Overview

Where do you come from? Among the people who have achieved eminence on the contemporary scene, in the arts, in the professions, in public service, in education, an unexpectedly large number are likely to answer with pride, From Winnipeg, the North End. This book began as an inquiry into the forces that led to so rich a harvest of talent from one small section of an ordinary city on the edge of the Canadian prairie. In a series of eighteen reminiscences by former North-Enders, it attempts to reconstruct the quality of life in that polyglot community in the years immediately before and after World War II, and from the point of view of one distinctive ethnic group, the children of its Jewish immigrants. Jews constituted only a small proportion of the North End s ethnic mix, but as a group they quickly reached a remarkable level of acculturation and achievement, setting the tone and pace for the entire enclave.Today, urban growth has exploded the district s boundaries, and new waves of immigration have altered its demography; the North End that produced these people is no more. As the men and women represented here seek to recapture a distant past, they explore one common concern: in what way were their lives shaped by the immigrant community of their parents; what still holds fast of their particular background? In the assembled reflections there are insights into the particular nature of the Jewish ethos, and perhaps also into the universal immigrant experience. A composite evocation of time and place emerges, out of the shared lives of the men and women whose voices are recorded here. With them, readers may take their own journey back into the lost world of youth.

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9781550052107

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