R oz Usiskin writes about Winnipeg's Jewish women of the left.
Former Manitoba attorney-general Roland Penner recalls his Jewish mother, Rose, and her early involvement in "radical" circles.
Dee Dee Rizzo offers a "personal perspective" on her mom, longtime Mount Carmel Clinic head Anne Ross.
And Fred Narvey writes about Winnipeg's leftist theatre of the 1930s.
Those are just four of 20 essays in Jewish Life and Times: Volume VIII: Jewish Radicalism in Winnipeg, 1905-1960.
The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada (JHC), the publisher, launched the 224-page softcover book June 15 at a ceremony in the JHC's Holocaust Education Centre.
And some of the key people involved explained how it happened.
Harold Buchwald came up with the idea in the 1970s of holding a conference on Jewish radicalism in Winnipeg.
"I was one of two or three people who felt very strongly this was an era that had not received its proper historical setting," the prominent local Jewish lawyer told an audience of several dozen.
Buchwald, Usiskin, a past president of the Jewish Historical Society and its successor, the JHC, and the JHC, itself, organized a conference on that subject that took place here two years ago.
The book features essays by scholars, Jewish Winnipeggers with family connections to the Jewish left and others who spoke at that September, 2001 gathering at the Asper Jewish Community Campus.
The symposium was "a living portrait of an era of our lives so many of us had lived through," Buchwald told the book launch crowd.
Born and brought up in the South End, he was just an "observer" of the Jewish radical movement of decades ago, concentrated in the North End.
"But I felt that epoch in Jewish history, in Canadian history, had to be recorded," Buchwald said.
He also made a point of "dressing up" for the book launch, despite the hot weather, in tribute to the Jewish participants in a Winnipeg 1932 May Day parade, pictured on the book's cover.
"When you see the people, how they're marching down Main Street, demanding work, they're all dressed in their Sunday best - or Shabbes best - in their suits and ties. I felt I could do no less - even when it's 32."
Daniel Stone, a University of Winnipeg history professor and JHC member, edited this essay collection, which also includes more than two dozen historical photographs.
"I'm very pleased to have been asked to participate in this - the frosting on the cake - the launching of this book," Stone concluded.
Jewish Life and Times: Volume VIII: Jewish Radicalism in Winnipeg, 1905-1960, can be purchased at the Jewish Heritage Centre. To access the centre's website, click here.
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