Edmonton's Jewish community shows a pattern of development similar
to Calgary's. Community pioneer Abe Cristall started a liquor
store shortly after arriving in Edmonton in 1893.13 William
Diamond moved to the city in 1905 and helped set up the first
Jewish religious council in the province.14 The following year,
Hyman Goldstick moved from Toronto to Edmonton and became
Alberta's first full-time Jewish spiritual leader, with
responsibilities in both Calgary and Edmonton and points in
between.15 Goldstick conducted Edmonton's first Jewish services in
the Oddfellows' Hall on Jasper Avenue.16 Like its Calgary
counterpart, the Edmonton Jewish community soon established a
synagogue, religious school, cemetery, mutual aid societies, and
other necessary elements of Jewish community life. In both Calgary
and Edmonton, separate schools provided education in Hebrew and
Yiddish.
In 1893, while the Jewish communities of Calgary and Edmonton were
still in their infancy. Alberta's first Jewish farming settlements
began near Fort Macleod and at Pine Lake, near Red Deer. The Calgary
Herald, in a July 1893 editorial, evoked the traditional
view that Jews were unfit to till the soil:
If these people are the only settlers that can be obtained for the
northwest, there would even then be no reason to spend money in
bringing them here to let them loose on the public, while
practical men who can turn the prairies into fruitful fields are
being forced away by the petty annoyances to which they are
subjected on attempting to come into the country.17
In its time, the Pine Lake settlement had the largest
concentration of Jews in what is today Alberta. Supported by the
Russo-Jewish Committee, the Pine Lake settlement comprised some
seventy individuals. These settlers experienced harsh pioneer
conditions, compounded by the complete absence of Jewish community
institutions in this remote area. As with some other pioneer
farmers, their efforts failed; the settlement disappeared in 1895
and most of the settlers soon left the region.18 The smaller
settlement at Fort Macleod also failed, and more than a decade
passed before Jewish agricultural efforts resumed.
Jewish farming in southern Alberta began again in earnest after
the turn of
the century, with the establishment of bloc settlements at Trochu
(1905), Rumsey (1906), and Sibbald (1911). Unlike the collective
colonies of such groups as Doukhobors and Hutterites, these Jewish
settlements were characterized by private land ownership. With the
help of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), an
international organization established in 1882, Jewish
homesteaders could locate in areas of contiguous Jewish
settlement. Initially, these settlements consisted mostly of
single men, or men whose families remained in Calgary, in eastern
cities, or in Europe. These men endured primitive living
conditions and backbreaking labour. With the arrival of a Canadian
Northern Railway branch line in 1910, living conditions improved.
Sod huts gave way to farmhouses, single men soon shared their
homesteads with wives and children, and Jewish merchants opened
businesses in the new railway villages of Rumsey and Trochu.
With JCA assistance, settlers established the essential elements
of Jewish existence: religious services and instruction,
circumcision, and the provision of kosher food. In Rumsey, where
many farmers in the area were Jewish, residents built a synagogue
in 1918 and homesteader Elias Sengaus provided religious
leadership and education. Jewish settlers enjoyed good relations
with their non-Jewish neighbours, fostered through farmers'
organizations, sporting events, and public school attendance.
According to Harry Isenstein, who observed the Rumsey settlement
in its early days,
These people had earned the respect of their neighbors.
Recognition was given for a group who came to a strange land
without the language of the country, without the required skills
and experience but with the will and courage to survive.19
The Montefiore colony, near the town of Sibbald on the
Alberta-Saskatchewan border, enjoyed similar growth. Its one
hundred settlers built a synagogue around 1914 and hired a rabbi
and a Yiddish teacher.
Heritage Community Foundation Presents
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