Name

Mel Lastman

Number

OH 290

Subject

Religion

Families

Interview Date

1 Jun. 2006

Quantity

1

Interviewer

Ellen Scheinberg

Total Running Time

60 min.

Conservation

Copied November 2006

Use Restrictions

Copyright is held by the Ontario Jewish Archives. Please contact the archives to obtain permission prior to use.

Biography

Melvin Douglas Lastman was born in Toronto on 9 March 1933, the son of Rose and Louis Lastman. Raised in the Kensington Market area, he attended Ryerson Public School and Central High School of Commerce, where he was president of the school council. Lastman left high school to work at an appliance store and, in 1955, opened his own appliance store. By the late 1960s, he owned a chain of forty stores, Bad Boy Appliances, throughout Ontario. Lastman lived in North York and, in 1969, ran successfully for the North York Board of Control. In the 1972 municipal election, he was elected as mayor of North York, a position he held for twenty-five years until North York became part of the newly created City of Toronto on 1 January 1998. With the provincially-mandated creation of the new City of Toronto by the amalgamation of Metropolitan Toronto and the six local municipalities, Lastman decided to run for mayor against the other major contender, former City of Toronto mayor Barbara Hall. He won the 1997 election and was sworn in on 1 January 1998. Lastman was easily re-elected in the 2000 mayoralty election; however, in February 2003, Lastman announced that he would not be seeking re-election in the November municipal election.

In 1953, Mel Lastman married Marilyn Bornstein. They have two married sons and six grandchildren.

Material Format

moving images

Name Access

Anshei Minsk Synagogue (Toronto, Ont.)

Lastman, Mel

Scheinberg, Ellen

Geographic Access

Toronto

Kensington Market

Original Format

Digital videocassette

Copy Format

DVD

Source

Oral Histories

In this clip, former Toronto mayor Mel Lastman remembers playing as a child at the Minsk Shul in Kensington Market.

Name

Michele Landsberg

Number

OH 294

Subject

Religion

Families

Buildings

Interview Date

Aug. 2006

Quantity

1

Interviewer

Ellen Scheinberg and Aviva Heller

Total Running Time

60 min.

Conservation

Copied November 2006

Use Restrictions

Copyright is held by the Ontario Jewish Archives. Please contact the archives to obtain permission prior to use.

Biography

An award-winning columnist, staunch feminist, and tireless activist for social justice and progressive causes at home and abroad, Michele Landsberg was a well-known and prominent Torontonian during the mid-to-late twentieth century. According to a biography posted by the University of Windsor where Landsberg was a distinguished visitor in women's studies in October 2003, her "zest for wanting to change the world has its roots in her childhood: growing up as a Jewish girl in 1950s Toronto, where sexual stereotyping and objectification were rampant and overt antisemitism was acceptable." As a result, Ms. Landsberg tackled a wide-range of related issues, often grounding her columns in events, places, and issues of particular interest to Torontonians.

Born on 12 July 1939, Ms. Landsberg attended Toronto public schools, spent time on a kibbutz in Israel, and graduated from the University of Toronto with honors in English language and literature in 1962. She was dissuaded from pursuing a master's degree by her male professors and instead became a reporter at the Globe and Mail newspaper and launched a remarkable career as a journalist and writer. In addition to freelance and full-time stints with the Globe and Mail (1962–1965; 1985–1988), Chatelaine magazine (1965–1971), and the Toronto Star (1978–1983; 1989–2003), Ms. Landsberg frequently appeared on television and radio and wrote three best-selling books. She garnered awards, including the first National Newspaper Award for column-writing, the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, and the 2002 Governor-General's Award in Commemoration of the 1929 Persons Case, and received honourary degrees from several Canadian universities. She also served on the boards of many community organizations, such as CARAL (Canadian Abortion Rights League) and Opportunity for Advancement.

After her retirement from the Toronto Star in 2003, Ms. Landsberg planned to pursue other writing projects and to spend more time at home in her garden and with her family: husband Stephen Lewis, three grown children, and two grandchildren. In September 2005, she was acclaimed as the new Chair of the Women's College Hospital Board when the Hospital ended its partnership with Sunnybrook Hospital.

Material Format

moving images

Name Access

Anshei Minsk Synagogue (Toronto, Ont.)

Landsberg, Michele

Scheinberg, Ellen

Heller, Aviva

Geographic Access

Toronto

Original Format

Digital videocassette

Copy Format

DVD

Source

Oral Histories

Canadian author and journalist Michele Landsberg provides recollections of attending the Minsk Synagogue with her grandfather in the 1940s.