Spadina Avenue
By Elaine Z. Markovic
I saw a man once,
withered arm held to his chest, protectively;
His heavy head drooped to one side
and one foot dragged.
People stared.
The lame foot faithfully followed
as he progressed down the street.
My heart was shouting after him,
“Tears to be wiped away, all things
Made New!”
Sometimes, even the elements
sympathize.
They rain down tears
from a mournful sky.
They too await the day of
Deliverance.
Chapter 1: Finding Laine
To say that Elaine was born into a missionary home means little today. There was a time when those words would have brought to mind exotic settings, foreign languages and intriguing new cultures. But she had her fill of that on the family mission field, Toronto’s inner-city Jewish neighbourhoods.
She grew up near the bustling mayhem of Kensington Market, where Jews from around the world, especially after World War II, crowded into the teeming narrow streets to find a bargain or drive a deal. Colourful baskets of fresh produce were lined along the sidewalks where the air was punctuated by the noise of shouting merchants, car horns and live chickens still in their cages. Cobbled alleyways were vibrant with conversations over open barrels with pickles or herring. Families and couples were drawn by the aroma of European bakeries to get coffee and pastries and for Shabbat (the Sabbath) pick from at least five types of challah—sweet egg bread—sliced to order. Behind the large shop windows were piles of fish over ice, glass cases stacked with waxed rounds of cheese and heavy blocks of halvah in gold and silver foil.
It was an old-world marketplace in the heart of staid Toronto, a bland grey city where immigrants found a bank and a church on every corner and solid middle-class proprieties. As a teenager, Elaine might have been embarrassed by the shouting fruit peddlers and raucous conversation between tailors and seamstresses pouring out of sweatshops. Yet this is where she came to feel most familiar, surrounded by jarring accents on hectic street corners.
Even today, Kensington retains many of its original quaint narrow Victorian “gingerbread” houses. In summer, they boast vivid garden plots or small squares of grass. Similar houses had once lined the market streets before they acquired storefronts and then brazenly pushed their sales-goods to the sidewalk. A world away from the average Toronto church parish, it was a remarkable backdrop for life-size drama, and the market streets of Kensington were just steps away from the broad thoroughfares of Spadina Avenue and College Street.
By the 1930s, Spadina, running south of College, had become the arterial mainstay of Toronto’s Jewish community. The avenue’s wide sidewalks had room for everyone with an opinion and a voice to hold a crowd. There were missionary preachers, union organizers and street-wise politicians of every stripe. When there was outrage or a strike or the people opened their hearts to a new cause, there was a march up Spadina—as they did in 1933, 15,000 strong to protest the anti-Semitic laws in Nazi Germany.1
At its lower end, Spadina was growing into an industrial centre for the Canadian garment and fur trade—the shmatte business—with a lively cast of entrepreneurs. The avenue was lined with dusty storefronts, each one a standard bearer for immigrant expectations of making a living in hats or lace, buttons or business suits, retail or wholesale. Down the centre of the avenue rolled the familiar TTC red-and-cream streetcars (the original “Red Rockets”). When the front doors slid open, people squeezed their way through the stone-faced newcomers, gripping bags full of groceries or dry goods. There was always a baby crying while a mother comforted her in some unknown tongue. When you got off, you couldn’t help noticing the chrome-gilded sedans filled with families who showed off the brash self-satisfaction of having arrived.
In November 1941, the Scott Mission was one of the newest ministries in the city but already one of the best known. Rev. Morris Zeidman and his wife, Annie, had been running the Scott Institute, a Presbyterian inner-city mission outreach to Jewish people, since 1927. During the Depression years, the Zeidmans came to citywide prominence when they expanded their ministry, going to extraordinary lengths to assist those who were impoverished by the economic tsunami sweeping the country. But by the early 1940s, those hard times were past. A thriving economy driven by the war in Europe meant that most people—and most churches—were no longer worried about the poor. After years of effective ministry, Zeidman became subject to petty complaints from his denomination about minor expenses. In frustration, he resigned his position with the Presbyterian church, closing the Scott Institute at the end of October 1941.
Giving up the security of a salary, missionary housing on which he paid no rent and the guarantees of his position with the church, Morris secured a double storefront on Bay Street. The day after the Scott Institute closed its doors, newspaper ads announced, “The Scott Carries On.” On November 1st the program of the institute would continue under a new banner: The Scott Mission. Even with a network of supporters and willing volunteers, they would face some very lean years.
The effect of all these changes on the Zeidman family happened well out of public view. The transition was hard on their four children, the oldest still only 13. They moved from the Mission quarters near Kensington at 307 Palmerston Ave. and College St. to a more conventional area in the east end of the city, north of the Danforth, between Woodbine and Main. The children considered themselves to be Jewish and had to cope with the culture shock of arriving in a typical Anglo-Canadian suburb. At the time, some 80 percent of Torontonians identified their origins as British. The open anti-Semitism among local children, even teachers, aggravated the family’s sense of isolation. (Very few Jewish teachers during the 1930s and ’40s were able to find work in Toronto schools.2) Nor did the neighbours bother hiding their prejudice. Some were particularly obnoxious, and one day the family came home to find the word “Jew” scrawled on the garage.3
Elaine, the younger daughter, had just turned seven. The family called her “Lainey”— spelled out as “Laine.” She was surrounded by two older siblings and a younger brother, all of them born three years apart between 1928 and 1937. Her practical-minded older sister, Margaret, had arrived while the family still lived in the original old Mission building at 165 Elizabeth St. Margaret had inherited her mother’s considerable musical skills in voice and piano. Alex, the older brother, was destined to carry himself with the bearing of a distinguished clergyman. He was a serious boy who enjoyed tinkering with mechanical projects, including a large crystal radio set, in the basement. The youngest, David, who would also play a leading role with the Mission, was a robust, happy child with great affection for his parents and siblings.
Laine was born in 1934 at the height of the Depression, a strikingly beautiful baby according to Margaret, but frequently ill. She was too young to remember her parents bringing her to Sick Children’s Hospital with peritonitis, which in those days was fatal. The revered family physician Dr. Markowitz was able to secure penicillin, which had just become available. Her fate was uncertain until she rallied, taking months to recover. Laine would always have a sensitive stomach and remained prone to infections, never so vigorous as her siblings.
One of Laine’s earliest memories was of her mother, thermometer in hand, deciding she was sick and hurrying them over to the family physician. Dr. Markowitz paid scant attention to the little girl, insisting that Annie immediately sit down and take a glass of wine.
At Christmas 1941, with the new Mission barely underway, Laine came down with scarlet fever. Public health officials treated the disease with extreme caution. Her parents couldn’t afford the $12 a week required to put her into a special hospital isolation ward and paid off the bill in instalments.