Alex Rose

Proud of Jewish roots

When she was Nova Scotia’s lieutenant governor, Myra Freeman opened up Government House to the public. (photo by Alex Rose)

When Myra Freeman (née Holtzman) was appointed lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia in 2000, she broke down two major walls. She was the first woman appointed to the position, and she was the first Jewish person appointed to the position. In fact, she was the first Jewish appointee to such a position in all of Canada, and the second in the entire Commonwealth of Nations (the first was former Australian Governor-General Zelman Cowen).

“It’s always been my family and my heritage that have defined me,” Freeman told the Independent in a recent interview.

Her Jewish values, she said, were put in place by her grandparents, who moved to Canada around the turn of the 20th century, and strengthened during her upbringing in Saint John, N.B., the city where her grandparents eventually settled. The Holtzmans were one of about 120 Jewish families.

Freeman went through the Canadian Young Judaea program. She said it nurtured seeds to give back to Israel, to give back to community and to help improve the lives of Jewry on the other side of the world. These lessons were echoed by her parents – her mother was a president of the local Hadassah-WIZO chapter and her father was very involved with their synagogue.

“Over the years, I’ve never really lost sight of the fact that I have a responsibility to the Jewish community, and I’ve always been proud of the things that I’ve done in my shul, in Hadassah, in United Israel Appeal,” she said, just the beginning of the long list of a life of involvement in the Jewish community. But, with that, she added, “the broader community was a huge part of my life as I changed careers.”

photo - Myra Freeman — Myra Freeman *(photo from Myra Freeman/Historica Canada)*

Freeman’s first career was teaching, and she always thought it would be her only career. She loved working with students, helping them discover the joys of learning and the world around them. She encouraged students to step up and help others, to set an example by leading the way. She passed along lessons she had learned from mentors who had inspired her over the years. And, as she taught these lessons, she also took them to heart, becoming increasingly involved in community.

“And that’s when, in April of 2000, I received a call from the prime minister [Jean Chrétien], and he asked me to take on the responsibility as the queen’s representative in Nova Scotia,” said Freeman.

Aside from being the first woman and the first Jewish person to serve in the role, Freeman’s tenure as lieutenant governor, which concluded in 2006, will be remembered for some of her main initiatives, said Craig Walkington, communications advisor to the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia. For one, she focused on supporting education and childhood development. She also created a number of awards that recognized Nova Scotians who excelled in their fields, including writing, teaching and the environment.

“I think the one I’m most proud of is the Lieutenant Governor’s Masterworks award, which gives an opportunity for artists to showcase their creative talent,” said Freeman.

Walkington added that Freeman will also be remembered for opening up Government House, which is the lieutenant governor’s residence, to the public. It is the oldest vice-regal residence in North America – the cornerstone was laid in 1800.

“We call the Government House the ceremonial home of all Nova Scotians,” explained Walkington. “I think, for a lot of people, it was just this very big mansion on Barrington Street that they would drive by every day, and having it more accessible means that visitors and Nova Scotians can learn about the history of this province and the history of the people who worked and lived in this house.”

Walkington estimated that 14,000 to 15,000 people pass through Government House every year.

“We made it like our home. We had a kosher home, we had Shabbat, we had seders in there,” said Freeman of her time at Government House. “And I think one of the remarkable moments was we had a visit from royalty.”

When Prince Michael of Kent, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, visited Nova Scotia in 2002, he stayed overnight in Government House. He was scheduled to arrive around 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and Freeman had been instructed to show him to his room and then leave him be, but she had other plans.

“You can’t surprise royalty, OK? You cannot just throw something on them when they arrive,” she said. But, even so, “after I showed him to the room, I said, ‘Every Friday night, our family tries very hard to be together to observe the Sabbath and have our Sabbath meal. And we’ll be eating dinner at 7 o’clock if you would like to join us.’… He looked at me and he said, ‘It would be an honour.’”

Freeman said Prince Michael was attentive throughout the whole evening, as they sang “Shalom Aleichem” and as her husband made Kiddush. At the end, he told Freeman that, as a man in his late 70s, it was the first Shabbat dinner he had ever attended; he also said it was the highlight of his trip across Canada.

“It just goes to show that we take for granted … our heritage, and we might not observe it as much because we think it’s nothing, but to somebody else … he was so honoured to be a part of it,” said Freeman.

“Each of us brings to our communities our traditions and our culture, our heritage,” she said. “And we, as people of an ethnic background, like all other people of ethnic backgrounds, contribute and make Canada unique…. We care enough to participate and to become involved in community, and we give of ourselves. And, when we do that, we add diversity to the country and we enhance the social fabric of our countries.”

As Jewish community members, she said, “we have the responsibility to our home and abroad, because, really, our heritage is our strength, and we have to preserve that through our actions. We never lost sight that we have an equal responsibility to take our place in the secular community – in our city, in our province, in our country, and globally – because Canada afforded our grandparents a home and the opportunity to achieve.”

Alex Rose is a master’s student in journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax. He graduated from the same school in 2016 with a double major in creative writing and religious studies, and loves all things basketball, especially his hometown Toronto Raptors.

Pivotal role in Pier 21

Ruth Goldbloom stands in Nation Builder Plaza in front of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax. (photo from CMI at Pier 21)

The museum at Pier 21: National Historic Site opened on Canada Day, 1999. Built to commemorate the almost one million immigrants who passed through Halifax’s Pier 21 between 1928 and 1971, it was renamed the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 and designated as a national museum in 2011.

But back to June 30, 1999, the day before it all began. There was a luncheon for the people who had helped turn a shed on the water into a comprehensive museum. Chief among them was Ruth Goldbloom, without whom the museum likely never would have been established. Goldbloom was chair of the Pier 21 Society from 1993 to 1999, and remained active on the board afterward. In 2004, she created and chaired the Pier 21 Foundation, a role that she maintained until just before her death in 2012.

Also present at the luncheon was Rosalie Silberman Abella, who passed through Pier 21 in 1950 as a 4-year-old refugee. In 2004, she became the first Jewish woman appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

At the luncheon, Silberman Abella shared two stories. Her parents were married in Poland the day that the Second World War broke out, she said. Her infant brother was killed, and her father’s side of the family was wiped out in the Holocaust. Her parents spent four years in concentration camps, but both survived. In 1946, Silberman Abella was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany.

“It was their way of proving to the world – and themselves – that their spirit was not broken,” she said in her speech, referring to her parents.

After years of trying, the Silbermans were granted entry into Canada. Silberman Abella’s father, a lawyer by trade, was not permitted to practise law in Canada until he became a citizen – but he couldn’t wait the five years it would take to become a citizen to work, as he had a young family to support. So, he became an insurance agent, and inspired his daughter to go into law. He died just before she graduated.

“But he knew somehow it would turn out alright for his family because he was confident in Canada’s generosity,” said Silberman Abella at the lunch. “And how generous it has been! The child my parents had to rebuild their hearts in Germany in 1946 became a judge in Canada in 1976. Remarkable.”

Canada Day, she continued, is her birthday. And what better present could there be than coming back to Pier 21?

“I will never forget how lucky we were to be able to come to Canada, but I will also never forget why we came,” she said. “These are the two stories which complete me – one joyful and one painful – and which merge in the next generation into a mother’s irrevocable gratitude to a country which has made it possible for her children to have only one story – the joyful story, the Canadian story, the story that started at Pier 21.”

Every immigrant has their two stories, at least, from before and after coming to Canada. And countless many of these stories would have been lost to time, a bit more detail lost with each retelling, were it not for the efforts of Goldbloom.

Goldbloom was born Ruth Schwartz in New Waterford, N.S., on Dec. 5, 1923. She was known for her family’s hardware store and for her tap dancing.

“This sense of charity and giving back to the community – at all the community fundraisers and anything, she would always dance at those events, so the spirit was always in her,” said Carrie-Ann Smith, chief of audience engagement at Pier 21.

Smith was one of Pier 21’s first employees. She started working there in 1998, before the museum opened, and continued working with Goldbloom until Goldbloom passed away.

“She just stayed, she just kept volunteering. She was constantly here. She never had an office, we always moved her around,” said Smith of Goldbloom. “I miss her so much.”

The idea to turn Pier 21 into a national site started with J.P. LeBlanc, founding president of the Pier 21 Society. LeBlanc was a retired immigration officer with the modest goal of acquiring an Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada plaque to put on the outside of the old Pier 21 building. Before he could complete his goal, however, he developed bone cancer. Around that time, he attended a Dalhousie graduation ceremony where Goldbloom was giving the convocation address.

“This was the ’80s, when people really weren’t looking back and thinking of Canada as a country of immigrants,” said Smith. “And that was the theme of [Goldbloom’s] talk, that we as a country have never really thanked our immigrants. [LeBlanc] knew that he was going to get much sicker, and he was really taken with what she said and how passionate she was about honouring the immigrants that built Canada.”

LeBlanc asked Goldbloom if she would take over the Pier 21 Society, and she did. She began fundraising almost immediately, and decided that a simple plaque wasn’t enough. For years, she worked to create the museum. She traveled the country on her own money, raising awareness and funds about the project, and used her knowledge to lobby the government.

In 1995, Halifax hosted the G7 Summit. Traditionally, the summit’s host city receives a gift and, for Halifax, it was a promise from then-prime minister Jean Chrétien to help build a museum at Pier 21. The deal was, if Goldbloom could raise $4.5 million, then the municipal, provincial and federal levels of government would work together to match that donation.

“It sounds so modest now,” said Smith of the $9 million that brought the museum into being.

photo - The Wheel of Conscience commemorates the voyage of the St. Louis, whose 937 Jewish refugee passengers were refused entry into Canada and other countries in 1939 — The Wheel of Conscience commemorates the voyage of the St. Louis, whose 937 Jewish refugee passengers were refused entry into Canada and other countries in 1939. *(photo from CMI at Pier 21)*

When it opened, the museum contained exhibits about the history of immigration in Canada, as well as a database of more than one million immigration records. Smith remembers the very first person who ever asked for an immigration record.

“When I showed her the record, she started crying,” said Smith. “I just didn’t realize how profound the impact of that [immigration record] collection was going to be. Her husband had just died days before, and she wanted to make sure she had the original European spelling of his last name on his grave.”

Marianne Ferguson is another woman who received a surprise on the first day the museum opened. (See “Making Canada home.”) Ferguson had come through Pier 21 in March 1939, a Polish immigrant who had escaped Europe months before the start of the Second World War. While the pier was put to military use during the war, Ferguson volunteered there once it reopened, helping refugees get settled in Canada.

By 1999, Ferguson was an established member of the Halifax Jewish community. She would always ask Goldbloom to help her out at shul, but Goldbloom was too busy. To make it up to Ferguson, Goldbloom planned a surprise for her on the opening day.

“When I got to the pier, I didn’t know what to look for,” said Ferguson. “[Goldbloom] said, ‘I’m not going to tell you, you have to find it yourself.’ And I didn’t know, what am I looking for?… I had my son Randy with me that day, he says, ‘Oh, come here, here’s something from you.’”

It was a quote from an essay Ferguson had written in 1942 as a 16-year-old schoolgirl in Canada: “Everyone asked them to take us with them, but that, too, was impossible.” The essay can be found on Pier 21’s website. The “everyone” refers to Ferguson’s extended family, all of whom died in the Holocaust.

Ferguson only had kind words to say about Goldbloom, calling her “the heart of Pier 21.”

Goldbloom would prove that multiple times over the years.

“By about 2002, 2003, it was getting pretty rough to pay the bills,” said Smith. “It was just really a shed on the waterfront, one of the windiest spots in the country, and it was expensive to heat and light … when you’re a National Historic Site, we had that status by then, that just means they can’t tear down the building. That’s all it means, it didn’t come with any funding.”

So, Goldbloom decided to set up a foundation to raise money for the museum. Instead of going door-to-door and asking a million people for $7, she decided to ask seven people for $1 million. These people would be called “Nation Builders.”

“When she had the six Nation Builders, all of her friends chipped in and made her the seventh Nation Builder,” said Smith. “That allowed us to have an endowment. That’s what she wanted – that security for us.”

This year, to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary, the museum is putting on a special exhibit called Canada: Day 1, which looks at what the first day in Canada is like for arriving immigrants. Since Goldbloom was born in Canada, she never had that experience. But, as she would regularly point out, the only indigenous people in Nova Scotia are the Mi’kmaq – almost everyone living in Canada can connect their history to an immigrant at some point. She dedicated much of her life to commemorating immigrants’ contributions to this country and her story is inextricably entwined with that of Canadian immigration and Pier 21.

Jewish Buddhists in Halifax

Isaac Greenberg grew up speaking Hebrew, and he was raised with Shambhala, as well. (photo by Alex Rose)

With his lean frame folded behind a small coffee table at Just Us Café in Halifax, with his large wire-frame glasses and thinning hair, Michael Chender looks somewhat like Larry David. But although Chender shares David’s sense of humour and perhaps some of his neuroticism, the soft-spoken and measured Chender embodies little else of the Curb Your Enthusiasm star’s notorious annoyance and impatience with other people. That is not a coincidence.

Chender is a Jewish Buddhist, or Jew-Bu, one of a number who call Halifax home. Most of the Jew-Bus in Halifax follow a tradition called Shambhala.

In Tibetan folklore, Shambhala is a mythical kingdom that represents a just and good society. It is also the inspiration for a worldwide movement, which has its headquarters in Halifax.

The movement was started by Tibetan Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (Rinpoche is a Tibetan honorific). He escaped Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1959 at 19 years old, already a renowned sage. According to Chender, in Tibet, older teachers would come and ask the teenage Trungpa questions.

By the 1970s, Trungpa had settled in Boulder, Colo., where his Western following began to develop in earnest. He wanted to teach meditation in the West in a secular language. He taught that everyone was possessed with a fundamental goodness, and that life is worth living. A central philosophy of Shambhala is spiritual warriorship, which is accomplished by living a life of fearlessness, gentleness and intelligence.

Trungpa was known for both his incredible mind and for being an eccentric. He encouraged his followers to take pride in their heritage, so on Robbie Burns Day he would dress up in a kilt and celebrate with his Scottish disciples, and he would work Yiddish phrases like “oy vey” into his lectures. In 1986, Trungpa moved the headquarters of the Shambhala community to Halifax. In 1987, he died there of liver failure at the age of 48.

“He decided that Colorado was too speedy, materialistic, flashy, and that we should move to a simpler, more peaceful, calm place,” said David Greenberg, a former Jew-Bu and current Christian. He was raised outside Boston as an atheist Jew, and is conversant in Hebrew. He is the grandson of Rabbi Simon Greenberg, the founder of the University of Judaism at Los Angeles, a branch of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

When Greenberg was 17, he started reading Trungpa’s teachings, and joined the Shambhala community for the first time at 22. He met his wife through Shambhala and, together, they had four children. Eventually, the couple divorced and, in 2009, Greenberg converted to Christianity. Nonetheless, he said he felt more Jewish when he became a Buddhist, and even more Jewish now as a Christian; it’s allowed him to appreciate his Jewishness and not just take it for granted. For example, he said, he explains the Hebrew meanings of Bible verses to his fellow churchgoers.

photo - Michael Chender knows what he likes about Judaism and what he wants to take from it — Michael Chender knows what he likes about Judaism and what he wants to take from it. *(photo by Alex Rose)*

Chender feels similarly.

“I began to feel much more Jewish after I became a Buddhist,” said Chender. “My being Jewish … it’s deep in the bones, an ethnic thing. I’m very proud of my people.”

Chender calls himself an Upper West Side Manhattan product of the late 1960s – a Woody Allen-type kid who was high-strung and philosophical, the kind who was worried about the world ending millions of years in the future. For him, being Jewish meant viewing the world through Allen’s lens, not beneath a phylactery on his forehead. Religion was never a key component of his Jewish identity – he only knew one observant family growing up – but the culture and heritage always were. He is proud of the Jewish intellectual and moral tradition.

Chender knows what he likes about Judaism and what he wants to take from it. Not every Jew-Bu has such a concrete self-identity.

Isaac Greenberg is David Greenberg’s son, and a university student in Halifax. He grew up speaking Hebrew, and he was raised with Shambhala, as well. After his parents divorced, his mother moved him and his three siblings to Halifax. He was 11 at the time, and he lost his connection with Judaism for almost a decade. When his mother left Shambhala, when he was 17, he lost touch with that community, too.

“After first year of university, I kind of lost my mind … I just became totally untethered. I broke up with the person I was dating for a year-and-a-half, which set off this total spiral of insecurity and not figuring myself out. And then you just grasp the things that you know,” said Greenberg, noting that Judaism and Shambhala are his “foundations.”

Towards the end of his second year, he wanted to reconnect with Judaism. He was dating a Jewish woman, he said, “and she invited me to a seder and she was talking all about Judaism. And I was like, ‘Oh, I remember these things, and they were really great times.’”

Since then, he has been making a conscious effort to become more involved in the local Jewish scene. But he’s not entirely sure how.

“I kind of feel like an outsider,” he said.

As to why some Jews find their way to Buddhism, Chender said there are three common links between Judaism and Buddhism. The first one is appreciation for the critical mind, of inquiry and analysis. The second one is the importance of humour. The third is the truth of suffering.

“As my grandmother said to me when I was telling her about Buddhism, ‘You’ve gotta tell me this?’ We kind of know the truth of suffering in our bones,” said Chender. “So, it was like really coming home to some long-lost cousins who, actually, whatever they’ve been doing the last few thousand years, they had figured some sh*t out…. I wouldn’t go so far as to speculate where the lost tribes went or came from, but, you know.”

Making Canada home

Marianne, left, with her father, Otto Echt, and sister Brigitte. (photo from Canadian Museum of Immigration [CMI] at Pier 21)

Marianne Ferguson’s family missed the train that was supposed to take them to Montreal from Halifax. Just 13 at the time, she and her sister were mostly excited at the prospect of something new, although they were sorry to leave friends and family behind in Europe. Their parents, however, were apprehensive, worried about starting a new life in a foreign country. And that was before they got stuck in Halifax – where, almost eight decades later, Ferguson, née Echt, still calls home.

In Europe, the Echts had lived in a little resort town called Brosen, just outside of the Free City of Danzig, which is today the Polish city of Gdansk. Ferguson’s father, Otto, was a pharmacist and a hobby farmer, and they lived well. Her mother, Meta, had multiple maids; the children – Marianne, Brigitte and Reni – had a nanny, and every spring and autumn a dressmaker would come into their home for a week to create new wardrobes for the upcoming season. When Adolf Hitler came to power, Ferguson’s family was relatively unaffected in the beginning. Even so, her parents saw what was coming and began making contingency plans.

Ferguson’s father kept homing pigeons on his farm. He would go to Poland to deposit money, and send the pigeons back home with coloured ribbons tied to them for Ferguson’s mother to decipher. A yellow ribbon meant he had arrived, for example, while a red ribbon meant he had deposited the money. He was able to get away with this scheme because the guards at the Polish border assumed he was entering his pigeons into competitions.

The Echts continued living in Brosen as the situation deteriorated for Jewish families. When the fair-haired Ferguson traveled to Hebrew school in Danzig with her sister, Hitler Youth would yell at her to ‘Stop walking with that Jew!’ When the Jewish children in the region were no longer allowed to attend school with their peers, the Jews of Brosen opened their own school on a local estate. The estate was at the end of a long street inhabited by Nazis, and it was understood the Jewish children all had to be in school and off the street by 8 a.m.

One day, when Ferguson was about 11 or 12, her streetcar to school was late. As she was walking alone down the long street to her school, a man sent his police dog after her. The dog attacked her, biting her on the elbow.

“And all of a sudden, somebody raised me up. Must have been an angel, really,” said Ferguson in a recent interview with the Independent from her nursing home in Halifax.

It was the milkman. He put Ferguson in his wagon, drove her to school and deposited her inside the gate. Ferguson said that man saved her life.

For her parents, it was the last straw. They decided they had to get out. A member of the Canadian consulate informed them that the country was not accepting pharmacists. Fortunately, though, the consulate worker saw their little farm and suggested sending them as farmers. And so it was that the Echts found themselves coming through Pier 21 in Halifax on March 7, 1939.

When they arrived at the pier, someone called their names and frightened Ferguson’s father. How did people here know who they were? But the woman calling them was Sadie Fineberg, from Jewish Immigrant Aid Services (JIAS). When the Echts missed their train, Fineberg put them up in a boarding house run by a Yiddish-speaking woman, and many Jewish families came to visit them.

photo - Marianne Ferguson — Marianne Ferguson *(photo from CMI at Pier 21)*

“My parents said, ‘The people were so nice to us, and how do we know what it’s going to be like in Montreal? Maybe we should stay in Nova Scotia.’ And then they helped us with finding the farm, they drove us out … and we moved over there,” said Ferguson.

The farm was in nearby Milford, about a 45-minute drive from downtown Halifax. The Echts had to stay and work the farm for seven years as a condition of their immigration and, after their term ended, they moved to Halifax. Fineberg became a close family friend, and her nephew Lawrence became Ferguson’s husband.

Ferguson’s extended family was not so lucky. Her parents had applied to bring 11 of them over to Canada, and they were supposed to arrive later in the year. Cutting through all the red tape took time, but the process seemed to be progressing. Ferguson’s 11 family members went to meet their boat in Hamburg – but it wasn’t there. That day was Sept. 1, 1939, and the Second World War had just broken out.

“My father had bought a second farm. We were so lucky, it was right next to our farm. We thought we would all be together in the two farms. But it wasn’t meant to be. They were all killed,” said Ferguson.

When the war ended, Ferguson began volunteering with JIAS, helping Jewish refugees find their way in Canada. Many of the displaced persons were children traveling alone. Ferguson remembers one 17-year-old boy in particular who came through Pier 21 in 1948 and needed money to get to Montreal. Ferguson and her mother gave him $20 and some food. They also told him that he would become a good citizen, and he should work hard and make something of himself. Meanwhile, Ferguson continued to volunteer at Pier 21 until it closed in 1971. She began volunteering there again when it reopened as a museum in 1999.

Unbeknownst to Ferguson, the boy listened to her. His name was Nathan Wasser, and he had survived multiple camps in the Holocaust, including Auschwitz. He was trained as an electrician in Munich after the war, so that’s the work he first did after arriving in Montreal. In 1952, he met his wife-to-be, Shirley, at a parade for Queen Elizabeth, who was still a princess at the time. Together, they started a family, having a daughter and a son, and he ventured into the business world. Wasser eventually came to own his own shopping centre.

photo - Marianne Ferguson volunteered at Pier 21 when it was an immigration facility and again when it reopened as a museum — Marianne Ferguson volunteered at Pier 21 when it was an immigration facility and again when it reopened as a museum. (photo from CMI at Pier 21)

Through it all, Wasser – who passed away in 2015 – kept in mind the two women who had helped him when he first came to Canada as a scared and overwhelmed teenager.

“So I said to him, ‘You know, you have this vision of two volunteers. Would you like to go back to Pier 21?’” said his wife Shirley Wasser in a phone interview with the Independent. “And he said, ‘Well, I’ll never find anything.’”

Despite his doubts, Wasser contacted the Atlantic Jewish Council in 2003. The council connected him to Ferguson (her mother had already passed away), and they arranged to meet when the Wassers visited Halifax later that year.

On the appointed day, Ferguson and her granddaughter waited in the lobby of Pier 21 for a man with a blue shirt. Unfortunately, it seemed as if every man was wearing a blue shirt that day. Finally, a couple entered. The man was wearing a blue shirt and carrying flowers.

“My granddaughter said, ‘I think that’s for you.’ And, you know, he recognized me,” Ferguson recounted as she started to tear up.

Ferguson and Wasser stayed in touch until Wasser’s death, and she is still in contact with his wife. Whenever the Wassers came to Halifax, the Fergusons would have them over for Shabbat dinner on the Friday, then the Wassers would take out the Fergusons for dinner on the Saturday. Every birthday and holiday, Nathan Wasser would send a bouquet of flowers to Ferguson.

“He had no words for her, how grateful and how appreciative he was to the pier and the volunteers,” said Shirley Wasser. “I think [Ferguson] was one of the finest ladies I’ve ever encountered.”

“He did save his money and he listened to what we were saying. He said he owed it to us to do well. He was so grateful,” said Ferguson, speaking of her late friend somewhere between laughter and tears.

Halifax “owns” bagel

East Coast Bakery opened in Halifax on May 14 last year. (photo by Alex Rose)

Gerry Lonergan wants to put Halifax on the bagel map. “Why do Montreal and New York own bagels?” he asked. “Two cities shouldn’t own bagels. Why can’t Halifax own them?”

Lonergan’s East Coast Bakery celebrates its one-year anniversary May 14. Since he opened last year, he’s been churning out quality bagels. The bakery came in third in a local newspaper’s poll for best new business after being open for only 45 days – and the voting had started two weeks before the store’s first day.

Although Lonergan is from Montreal, he is adamant that his bagels are their own style, which he calls East Coast. There are a few things that set them apart.

The first is sourdough: Lonergan is the only baker he knows who uses it for his bagels. The second is that his bagels are kosher, even though Lonergan himself isn’t Jewish.

With a laugh, he noted that Chabad Rabbi Mendel Feldman “said if I do become Jewish I wouldn’t be able to open on Saturday, so it works for everybody in the community.”

photo - Gerry Lonergan — Gerry Lonergan *(photo by Alex Rose)*

About his decision to go kosher, Lonergan explained, “If I went kosher, it was another level of auditing, of standards, of quality that I felt a lot of people would have trouble following my example, so it would give me a leg up in it from a business standpoint. But, also, I thought it was the right thing to do, it would just add that extra bit of authenticity to these bagels.”

Halifax Jewish community member Josh Bates helped Lonergan get started. The two met when a mutual friend told Bates he had to try Lonergan’s bagels, when Lonergan was still making them from home.

“In terms of becoming kosher, I also introduced him to the Chabad rabbi who kosher-izes his bagels, if that’s the word,” said Bates.

Bates works in the mayor’s office and, although he didn’t help Lonergan in any official capacity, he was able to use his knowledge to help in other ways.

“He had a few questions around building code, getting approvals, finding a location. I introduced him to the executive directors of a couple different business improvement districts in Halifax,” explained Bates.

With a background in the electronics industry, where he streamlined production processes, Lonergan knew how he wanted his bakery to function and what he would need to make it happen. The entire back of the bakery is open concept, so the customer can see as the bagels and challot are made every step of the way.

It was important for Lonergan to find the perfect place to set up shop, in part because his machines need three-phase power, which wasn’t available in every potential location. One of those machines turns tubes of dough into rings, which are then each individually hand-stretched before being boiled in a pot of honey-water. The machine churns out the rings at a rate of 3,600 an hour, or one a second.

While living in Montreal, Lonergan visited Halifax a few years ago and knew it was the place he wanted to be.

“I came for a five-day trip and I just fell in love. I just said, ‘Wow the people are so nice, the ocean is amazing.’ I just saw lots of opportunity here, and I saw there was a need for what I wanted to do here. There was a need for artisanal bread, artisanal bagels,” he said. “Within 48 hours of that trip, I said, ‘That’s it, I’m moving.’ I came home and put my house up for sale within about five days.”

In less than a year, East Coast Bakery has become something of a Halifax institution. Aside from his bagels and challot, which are based on old family recipes, Lonergan hopes to add hamantashen by next Purim. But even if he keeps the menu the same, Bates said the quality of Lonergan’s baked goods should ensure the bakery’s success.

“No matter how good a bagel is, it’s always better when it’s fresh out of oven…. I like a thin sweet bagel right out of the oven and, until East Coast Bakery opened, you couldn’t get that in Halifax,” he said.

And the challah? “Best challah I’ve ever had,” Bates said. “When I go in there and buy a bag, I have hard time not finishing an entire loaf on my walk home.”