Anja Borck reports in her 2009 article “SEEN BUT IGNORED
Concordia University’s Henry Foss Hall Building
in Montréal“:

“The chair of SGWU’s Fine Arts Department, Alfred Pinsky, was not satisfied with that visual trick and insisted on a more substantial base for the optically heavy top. He introduced the fieldstone for the sidewalls of the foyer, an unusual look in high-rise buildings.”

I just finished reading Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society, a series of conversations between Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim. Among the many fascinating topics discussed in the book is the conflict Barenboim experienced in regards to playing Wagner’s operas in Israel after the Holocaust. In 1936, when Toscanini conducted the Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra (founded that year by Bronislaw Huberman) Act 1 and Act 3 of Wagner’s Lohengrin were on the program (despite his well known antisemitism).

This discussion of the esoteric world of opera and the Jewish connections prompted me to pick up a book that had been sitting in my library for months (which I had scavenged from a heap at the side of the road) on the Canadian Jewish prima donna Pauline Donalda.

Her biography – born to poor Russian and Polish Jewish immigrant parents, a great uncle who was a cantor at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, discovered by Mrs. De Sola, a student at Royal Victoria College, a marriage to a non-Jew that troubled her family, advocacy for Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, a stunning musical career, founding of the Opera Guild of Montreal….. etc. is fascinating.

And there were many connections with Said and Barenboim’s conversation, including this: In 1937 Donalda took a ship back from Paris to Montreal. Also on this ship was Bronislaw Huberman (himself a famous Polish violinist). He was on his way to North America to raise funds for the Palestine Philharmonic orchestra, composed of Jewish musician who had been driven out or unwilling to work in Europe because of escalating antisemitism. Upon returning to Montreal Donalda organized a concert at Her Majesty’s Theatre that raised $3000 for the orchestra.

Occupation by Bill Reid, National Film Board of Canada

This documentary about the 1968 Political Science Students Association occupation of the 4th floor of Stephen Leacock Building at McGill University features an incredible cast of Jewish subjects and crew, though their Jewishness is never named in the film.

It first attracted my attention because two Moroccan Jews were on the film crew. Jacques Bensimon provided additional directing and Pierre Lasry was one of the editors.

It also features among others : Harry Edel (student activist), Janice Stein (PhD student in Political Science at the time), John Shingler (former president of the National Union of South African students and Political Science Professor at the time).

For more information: check out: “An oral history of the 1968 Political Science student strike.”