Yiddish No More
Eddie Duke Remembers Kirkland Lake's Jewish Community
Eddie Duke interviewed by Charlie Angus
HighGrader Magazine January / February 2001
There is little to show today for the once thriving Jewish communities of Northeastern Ontario. A few store names in Timmins - Steinberg and Mann, Buckovesky's and Feldman's Timber - hint at the once large merchant class of Eastern European Jews. In Iroquois Falls one of the main thoroughfares bears the name Synagogue Avenue but the holy building has long since closed, along with the synagogues of Timmins, Cochrane, Noranda and Kirkland Lake.
Up until the 1960s, the Jewish community of the north was well-known and respected. The annual Purim Ball in Timmins, for example, was a high-light of the social year for gentiles and Jews alike.
In Kirkland Lake, the community had over 100 families - mostly hailing from Russia and Poland.
Eddie Duke grew up among the Yiddish speaking families of Kirkland Lake. Unlike many of his contemporaries he did not join the post-war exodus to southern Ontario. On a cold day last winter, Eddie sat down with HighGrader Magazine to share some memories of Kirkland Lake's once thriving Jewish community.

The head of the Jewish community in Kirkland Lake, and you might say one of the leaders of the whole community, was the Kaplan family. The Kaplan family created a special community. There was no division in the community. They were here first. They welcomed every Jewish family that came and made them welcome and accepted them as a part of the community regardless of whether they were poor or well off. If there was a function or a Jewish wedding, everybody was invited.
I know on a number of occasions the Kaplan family endorsed notes for people who came here and were trying to get started and were short of money. They helped them along because they wanted to have more Jewish people in the community.
The Kaplans had a nice home with a large upstairs. We used the upstairs for a synagogue before we had a synagogue. They were very instrumental in building the synagogue.
Mr. Kaplan had been in New York and Toronto prior to coming to Kirkland Lake. He started a little store on Government Road and it was one of the first businesses in Kirkland Lake. It is said that Mr. Kaplan helped bankroll Harry Oakes.
Kaplan's store had a bit of everything -- groceries, shovels, tools and things like that. They also dealt in furs that they had bought from the Indian trappers.
As things progressed, Mr. Kaplan decided he'd like to build a theatre and he did. He was able to arrange to build the Strand Theatre. Harry Oakes endorsed the note so they could borrow the money to build the theatre. Oakes took a personal interest in it and asked to see the plans, the size of the stage and everything.
In fact, he criticized the choice of curtains for the theatre. He didn't like the curtains.
He said, "If you're going to have a theatre I want you to have nice curtains. Make it beautiful."
So they changed their specifications and bought new curtains which were still in use when I came.

The Jewish community in Kirkland Lake eventually grew to about 120 families. They were all mostly in business although there were people in the mines. Some young men who took jobs in the mines had come up from Toronto. They were good athletes and basketball players who were glad to take jobs in the mines. But on the whole, most were in the clothing or food business. The Spiegleman family, for instance, were hauling vegetables and fresh fruits which they sold all over Northern Ontario.

Mac'a'bill
Harry Davis had a store right next door to the Princess Hotel. He was a Russian immigrant who started this system of revolving credit long before credit was popular anywhere else. If you got a job and you had your ticket (to work in the mines) you needed to have working clothes and rubber boots.
As soon as you showed the ticket to Harry he'd say, "Okay, we'll fit you up with everything you need. Can you give us so much a month? We don't want it all? Can you pay us a little bit every pay day?"
Everybody in town had a bill or an account at Harry Davis. Soon, Breland's across the road followed suit and then everybody in town operated this way because when people first arrived in town they were flat bloke. If they landed a job it meant they would be working and able to pay their bills.
I remember my classmates and I always got a kick out of the way Mr. Davis used to speak.
My classmates used to come along and say, "Hey, Ed, I can speak Jewish."
I'd say, "Well, say something," and they'd say "Mac'a'bill" which was what Harry used to call out when he was making a sale. When he'd make a sale he would say "Mac'a'bill" which was the way he said "Make a bill."

The Parklane
The Parklane Hotel was a pretty fancy place. It was a three story brick building with a nice dining room, comparable to the best dining rooms in the area. Mr. Greenberg, who built the Parklane, came to town in the early 1930s and opened up a small dry-cleaning plant. He used to run around with a small truck and pick up everybody's laundry. His first venture was to put up an apartment block which he called the Parkside. It had about six apartments in it and they were the nicest apartments in town.
Then he built another block on Government road further down on the corner of Allan avenue. After he'd built three apartment buildings he decided to build the Parklane Hotel.
There were a couple of Jewish architects in town who designed these buildings.
The Parklane was a really nice hotel which had mens and ladies beverage rooms. It was very fancy. But like so many hotels, it hit the skids when the motels came along because there was no place to park a car and there were so many cars.
Eventually Greenberg went broke and left town.

Old Man Scott
Another man who was very instrumental in building the Synagogue was Alter Scott. Alter, translated into either Hebrew or Yiddish, means old. I used to always think of him as Old Man Scott.
Scott came to Kirkland Lake in the twenties and he started building small houses. Any place with room enough to build, he'd build a house. Eventually he moved on from little houses to big houses. Several of the big buildings in Kirkland Lake were built by Mr. Scott and his sons.
Mr. Scott took a very active interest in the synagogue. He had been living in Montreal before coming to Kirkland Lake where he had been a member of a Rumanian synagogue. As things were changing in Montreal, the synagogue decided to amalgamate with another synagogue. And with the amalgamation they decided to build a new building. When Mr. Scott heard about this, he decided to get in touch with the Secretary, whom he knew, and arranged to get the pews, the alter and the Aron Harodesh.
Mr. Scott got hold of a big truck and drove to Montreal with a helper. They took as much back as they could and that was the beginning of the furnishings for the Synagogue.
The Aron Harodesh had been made by French Canadian artisans. I don't know who built them but we found out later on that they really were works of art and were quite valuable especially since many of the old synagogues over time were amalgamated or wrecked. And the fact that we held on to them and refurbished them made them quite valuable.

I remember that when they first put up the Aron Harodesh it was very dark, having been varnished many times and the varnish was really quite wrinkled. It wasn't very pretty. I didn't think it was very nice. Later on when the synagogue was being refurbished one of the workmen had to cut a piece off it because it no longer fit. When he scraped off the paint and cleaned it up it turned out to be beautiful old wood with perfect grain. So they decided to strip the whole piece down and clean it and it turned out to be quite beautiful.
We also received three torahs from the Rumanian synagogue. The Kaplan family already owned one, so it meant we had four. And if you think about, a torah today can be worth anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000 because all the people who did these by hand have died out or where wiped out in Poland during the holocaust.

One time, when I was in my thirties, I went skiing with Abe Adelbaum. We decided to go skiing in the Laurentians and we decided to stay at a place called Greenberg's Hotel. It was a popular Jewish spa in the Laurentians. I was sitting in this hotel minding my own business when an old man sat beside me and said, "I hear you come from Kirkland Lake."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Do you still have the synagogue in Kirkland Lake?"
I said, "Yes we do."
He said, "Do you have a rabbi?"
I said, "Yes, we still have a rabbi."
He said, "Do you have prayer meetings Friday night and Shaboss?"
I said, "Yes we do."
He said, "Can you tell me who is the Rabbi?" And I told him.
He said, "Can you tell me who is the President of the Synagogue."
I said, "It just so happens that I'm the President of the synagogue."
He said, "Well I'm so glad to meet you, there is something I want to know." He said, "I was the Secretary of the Rumanian synagogue that gave you the Ark, the seats and we also gave you three Torahs. Do you still have them and do you still use them?" I said, "Yes we do, and as a matter of fact it was from the larger Torah that I read at my bar mitzvah. I've always carried your torahs in our celebrations."
He said, "I'm so glad. I was so afraid they had all been lost and nothing had come of it."

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