SEEGELKEN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-08-18 published
Werner SEEGELKEN
By Jennifer
LEWINGTON,
Jean
LEWINGTON and Antji
GILES Monday,
August 18, 2003 - Page A14
Farmer, opera lover, wine maker, improviser of machinery. Born
June 24, 1932, in Gibeon, South West Africa (now Namibia). Died
June 16, in London, Ontario, of cancer, aged 70.
The place called "Werner's Paradise" is special, hidden from
roadside view on a farm north of London, Ontario The Nairn River,
lined with weeping willows, cuts through the rolling property
as a fast-flowing stream. On humid summer nights, Sabrina the
turtle may poke her head out of a spring-fed pond at the sound
of her name. In winter, deer and fox meander through a nearby
woodlot of maple, pine and cedar.
This 14-acre sanctuary for people and wildlife is one of the
legacies of Werner
SEEGELKEN. A farmer "through and through,"
so aptly described by daughter Antji, Werner had a knack for
creating something from nothing.
For example, Werner saw the potential of a rough piece of land
on an otherwise productive farm of corn and white beans. He bulldozed
aside a few of the thorn trees and tapped into natural springs
to create two ponds that attracted birds and wildlife. Year by
year, Werner and his family planted native trees, creating a
place of beauty and tranquility.
Born in South West Africa, Werner was raised in Germany from
the age of 5 and as a young man emigrated to Canada after the
Second World War. He came with little money but sharp memories
of war-related privation. He decided to be a farmer so he would
never be hungry again.
In 1957, temporarily leaving behind his fiancée Marga in Germany,
he arrived in Canada and worked on a dairy farm in Ottawa. A
year later, Marga joined him and they were married in the fall
of 1958. At first, they lived in London, Ontario, where Werner
worked in several industrial jobs to save money for a farm.
Werner and Marga bought their first farm in 1963, after the birth
of their two children, Antji and Werner, Jr. During the next
30 years, the
SEEGELKENs acquired five farms in the London area,
including the Pond Farm of "Werner's Paradise."
Like many farmers, Werner was a frugal and practical man. He
had a talent for adapting farm machinery to extend its life.
In the wintertime, Werner was busy in the large metal-working
shop at the family homestead, tinkering and improvising to get
more from a cantankerous combine for the next crop season.
He knew what it meant to respect the natural environment. On
one occasion, he found a young heron with a broken wing. Ignoring
the bird's angry pecks, Werner nursed it back to health and released
it back into the wild.
Spring planting and fall harvest are the most exhausting times
for farmers. In addition to farming their own land, Werner and
Werner, Jr., worked the land of several neighbours, including
my mother Jean's farm some 30 kilometres away. In spring and
fall, the SEEGELKENs would arrive with their imposing equipment
and work all night, if needed, to beat any forecast of rain.
Since there was no time to stop for a meal, my mother would prepare
a picnic supper for them to eat on the run.
When Werner pulled up in his big tractor to meet her, he would
be singing along with the German operatic music that boomed from
his glass-enclosed cab. He always was ready with a joke or a
funny story -- or a blunt assessment of the planting conditions
or the likely crop yield.
Werner saw any visit to his family's farm as an excuse for little
party. Out would come the stubby glasses filled with his homemade
beer and wine. He made you feel welcome, even if you had interrupted
a sprawling Sunday dinner of the immediate family (six young
grandchildren), assorted relatives visiting from Germany and
Friends. Werner's big heart embraced family, Friends and the
land.
Jennifer and Jean are Friends of Werner and Antji is his daughter.
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SEEGER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-30 published
Melva MANCHEE
By Janice MANCHEE, page A16
Wife, mother, folk music supporter, fundraiser. Born January
15, 1921, in Montreal. Died May 15 in Ottawa, of cancer, aged
Melva MANCHEE had a wonderful, wry sense of humour. Even as cancer
wore her away, she invited the neighbourhood children to move
in if their parents bothered them too much. When her doctor visited,
she'd warn him to stay healthy for his most important patient
and she never forgot to remind her children that the cat inherited
everything on her death. She had the eyes of a thinker, but then
there was that quirky, humorous mouth.
Melva was born in Montreal. Early pictures show her on her toes
pirouetting across the lawn, and in cross-country skiing gear
boldly setting out across Montreal parkland. When Melva was 14,
her family moved to Toronto, where her father, Joe
LAING became
plant manager for Canada Malting Co. She left behind two large,
extended families for life in a strange city, with only her younger
brother for company. In Toronto, Melva entered Havergal College,
a private girls' school, as a day student.
During her Havergal years, Melva began to date Eric
MANCHEE.
They continued dating while she attended Trinity College at University
of Toronto, where she specialized in household sciences. The
Second World War only temporarily delayed their marriage until
1945. The couple's first two children, Rod and Ellen, were born
in Toronto and the small family moved west to Edmonton where
Eric took a job with the oil industry. A third child, Janice,
was born shortly after the move.
Melva was not a big fan of either the West or the oil industry
he said the wind was always blowing out there, but it was the
Americanization of the West by the oil industry that really upset
her. And she didn't hesitate to let her views be known.
The couple became involved in the small folk music community
in Edmonton and played host to Peggy
SEEGER,
Pete's sister and
the woman for whom the song Black is the Colour of My True Love's
Hair was written. This interest in folk music and concern for
Canadian culture was not particularly popular in Alberta and
Melva was happy when Eric took a job with the federal government
in Ottawa in the early 1960s.
This began as a period of relative tranquility for Melva, but
the late 1960s changed all that. Melva patiently and lovingly
supported her children as they protested for peace and against
war; her daughters became "liberated women" and generally pushed
the envelope, as baby boomers then did.
Melva's concern for the children of the sixties went beyond her
own. At that time, medical institutions, in particular hospitals,
were not providing sensitive or supportive care for young people
experimenting with street drugs. As a result, young people organized
to assist each other with medical problems and one of their initiatives
in Ottawa was to set up a street clinic. Melva worked on findraising
and providing nutritional information and resources to street
kids through the diet dispensary project. Since that begining,
the clinic has developed into Ottawa's Centretown Community Health
Centre, a large, forward-thinking and well-respected community
health service.
Melva loved words. She was one of those rare non-visual crossword
players. She could sit back in her chair, close her eyes, hear
the clue and the space configuration and simply give you the
answer. She was an avid reader and collector of Canadian fiction.
Robertson Davies and Timothy Pindlay were two of her favourite
authors.
When Melva was told she had terminal cancer, she gathered and
considered all the information. Then she made her decision: let
nature take its course. But while nature was doing its thing,
she did hers. She toured Ottawa's museums and art galleries one
more time and waited for the spring flowers. In April, they came.
Janice MANCHEE is Melva's daughter.
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SEEGER o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-29 published
A champion of Canadian textile workers
By Barbara
SILVERSTEIN,
Special to The Globe and Mail Wednesday,
October 29, 2003 - Page R5
A pioneer in the labour movement within Toronto's once-vibrant
garment industry and an early advocate of basic social-welfare
programs has died at the age of 105.
As a union activist, William (Velvl)
KATZ survived blacklisting
in the 1920s to establish the embroidery local of the International
Ladies Garment Workers Union and later went on to co-found the
Labour League, a Jewish radical left-wing mutual-benefit society
that later evolved into the United Jewish People's Order.
"He was a man of integrity, intelligence and idealism," said
his daughter Ida
ABRAMS. "He held... an exacting moral standard.
If he gave his word, he meant it."
Mr. KATZ, who died in April of heart failure, was born in 1897
in a small Polish town just north of Krakow. He and his three
younger siblings were raised in the sheltered communal life of
Hasidism, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect. Mr.
KATZ studied at
a religious school and later apprenticed as a cobbler and had
almost no exposure to the secular world until 1918, when he fled
to Germany to avoid military conscription. In 1997, he told the
Canadian Jewish News that his life changed dramatically. In Poland,
the only books were religious, he said. "Suddenly there were
books on every subject imaginable."
By all accounts, Mr.
KATZ became caught up in the intellectual
fervour ignited by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. "He thought
communism would bring an end to anti-Semitism and all other forms
of discrimination and injustice," said Ida
ABRAMS. "He believed
the revolution was just around the corner."
In 1920, a cousin who was suddenly unable to travel offered Mr.
KATZ a free boat ticket and he arrived in Toronto with the address
of the relatives of a German friend. Mr.
KATZ became their paying
boarder. In the course of his stay, he courted their daughter
Bluma and married her in 1922. Two years later, he brought his
brother Ben and then his sisters Lil and Eva to Canada. Similar
efforts to bring his half-sister Esther failed and she did not
survive the Holocaust.
Around that time, Mr.
KATZ quit shoemaking and turned to the
garment industry where he took up union organizing. Eventually,
his reputation as a "lefty" alienated bosses and by 1924 he was
unemployed. Ida
ABRAMS recalls vivid memories of May Day parades
she attended with her father. "People marched with banners and
flags and sang union songs. There was always the threatening
presence of policemen on horseback."
His job problems ended in 1930 when Mr.
KATZ became a partner
in a modest embroidery shop on Adelaide Street. Although he was
an employer himself, he continued to support the efforts of the
labour unions. In those years, Mr.
KATZ campaigned for basic
social-welfare programs -- such as old-age pensions and unemployment
insurance -- through the Labour League Mutual Benefit Society,
a Jewish radical socialist organization he co-founded in 1926.
Mr. KATZ had initially belonged to the Workmen's Circle, an established
left-wing Jewish proletariat benefit society but in the mid-20s
it ruptured over ideological differences. Mr.
KATZ was among
a radical group that broke away to establish the Labour League
which, in later years, even ran political candidates. In 1945,
the league was renamed the United Jewish People's Order.
In its formative years, the Labour League established several
cultural institutions that still exist today: the Morris Winchevsky
School, the Toronto Jewish Folk Choir (formerly the Freedom Singing
Society), and Camp Naivelt, a collective of 90 cottages near
Brampton, Ontario The camp was a popular venue for folksingers
Pete SEEGER and Phil
OCHS performed there -- and it was where
the Canadian folk group The Travellers got its start.
United Jewish People's Order flourished until 1956, when Mr.
KATZ learned of the atrocities of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
and disenchantment set in. Instead, he supported institutions
in Israel, and the preservation of Yiddish culture. Through this
he became Friends with Canadian Yiddish poet Simcha
SIMCHOVITCH,
whose latest book Toward Eternity: Collected Poems, is dedicated
to Mr. KATZ.
Mr. KATZ, whose wife died in 1972, leaves his daughter Ida
ABRAMS
and his sister Eva
GANTMAN.
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