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Nov. 2, 2012
Making the world better
Peretz Centre honors Gallia Chud on Nov. 18.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
When Gallia Chud’s parents made the decision to emigrate to Canada, it was because her mother was concerned that her daughters, Gallia and Bebi (Betty), would grow up without family. History has proven that Nina and Harry Ullman made the right choice.
Gallia will be honored by the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture at a gala event on Sunday, Nov. 18, for her significant contributions to the organization and the community at large. Gallia has been a part of the Peretz since its beginnings and of the Vancouver Jewish community since 1945.
Born just outside of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), in 1923, Gallia immigrated to Winnipeg with her parents and sister in 1929.
“By Russian standards, we lived a very, very good life,” she told the Independent in an interview. “We weren’t poor or anything. My dad was a tailor, my mother was a dressmaker, but she didn’t work because he did very, very well as a tailor. We were fine.”
Everyone else had emigrated though – all of her father’s family to the United States; her mother’s family wanted to go to America as well, but the quota had been filled, so most of them ended up in Canada, as opposed to the United States.
“I remember her worry was that we would grow up without any grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, you know,” said Gallia about her mother’s desire to move the family.
Raised in Winnipeg, Gallia and her husband, Ben, arrived in Vancouver in 1945; Betty and her husband, Nathan Divinsky, moved here in the 1960s after they visited and “they were so enthralled with Vancouver ... that he [Nathan] immediately got a job at UBC and they came right away because they couldn’t get over the beauty, the climate.”
When Gallia graduated from high school in Winnipeg, her graduation gift was a visit to her aunt and uncle and cousins in Toronto, where she spent the summer at Camp Naivelt, just outside of the Ontario capital. “My cousin introduced me to his friends, one of whom was Ben, so that’s how I met him. For him, he insists that it was love at first sight. For me, it took me awhile to get to know him.”
After having met Gallia, Ben got a job teaching at a Yiddish school in Winnipeg, where she was attending the University of Manitoba – she had gotten a scholarship when she was at St. Johns Technical High School.
Ben enlisted, and the couple married before he went overseas. Gallia moved to Toronto, living mainly there, but traveling between Winnipeg and Toronto while Ben was serving in the army. In Toronto, she worked for Artkino Pictures, which was a distribution company that brought Russian films to Canada (Russia was an ally at that time).
“When Ben was discharged from the army, I thought he’d go back to school, back to university, but he got a phone call from Saul Wyne, who’s still alive in Vancouver.... Well, you know, I think the war convinced a lot of people how precarious the situation for Jewish people could be and, even though there was a Peretz school in Montreal and there was one in Toronto and they were just organizing one in Alberta, in Calgary,” they were starting one in Vancouver too.
Gallia had attended the Peretz school in Winnipeg. She explained, “The Peretz school in Winnipeg had two functions. It was a parochial school, but it was also an afternoon school, so I went to the afternoon school, which [took place between] four to eight, depending on what class you were in.”
When Gallia arrived in Canada with her family, she only spoke Russian. She was put into school, at six years old, only knowing the words “yes” and “no” in English. Yiddish came more naturally, she said, “because my grandparents spoke Yiddish, my aunts and uncles spoke Yiddish – my aunts and uncles had forgotten their Russian.”
When Ben accepted Saul Wyne’s job offer – he was hired as a Yiddish teacher and principal for the Peretz – she said, “I was absolutely horrified because I didn’t know a soul west of Winnipeg. I said, ‘What am I going to do in Vancouver? I don’t know anybody.’ Anyhow, we got on the train, we came to Vancouver – there was a huge group of people at the train station, none of whom I knew, welcoming us.... They just welcomed us like we were long-lost children who had finally come home.
“And, at that time,” continued Gallia, “Saul and his brother Archie Wyne had rented a large house on [13th Avenue] just off Oak, but when the neighbors found out that a school was going to be there, they petitioned city hall because they didn’t want the noise and the turmoil and the responsibility of having kids running around, so the committee couldn’t get a permit there.”
She said they ended up renting space for awhile at the Jewish Community Centre, when it was at Oak and 11th, “until one of the members ... Louis Novikoff, he was very savvy about real estate and whatnot, he sort of found this old, old building on Broadway, so that’s where we started.”
Development in that area led the Peretz to move from its 1173 West Broadway address (where a Toys R Us is now) to 45th Avenue and Ash Street. “But, at that time, this whole area was a forest and people thought we were crazy to move that far out because there was nothing here; it hadn’t been developed yet. I mean, as it turned out, it was a real bonus for us.”
The building that was constructed for the Peretz on Ash Street in 1961, opening in January 1962, was replaced by the current structure and development, whose groundbreaking took place in 2000, with an Oct. 15, 2001, ribbon-cutting ceremony. About whether she and Ben had ever thought, when they first came here, that the school they helped start would still be growing so many decades later, Gallia said, “We just never thought of it. It was just sort of day-to-day, carrying on and building and trying to keep Yiddish culture alive.... So, I don’t recall that anybody actually thought of the future; it was that we’ve got to defend what we already have because life, particularly for Jews, after the Holocaust, it was so precarious in a sense, that you really clung to whatever little bit of Yiddish culture, what was available, for fear that it will go, which it has now.”
Gallia described the demise of Yiddish as inevitable. “I mean, how many now speak Yiddish? As far as the language is concerned, it’s gone, it’s finished. So, it’s sad, but there’s nothing we can do about it. I mean, after the generation of grandparents past, that was the end of Yiddish.”
Going against the tide, the Peretz Centre’s programming still includes Yiddish courses and get-togethers. Gallia explained that “the initial philosophy of the Peretz has not changed, and that is to keep Jewish history, Jewish culture, to keep that alive.”
When the Chuds moved to Vancouver, the community was small, “but it just grew explosively because so many Jewish servicemen who’d been stationed here either with the army or the air force and even the navy ... were so seduced by the weather and the beauty of it. When we came to Vancouver, I think that we knew just about every Jewish family here because Ben was a teacher [and principal], so he was invited by everybody, all the Jewish organizations, to speak. It grew really rapidly right after the war.”
Gallia recalled how popular the Peretz kindergarten was – there were morning and afternoon sessions and the school had to rent a bus to bring all the kids to school; this was before there were public kindergartens. There were also afterschool classes for older children, a Mother’s Circle (Muter Fareyn) and an active parent-teacher association. The opening event at the Peretz on Broadway was a ballroom dance, Gallia recalled. Noting the tiny kitchen the school had then, she added that the amount of food the elder women prepared amazed her. “There was always that largesse of welcoming and including, and I think that the community saw it [Peretz] as a great asset, that Jewish history, Jewish culture was going to continue.
“At one point,” she acknowledged, “we lost a bit of support, during the McCarthy era in the States, because there were some left-wing people involved and so a lot of people were scared off a bit, but nothing ever happened. It was just the general fear of being more liberal than the society was able to live with or absorb.”
During the years following the birth of their two children – Gyda in 1947, Rita in 1951 – Gallia and Ben rented rooms to boarders, several of whom became prominent community members. When the girls were older, Gallia worked, among other places, at the Jewish Western Bulletin – doing secretarial work, the social column, reception and other general office tasks when Abraham Arnold was the publisher – and at the Continuing Legal Education Society of British Columbia for many years, until she retired, at 64. Ben passed away in 1986.
“I realized very early on that what I really need was stimulation,” she said when asked about how she has filled her retirement years. “I have never been bored in my life, and I can’t sit and do nothing.... It’s not a question of filling time, it’s just that I feel better. I have to feel productive, that’s the bottom line.”
Gallia has been involved in many organizations over the years, and is still active in a few, including, obviously, the Peretz Centre – “my top priority,” she said – as well as the United Jewish People’s Order and the National Council of Jewish Women. “When I have nothing special to do, I either cook or bake something to put in the freezer. I belong to two book clubs; I still love reading.”
Gallia was involved with the Peretz PTA, has served as its president and is still very active, including organizing the home baking that is served at many Peretz functions and being the contact person for events such as the Fraytik Tsu Nakht and a once-a-month speaker/discussion program.
“People have different motivations, people have different attachments,” said Gallia about what keeps her going, in addition to her family that now includes four great-grandchildren. “I’m still attached to the Yiddish language, and people say, ‘Forget it, who’s going to use it?’ It’s really very hard for me to define [what keeps it going]. It’s even hard for me to define what keeps me going.”
She added, “I’m still interested in what’s happening.... Some people just feel better when they are involved in doing something worthwhile and some people are happy just to be where they are and [doing] what they’re doing. So, I guess I’m in the camp of still being involved in what happens to, not only my family, who are my first great love, and now, my great-grandchildren, that operation, I still keep wondering what their life is going to be like when they grow up.
“There’s very little that I can accomplish at this stage, but I’m still ready to put all my energy into something that will make this a better world, not only for my great-grandchildren, but, of course, for everybody. And, I tell this to Gyda and Rita every morning when I wake up, I’m glad I’m still alive to see what’s happening. So, I’m no different from any other mother, grandmother, great-grandmother.... I just want it to be a better world for the upcoming generations.”
The banquet honoring Gallia Chud will take place at the Peretz Centre, 6184 Ash St., on Nov. 18, 6 p.m. It includes dinner, entertainment by Claire Klein Osipov, Wendy Bross Stuart, Saul Berson and Jeannie Corsi, and emcee Stephen Kaplan. Tickets are $45 before Nov. 12; $50 afterwards (children under 13 and b’nai mitzvah grads under 25 are $22.50/$25). Reservations are required to 604-325-1812.
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