Non-Jew works to restore Saskatchewan shul

Before and after photos of Don Robinson’s synagogue renovation project in Melville, Sask.  DON ROBINSON PHOTOS

For Don Robinson, the restoration of Melville’s old synagogue is a labour of love

Although he’s not Jewish and is a relative newcomer to the northeastern Saskatchewan community, Robinson feels a great deal of respect and veneration for the former shul he has been painstakingly rebuilding for the past two years.

“I have been told that this is one of just two former synagogue buildings still standing in this part of Saskatchewan,” he says. (The Beth Israel Synagogue in Eden Bridge, a former Jewish farm colony, was designated a municipal heritage site by the Rural Municipality of Willow Creek in 2003. It’s the oldest surviving shul in Saskatchewan.)

According to information provided by Tony Wohlfarth, a former Jewish resident of Melville – his father was a doctor in town and the local coroner from the mid-1950s until 1992 – the Melville Hebrew Synagogue was founded in 1921. A day school was added in 1932. At its peak in the 1930s, the community numbered about 50 families. Wohlfarth celebrated his bar mitzvah at the shul in 1969. The synagogue was closed in 1970. 

Robinson is originally from Montreal, where he was a general contractor with a particular interest in heritage buildings. About eight years ago, while on a cross-Canada drive, he stopped in Saskatchewan. He liked the province so much that he decided to stay and settled in Melville, a community of about 4,500 people 145 kilometres northeast of Regina. “People are friendlier in Saskatchewan,” he says.

The first building that caught his eye in his new hometown was the abandoned synagogue, although he didn’t realize initially that it had been a shul.

“When, at some point, I became aware that it was a synagogue, it drew me in like a magnet to restore the building,” he says. “When I saw the inside for the first time, looking at all the structural issues and the crumbling foundations and so on, I would have walked away if I hadn’t known it was a synagogue. That was what motivated me to save it and make it a mission.”

At first, Robinson was unable to locate the building’s owner, so he bought another place that he began to renovate to be his home. The renovations led him to visit the town dump on several occasions. As a result, he got to know the dump manager, who, it turned out, owned the former synagogue building. “The guy had owned the building for about 10 years,” Robinson recalls. “I expressed my interest in buying the property. We talked about it off and on for five years. After he died two years ago, his widow sold me the property.

“I bought it cheaply because it was on the verge of being condemned and was in danger of falling. I paid around $7,000 with the transfer fees.”

It needed major work, he notes. “It’s amazing that it was still standing. The foundations and walls were collapsing, and the joists were rotted. It was hard to know where to start.”

He began by pouring a new foundation reinforced with steel to fix the original foundation wall under the building’s kitchen section, where old bathrooms were in danger of collapsing. Then he broke up the concrete floor in the basement that had been badly damaged from the building not being heated, and from flooding and freezing over the years.

“We had to replace 80 per cent of the floor joists under the shul,” he notes. “They were all rotted. We installed new main beams as well, and once we had them all in place, we were able to lift the building – it had sank considerably over the years. Once it was lifted to the original height, we poured concrete pads and added steel teleposts, replacing all the original vertical wood supports.”

The Magen David facing the street was badly damaged and most of the window panes were broken. Robinson had to rebuild the original frame and repair a few sections and install new stained glass.

The old front porch was falling down and the concrete marker stone with the name Melville Synagogue 1932 was broken in two and mostly covered. He repaired the marking stone, levelled it and poured concrete underneath to support it properly.

He estimates he’s spent about $65,000 thus far to restore the synagogue building.

“The building is structurally sound again. It should be good for another 50 years.” Still to come, he says, is a new roof. “We also have to work on the windows and the insulation.”

Robinson says he’s respectful of the building and its history. He also tries to be aware of the many worshippers who once filled the synagogue. “I feel the former members of the Jewish community here watching over me,” he says.

Robinson notes that a lot of older peo-ple in Melville have stopped in over the past couple of years to talk to him about his project. One visitor was a former electrician who once worked on the synagogue for the Jewish community. 

For the most part though, he notes, very few people knew anything about the synagogue and the former Jewish community in Melville. “Now they know about the synagogue,” he says.

Robinson says he’d like to see the community in Melville use the restored structure for non-profit events. “Some groups have already used the building for their programs,” he says. He’s also considering renting out space in the basement to help pay for taxes and the upkeep. 

“I recently had someone from the Saskatchewan Archives Board come to see me,” he says. “The individual was thrilled to see what I have accomplished here. That tells me that I am on the right track.”