קנדה זוהרת: מטבע לוני מיוחד הנופק ליום ההולדת המאה וחמישים
המטבעה המלכותית הקנדית החליטה להנפיק מטבע מיוחד ליום ההולדת המאה וחמישים של קנדה, שנחגג ביום שבת האחרון (ה-1 ביולי). במטבעה הוחלט להנפיק כשלושה מיליון מטבעות של שני דולר (לוני) זוהרים, ולהכניסם למחזור הכללי. מדובר באורות של זוהר הצפוני היחודיים לקנדה (ירוק וכחול) מעל שני חותרים אינדיאנים בסירת קאנו, באגם שמוקף בעצים. יצויין כי המטבע מורכב משתי מתכות והאורות שמכילים חומר זוהר יחודי בוהקים בלילה. במקביל הונפק מטבע זוהר לאספנים לחגיגות המאה וחמישים שנה עם ציור של דגל המדינה האדום לבן ומעליו זיקוקים (שעלותו 30 דולר).
קנדה היא בעצם המדינה הראשונה בעולם שהטביעה כבר מבטע זוהר וזאת כבר החל משנת 2004. המטבעות הזוהרים מעשי ידי המטבעה יועדו עד כה לאספנים בלבד ולא הוכנסו למחזור הכללי כמו המטבע הנוכחי.
המטבעה המלכותית הקנדית ממוקמת באוטווה ויש לה סניפים בווניפג וונקובר.
האם הייתה חצר? בטח שהייתה חצר: תושב נובה סקוטיה רכש בית עם חצר ופתאם התברר לו שהחצר לא שלו
ריאן מנינג, תושב הישוב הקטן סלומון ריוור באזור העיר הליפקס במחוז נובה סקוטיה שבמזרח המדינה, נדהם לדעת יום אחד שהחצר שצמודה לביתו איננה שלו. לפני מספר חודשים במהלך היום נקש מישהו על דלת ביתו של מנינג, והציע לו שירכוש את החצר שמאחורי ביתו. מנינג הנדהם מדברי האיש אמר לו נחרצות: “האם אתה השתגעת? החצר שייכת לי ולא לאף אחד אחר”. הוא אף הראה למציע את חוזה לרכישת הבית עם החצר שמאחוריו.
מנינג רכש את הקוטג’ והחצר הצמודה לו (שכולה מגודרת מסביב) בהליך מכירה, שהנוהל על ידי ההוצאה לפועל לפני כשלוש שנים. לאחר שהעביר את הכסף להוצאה לפועל הוא קיבל את מפתחות הבית וכן את מפתחות צריף קטן שנמצא בקצה החצר שמאחור. מנינג היה מרוצה מהעיסקה שעשה, תיכנן לבצע שיפוצים נרחבים בבית ומחוצה לו ולהשכיר חלק ממנו. אך כאמור הסתבר לו פתאם ביום בהיר אחד שרק הבית שייך לו.
בצר לו פנה מנינג לעורך דינו שיצא בינתיים לפנסיה, לסוכן הנדל”ן שתיוווך בעיסקה לרכישת הבית והחצר שגם הוא פרש מעבודה, לחברה שהוציאה את הבית למכירה במסגרת ההוצאה לפועל, לבעלים הקודם של הכנס והחצר, וכן לחברה שהייתה אחראית על שינוי שם בעלי הנכס ברישום בטאבו. למרות שכל הנוגעים בדבר הבינו את מצוקתו הקשה, אף אחד מהם לא הסכים לקחת אחראיות והם כולם אחד אחר השני, השיבו את פניו ריקם. מנינג הספיק בינתיים ללמוד כי הבית והחצר עומדים על מגרשים שונים וזה כנראה המקור לבעייה שנוצרה. הוא לא ידע מה הוא עוד יכל לעשות כדי להשיב לעצמו את החצר שרכש בכסף מלא.
בלית ברירה פנה מנינג לכתב של תחנת טלוויזיה מקומית של רשת החדשות הציבורית הסי.בי.סי, שהתחיל לחקור את הפרשה המסובכת לעומקה. לכתב התברר שקרתה טעות חמורה ברישום בעת הליך המכירה של הנכס, ובעצם רק הבית נרשם על שמו של מנינג למרות שהוא לא ידע על כך. הצדדים הקשורים בעיסקת מכירת הבית הבינו שכדאי להם להתעשת מהר לאור התערבות עיתונאי הסי.בי.סי, ואכן הם הצליחו להגיע להסכם עם מנינג שמקנה לו בברור בעלות חוקית על החצר שנגזלה ממנו. מנינג יכול עתה להירגע: מאחורי ביתו נמצאת באופן חוקי החצר שלו והוא יכול להמשיך ולתכנן את השיפוצים בכל הנכס. הוא יכול גם להגיד לעצמו: “מזל שיש תקשורת”.
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.
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.”
Alex Roseis 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. He wrote this article as part of an internship with the Jewish Independent.
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.
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.
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.
Alex Roseis 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. He wrote this article as part of an internship with the Jewish Independent.
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.”
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.”
Alex Roseis 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. He wrote this article as part of an internship with the Jewish Independent.
