Givens (nee Rubin), Min

Subjects

Law

Politicians

Related Material

See Fonds 2: Benjamin Dunkelman fonds

See Fonds 18: Gordon Mendly fonds

See Fonds 28: Zionist Organization of Canada fonds

See Fonds 37: Gilbert Studios fonds (Negev dinners series, Zionist Building series, Portraits series).

Creator

Givens, Philip, 1922-1995

Accession Number

1990-9-7

Source

Archival Descriptions