No. 58 / March 2017
Leaside Life leasidelifenews.com
ALLAN WILLIAMS
Leaside Life Founders Ruth & Harry Goldhar Retire (Again)
Harry and Ruth in September 2016 along the Lake Erie shoreline at Rock Point Provincial Park, formerly the site of Camp Kvutza, where both spent time in the summers during the 1950s. By ALLAN WILLIAMS Harry and Ruth Goldhar are retiring from the community newspaper business, for a second time. After five successful years of operation, the founders of Leaside Life have sold it to new owners. And that means, now that he has given up the editorial reins, Harry, who has always preferred to remain in the background, can no longer do anything to prevent this paper from paying a richly-deserved and somewhat delayed tribute to two dedicated community builders, mutually supportive and complementary business partners, and all-round great people. They certainly have interesting life stories, highlighted by a happy marriage of 52 years and counting.
Ruth’s father had been a wellknown Jewish socialist in Austria at the time of the Nazi annexation in 1938. Her parents fled soon after, via France, to Mexico, for which they had obtained a visa, while her mother’s sister received a visa for Argentina. “Our families have kept in touch, amazingly,” says Ruth, who was born a few years later in Mexico. “My father got a job teaching at the University of Pittsburgh, but then he was kicked out of the United States because, so my mother claimed, he was suspected of being a Communist – it was the McCarthy era. We travelled a lot, and I went to 12 different schools. Even when we came to Canada – he had a cousin here – we lived in Winnipeg and Montreal GOLDHARS, Page 6
Former PM is the Laird of Leaside Pg 16
WHERE CANADA CAME OF AGE
Drew Hamblin’s personal connection to the Battle of Vimy Ridge By ALLAN WILLIAMS “It was a milestone in Canadian history,” says Drew Hamblin of Sutherland Drive, “the first time the four Canadian divisions fought together as a single unit, and the day Canada stopped being a colony and became a nation in the eyes of the world.” The Battle of Vimy Ridge was fought 100 years ago next month, on the morning of April 9, 1917 – Easter Monday. And Hamblin knows far more than most about the day “when Canada came of age.” He’s read the books and is familiar with the manuscripts, films and other sources. But the battle is of more than academic interest to Hamblin; there’s a personal connection, too. VIMY, Page 4