TRANSCRIPT

Interview with I. Freedman by R. Ormerod May 17, 2004

R. Ormerod: What was; what was the community like after the Synagogue? (As a focus, I suppose, the synagogue was the real centre of the Jewish community.)

I. Freedman:After that, everybody, everybody pretty well moved away, who were moving away. The people who had been, the people who had been the core moved away and . . .

R. Ormerod: They would have been . . . do you remember some of their names?

I. Freedman:The Dash's moved away, The Kokotows moved away, Bill Jacks?and his wife moved away . . . Oh dear, if I had the names in front of me I could tell you, but most of them went to Toronto then . . .

And we just . . . we had nothing, we did not have B'nai Brith anymore; we did not have Hadassah anymore. But, after that there was no organization of anything. If we needed to have ten men for the minyan, they would have to go to somebody's house; If somebody had a memorial, had an anniversary memorial of their parents dying, which we do every year according to the Jewish calendar, not according to the calendar, the English calendar, but the Jewish calendar. They would have to go over to somebody's house, they phone and everybody would go over and they do what they have to do. The women never did; we never had teas anymore, we did not have Hadassah meetings - anything. It just was not there.