At the Bathurst Manor Plaza, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The north end of the strip mall was demolished years ago. Sunnybrook Food Mart, the grocery store that anchored the plaza, is gone. Most days, the lot is empty, except for the teenagers practising parallel parking for their driving tests. Across the street at Irving W. Chapley Park, kids shoot hoops, adults play beer league baseball, and the public pool is open for the summer. But the plaza is a ghost town, and at the end of July, it will be closed for good.
It wasn’t always this way. When I was a kid, Bathurst Manor Plaza was a bustling destination and a hub of Jewish activity. There was Sunnybrook at the centre of it all, kosher submarine sandwiches and sweet gefilte fish smothered in spicy tomato sauce at Rachel’s Catering, and doughnuts and cheese buns at Isaac’s Bakery. While my mother did the grocery shopping, I’d dash over to Gary’s Sports Cards to buy a pack of cards (and ogle the mint-condition Wayne Gretzky rookie card in the display case). I got my first pair of glasses at Focus Optical.
READ: BATHURST MANOR PLAZA TO CLOSE FOREVER ON JULY 31
The Manor was an idyllic Jewish suburb, with unpretentious houses on large lots, plenty of green space, a Jewish high school, two large synagogues and lots of young families and young kids. And at the centre of it all stood the bustling plaza.
But the days when Bathurst Manor Plaza acted as a neighbourhood hub are gone. A few weeks ago, I stopped at King David Pizza, housed in the mall’s former gas station, for a quick bite. I was the only one there.
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The Beth Jacob V’Anshe Drildz synagogue sits kitty-corner to Bathurst Manor Plaza.
It is a large building, with a vast sanctuary and social hall. That was where my family davened until we moved when I was 12 years old.
On Shabbat, I’d sit with my father and grandfather in the pews, squirming until I was finally allowed to go out and play. Once I was free, there were card games on the stairs that led to the basement and handball outside against the wall of the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto next door.
The shul represented a cross-section of Toronto Jewry at the time. Many, like my grandfather, were Holocaust survivors who had started anew in Canada. Others, like my parents, were young families looking to build a modern Jewish community. It seemed as though all the children in the neighbourhood were the same age.
Those memories have been collected in a new book by Janine Muller Sher, who grew up in the neighbourhood (and was my babysitter and first piano teacher). She presents an authoritative history of the synagogue, sprinkled with plenty of pictures of the men and women who made it such a special place (see Sheri Shefa’s story on page 15). Dedicated to the late Rabbi Moses J. Burak, the erudite and holy scholar (and CJN contributor) who led Beth Jacob for so many years, the book is a worthy reminder of the people who made Beth Jacob such a wonderful place to spend a Shabbat morning.