SEGAL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-02-07 published
Michael EDELSTEIN
By Leah KESHET
Friday,
February 7, 2003, Page A20
Mathematician, husband, father, grandfather. Born March 21, 1917,
in Mlawa, Poland. Died January 27 in Vancouver, British Columbia,
of natural causes, aged 85.
Michael EDELSTEIN was born to a respected, well-to-do, traditional
Jewish family: His grandfather, Zisha
ZILBERBERG, owned a large
brick tenement building and a grocery store; his father, Baruch,
prospered in the leather trade.
As a young child, Michael received a Jewish education. During
his impressionable teen years, Michael discovered a copy of Darwin's
Origin of Species abandoned in his grandfather's attic by a fleeing
soldier. The discovery led him toward a life of science, and
away from religion. As an adolescent, he excelled in mathematics
and physics. He was an avid reader, astute in current events,
and a scholar of history, who retained detailed knowledge of
turbulent events of the two centuries spanned by his life.
Rising anti-Semitism in Poland of the 1920s and 1930s blocked
higher education for Jews (via "Numerus Clausus" -- the quota
system). His sister Sarenka persuaded Michael to study abroad
at the fledgling Hebrew University of Jerusalem (in then-Palestine).
He arrived alone in that bewildering land in 1937. There he struggled
with the language and culture, and was beset by loneliness and
homesickness. Ultimately, this dislocation spared his life. The
firestorm that erupted over Europe in 1939 was to consume his
family in the Holocaust.
On the Mt. Scopus campus of Hebrew U., conditions were rough,
stipends meagre, and hunger and deprivation were rampant. War
interrupted his studies: With the onset of the Second World War,
Michael enlisted in the British Army, serving in Italy and Egypt.
He later fought in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, and
participated in defense research.
The 1950s were years of happiness and rejuvenation. He was reunited,
in Israel, with his sister, the single family member who had
survived Auschwitz. In 1951, Michael married a warm, caring,
beautiful native bride, Tikvah
SEGAL; two years later, their
only daughter was born. The couple struggled to make ends meet
while completing higher degrees, Michael a mathematics D.Sc and
Tikvah a botany Ph.D.
In 1962, the family undertook a journey, through Ithaca, New
York, and Michigan, which eventually led them, in 1964, to a
new home in Canada. Michael was recruited as a mathematics professor
at Dalhousie University in Halifax, where he became a founder
of the mathematics graduate and research program. He inspired
colleagues, trained students, carried out research, and taught
there for more than two decades before his retirement and relocation
to British Columbia.
Michael saw his own life as a series of personal losses: of his
beloved mother Ester-Leah (when he was 6), of his young wife
(at age 51), his sister in later life, and many others. By age
85, he had outlived an entire generation of kin. He struggled
with internal demons in personal interactions, often leaving
Friends and loved ones grieving over sudden, inexplicable estrangements.
A miraculous reunion in recent years, with his once-estranged
daughter who had followed his footsteps to become a mathematician,
led to a close bond. It remained unbroken until his dying day,
January 27, 2003, in Vancouver.
Michael was an exceptional chess player (gaining the title of
International Master in Correspondence Chess in the 1990s), but
mathematics was his first love and lifelong passion; he never
tired of transmitting that passion to students and even to casual
acquaintances. While infirm with Parkinson's disease at an advanced
age, he took pleasure in his mathematics books, and braved some
of the most notoriously challenging problems in mathematics.
Leah KESHET is Michael's daughter.
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SEGAL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-03 published
ENNIS,
Lillian
On Saturday, March 1, 2003, at Kensington Gardens, in her 85th
year, after a long and full life. Beloved wife of the late Dr.
Julius ENNIS.
Loving mother and mother-in-law of Paul and Laura,
Jon and Janice, Nancy and Monica, and Barry and Karen. Dear sister
and sister-in-law of the late Sonia and David
GARFIELD, Al and
the late Doris
JANIS, the late Pearl and Dave
DAVIS,
Ruth and
Josh SEGAL,
Bunny and Edith
ENNIS, and Rita and Marvin
WEINTRUAB.
Devoted grandmother of Simon, Joshua, Miriam, Naomi, Isabelle,
Sam, and Julie. She will be missed by her devoted nieces and
nephews and her many Friends. The family is grateful for the
attentive care given by Dr. Anne
BIRINGER.
Special thanks to
everyone at Kensington Gardens. At Benjamin's Park Memorial Chapel,
2401 Steeles Avenue West (one light west of Dufferin), for service
on Monday, March 3, 2003, at 12: 30 p.m. Interment Chevra Mishnayis
Section of Mt. Sinai Memorial Park. Shiva 8 Conrad Avenue, through
to Wednesday evening. If desired, donations may be made to the
Lillian Ennis Memorial Fund c/o the Benjamin Foundation, 3429
Bathurst Street, Toronto, M6A 2C3, 416-780-0324.
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SEGAL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-03-31 published
Scholar was 'hooked' on religion
Director of Centre for Religious Studies at the University of
Toronto was lauded for important introductory works
By Ron CSILLAG
Special to The Globe and Mail Monday, March 31,
2003 - Page R7
Like members of the clergy and their early epiphanies, scholars
of religion can often pinpoint the instant they decided to pursue
their calling.
For Willard
OXTOBY, one of the world's foremost students of comparative
religion and founding director of the University of Toronto's
Centre for Religious Studies, a defining moment came at the tender
age of five, when his father, a teacher of Old Testament at a
Presbyterian seminary, taught his son to memorize the 23rd psalm,
in Hebrew. One night, while an advanced Hebrew class met at the
Oxtoby home, young Willard was summoned, in his pyjamas, to recite
the psalm.
"See?" his father told the class. "Even a kid can do Hebrew,
so get on with it."
A decade later, another breakthrough: While accompanying his
father on a preaching visit, the elder
OXTOBY recounted one of
Jesus's parables, and then interrupted his exposition to say,
"Of course that was just a story. Can a thing be true that never
happened?"
About a year before his March 6 death in Toronto of colon cancer
at age 69, the son remembered the father's blunt words as a turning
point: "I can still recall the colour of paint on the wall at
that instant. And thanks to the right question coming at the
right time in my life, I've never had a problem personally handling
the symbolic dimensions of religion."
He did more than merely handle. Through over 40 years of probing,
analyzing, observing and writing in quantities that left colleagues
astonished, Prof.
OXTOBY bequeathed a legacy of scholarship that's
been described as passionate and exuberant. From Anabaptism to
Zoroastrianism, he dove headlong into all the world's major and
minor religious traditions and had the ability, so often demonstrated,
of connecting the dots between them.
"His command of detail was amazing," eulogized his former student,
Alan SEGAL, who now teaches Jewish studies at Barnard College
in New York, "all with specific knowledge of how it made religions
fit together and help explain what religion was all about."
A fixture at the University of Toronto's religion department
for 28 years, Prof.
OXTOBY was a vocal proponent of interfaith
dialogue, believing, as his friend, the Swiss Catholic renegade
Hans KUNG, that there will be no peace on the planet until there
is peace among its inhabitants' religions. In the specific case
of Islam, he called for the need to understand the faith's diversity:
"Lumping people of any group together, as if they're all alike,
is one basic strategy of prejudice."
Prof. OXTOBY knew his share of grief -- he was twice married
and twice widowed -- but he never lost his own footing. "He was
optimistic and curious about everything until his final day,
" said his son David, an executive with Ontario Power Generation
Inc.
Willard Gurdon
OXTOBY was born July 29, 1933, in Kentfield, Calif.,
just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, into a
family of scholars. Both his father and grandfather were ministers
and teachers of the Old Testament, and he spent a year between
high school and college accompanying his father on a sabbatical
to Europe and the Middle East. "I was hooked," he would recall.
"The world of the Bible, both its archeology and its current
events, came alive vividly."
After graduating from Stanford University with a degree in philosophy,
he completed masters and doctoral degrees within a year of each
other at Princeton, specializing in pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions.
In 1958, he married Layla
JURJI, the daughter of one of his Princeton
professors, and the couple spent two years in Jerusalem, with
Prof. OXTOBY as part of the team that studied the Dead Sea Scrolls.
His first teaching job was in Montreal, where he launched McGill
University's inaugural course on Judaism. But after a few years,
he realized he needed to explore the influence of modern-day
Iran on the religion of the Hebrews following their Babylonian
exile. He returned to school, this time to Harvard, to study
Zoroastrianism, an ancient faith born in Persia, possibly the
world's first monotheistic religion. So expert would he become
that he was made an honorary member of the Zoroastrian Society
of Ontario.
He taught at Yale University for five years before accepting
a full professorship at the University of Toronto's Trinity College
in 1971, a relationship that would last until his retirement
in 1999. In between were a slew of visiting professorships, appointments,
awards and fellowships, and authorship of dozens of entries for
dictionaries and encyclopedias on world religions.
Reprising his travels with his father, Prof.
OXTOBY took his
wife and teenage son and daughter, Susan, on an around-the-world
sabbatical beginning in 1976 to study Zoroastrians in the diaspora.
The clan lived in London, India and southeast Asia. The experience
"definitely changed my perspective on the transient nature of
North American culture," recalled Susan, director of programming
at Cinematheque Ontario.
Cancer claimed Prof.
OXTOBY's first wife in 1980. The following
year, he married Julia
CHING, a Shanghai-born onetime Catholic
nun and formidable scholar of Chinese religions and neo-Confucian
philosophy. The two formed an academic partnership at University
of Toronto that produced a slew of monographs and articles, before
cancer took Prof.
CHING in October, 2001.
Prof. OXTOBY was probably best known for two introductory volumes
he edited, World Religions: Western Traditions and World Religions:
Eastern Traditions, in which he wrote chapters on Christianity,
Sikhism, Zoroastrianism and general entries. Both have been hailed
for their lucidity -- examples of his ability to render complex
matters accessible without dumbing them down. He was working
on a condensed, one-volume version of the books at the time of
his death, along with a multitude of other projects.
In all, he travelled to more than 100 countries and studied over
a dozen languages, including Arabic, Ugaritic and Sanskrit.
He was fond of recounting several humorous firsts in his career:
That he was ordained a Presbyterian minister without actually
attending divinity school; that he gathered the inscriptional
data for his dissertation in one day; and that he smuggled pork
sausages into Israel.
A deeply religious man personally and a biblical scholar too,
Prof. OXTOBY never thought of himself as anything other than
a Christian -- but as a comparatavist, never an exclusivist:
"At no time have I ever supposed that God could not also reach
out to other persons in their traditions and communities as fully
and as satisfyingly as He has to me in mine," he concluded in
his 1983 book, The Meaning of Other Faiths. "My Christianity,
including my sense of Christian ministry, has commanded that
I be open to learn from the faith of others."
He extended that openness to his own funeral: "He wanted it to
be non-eucharistic," his son David said. "He wanted everyone
to feel welcome."
Prof. OXTOBY even had a snappy comeback to pious Christians who
asked whether he'd been saved: "Well, I'll be damned if I'm not."
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SEGAL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-11 published
SEGAL,
Murray
Eckler Partners Ltd. mourns the passing of its esteemed partner,
Murray SEGAL, who died on September 1, 2003 after a brief battle
with cancer. A prominent actuary, Murray joined Eckler Partners
44 years ago. In addition to his professional consulting activity
Murray served on the Board of Directors and as the firm's Chief
Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary for the past many years.
The loss of our treasured colleague and friend is immeasurable.
Murray headed up Eckler Partners' Actuarial Evidence practice
and was considered by many to be Canada's leading practitioner
in the field. He played a key role in numerous landmark cases
and was greatly respected by his peers, including fellow actuaries,
economists, lawyers and judges.
Murray was known for his love of his family, his community and
his profession. Murray's commitment and dedication to the betterment
of the actuarial profession was unfailing. Throughout his career
he served tirelessly on advisory committees and professional
organizations.
Murray's integrity and intelligence were matched only by his
humility, good humour and generosity. He was a great (and usually
anonymous) contributor to community charities, and passionately
lobbied for causes near to his and his family's heart. He will
be remembered always by his colleagues for his frequent and spontaneous
acts of kindness and for the respect he extended to one and all.
Murray will be missed immensely, both personally and professionally,
by so many. We extend heartfelt condolences to his wife Marlene
and his three sons, Gerald, Ernest and Moshe, and their families.
In honour and memory of Murray
SEGAL,
Eckler
Partners
Ltd. is
establishing a Murray Segal Memorial Award in Actuarial Science
at the University of Manitoba, Murray's alma mater. Donations
are welcome, and may be made through David
BROWN at Eckler Partners
(telephone: (416) 696-3016 or email: dbrown@eckler.ca), or through
Diana KASPERSION, at the Department of Private Funding, 179 Continuing
Education Complex, 406 University Crescent, University of Manitoba,
Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 2N2. Donations should be made payable
to the University of Manitoba.
Page B2
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SEGAL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-10-09 published
Murray SEGAL
By Bernie M.
FARBER
Thursday,
October 9, 2003 - Page A26
Community leader, actuary, political pundit, family man. Born
September 26, 1939, in Winnipeg. Died September 1, from cancer,
in Toronto, aged 63.
The Jewish prophet Jeremiah tells us of three types of behaviour
that gives G-d pleasure: kindness, justice and equity. Murray
SEGAL gave G-d much pleasure.
His father Jack, a truck driver, and his mother, Rae, worked
hard to ensure that Murray would have the education and stability
that their lives had not. Early on the boy showed a talent for
mathematics and entrepreneurship. His uncle Toker, a lathe operator,
made wooden candlesticks which Murray would diligently sell door-to-door.
A scholastic star in high school, he skipped grades not once
but twice. At age 19, Murray became the youngest person ever
to graduate from the University of Manitoba as a gold medalist
in commerce and actuarial math.
With a job offer in his pocket from a small Toronto actuarial
firm run by Sam
ECKLER,
Murray decided to go east in 1959. He
had to borrow the train fare from his future boss.
The job with Sam became the only job Murray
SEGAL ever held.
Today, Eckler and Partners is one of the most influential actuarial
firms in Canada. Lawyers repeatedly turned to Murray as an expert
witness; Supreme Court decisions rested on the precise expertise
of the testimony he gave.
But Murray was more than an actuary. He was also a dedicated
community leader. In 1984, he was appointed chair of the Ontario
Jewish Association for Equity in Education, a committee of the
Canadian Jewish Congress supported by the United Jewish Appeal
Federation. Equity was something Murray could understand both
in actuarial and moral terms. At a time when the funding of independent
religious schools was a concept no political party wanted to
touch, he forced politicians to consider it.
In the 15 years he held this voluntary position, he met with
every premier, minister of education, Member of Provincial Parliament
and newspaper editor whom he felt would help move the issue forward.
Murray was precise to a fault. He read every Canadian Jewish
Congress study, op-ed piece and commissioned report; there could
be no period, comma or sentence out of place. Much to the consternation
of professional staff, there were times when Murray insisted
a piece be entirely re-written.
Despite the objections of staff, Murray's will won out. We were
the better for it: The fact that the Ontario Conservatives brought
forward a tax credit for faith-based schools is testimony to
Murray's efforts.
He'll also be remembered for a wry, sardonic sense of humour.
Meetings with politicians were often fraught with tension. However,
a well-placed quip, followed by Murray's gap-tooth, Ernest Borgnine
smile, would cut through that tension like a knife through butter.
Murray used to tell me that his anchor, the person with whom
he shared his thoughts, goals and ideas, the person who grounded
him, was his wife Marlene. Married for close to 39 years, Marlene
and Murray had three children, Gerald, Ernest and Moshe whom
they gave a sense of what it means to be humble, gracious and
decent.
Judaism imposes upon the Jewish people the responsibility to
work toward the perfection of the world Tikkun Olam. The Ethics
of our Fathers tell us, "It is not your obligation to complete
the task [of perfecting the world], but neither are you free
to desist from doing all you can." Murray
SEGAL did all he could.
Bernie M. FARBER is executive director of the Canadian Jewish
Congress,
Ontario region. Murray
SEGAL was the first chair Bernie
worked with in his career at Canadian Jewish Congress.
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SEGAL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-14 published
McCAULEY,
Jack
Clark
(December 21, 1922 - November 11, 2003.)
After a full and cherished life, Jack
McCAULEY died peacefully
on Remembrance Day in his 80th year. For 46 years, he was the
deeply loved husband of Joan. Jack was the dearly loved father,
father-in-law, and grandfather of: Lyn and her children Carmen,
Lisa and Sarah; Laurel and her husband Guy
PRITCHARD;
Patrick
and Justine
SEGAL and his children Roxanne, Ryan, and Jasmine
John; Brian; and Gordon and his wife Catherine and their children
Peter, Heather and Jay. His many, many Friends and relatives
were very important members of Jack's life.
After graduation from Etobicoke Collegiate and the University
of Western Ontario (Kappa Alpha '49), and honourable service
to his country as a Lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy, Jack
enjoyed much success in business through leadership roles with
prominent marketing and sales organizations.
More important, however, was the pleasure he ultimately found
in his family, and coaching and counseling others. Jack came
to appreciate that the essence of community service was the enormous
inspiration he received from the simple act of helping others.
Jack left life as he lived it, the source of wisdom and counsel
to many, with a warm smile and handshake to all, and always with
a funny story to pass along.
In celebration of his life, Jack's family invite all with a happy
memory to join them at a reception at St. George's Golf and Country
Club, 1668 Islington Avenue, on Monday, November 17, 2003 from
5: 00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. In lieu of flowers, the family respectfully
suggests donations to your favourite charity, and that you be
certain today to cherish those you love.
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SEGEL o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-30 published
Eleanor
Ann
Veeder
SEGEL
By Rose DESHAW,
Monday,
June 30, 2003 - Page A18
Quaker, Raging Granny, canoeist, choral singer. Born May 29,
1933, In Rochester, New York Died February 20 in Kingston, Ontario,
of cancer, aged 69.
A national women's march against poverty, called Bread and Roses,
was winding its way from the West Coast and would spend a day
in Kingston, Ontario, in 1996. Some older women from various
city choirs had decided to form a gaggle of Raging Grannies to
officially greet the marchers. "Who else would be interested?"
someone asked.
"There's this Quaker who writes really good letters to the editor,"
an organizer said. "And she sings." I was commissioned to phone
Elly SEGEL.
"I'd rather like that," a husky, musical voice agreed when I
called to introduce the granny gaggle idea: scolding misbehaving
politicians with random hits of raucous public verse. At that
time, none of us knew much about the movement other than you
wrote your own songs, most of which made fun of the governmental
power-mad and their self-serving politics. When we started song
writing, Elly stood for fairness. "We can't call them 'liars,'"
she said. "A politician might be a misguided stinker but that
doesn't mean he isn't sincere."
Born in Rochester, New York where her father was a psychiatrist,
Elly was on her high-school cheerleading squad and went on to
take a master's degree from Harvard, after having spent a year
at St. Andrew's University in Scotland. With her husband, Stan,
she emigrated to Canada with their three children and became
a citizen during the 1960s. In 1974, when the Segels separated,
Elly took her master's degree in social work at Carleton University
and began work as a rehabilitative social worker.
In a recent granny gig on that campus, accompanied by kazoos,
Elly's trained voice harmonized on the Pink Ghetto number for
pay equity. "I had such a good time as a student here," she said.
Good times naturally associated themselves with her.
Forced to retire at 65, Elly rented a farmhouse on the Napanee
River, continuing the travelling ways that demonstrated what
flat-out committed living was all about. At this point she seemed
to have been spot-welded to a canoe. Not for her stale regrets
of missing backpacking through Europe, scrambling up New Zealand
mountains, or paddling Algonquin Park. If it was an adventure,
Elly was up for it. In the late 1970's, with no sailing experience,
navigational gear or radio, she helped crew a very small, leaky
sailboat across one of the largest stretches of open water in
the world, from Hawaii to Alaska.
She was a slightly built woman with a sense of humour the size
of a large forest and a laugh like the wind in its branches.
Her social work approach was as a friend sharing advice painfully
scraped from the granite surface of tenacious living. Perhaps
her Quaker belief in the value of silence made it possible for
her to hear so clearly what you meant to say. Serving on the
executive of the Canadian Friends Service Committee, and other
national committees, Elly never neglected her local Thousand
Islands meeting.
Diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer and given six months, she
filled the following four years with Friends and music. Coughing
more as the cancer advanced, Elly phoned shortly before her death
to ask if it seemed fair to go on singing with the Melos choir,
given her cough? Justice again. Anyone who ever sang with her
knew she was needed. A nervous first-timer standing next to her
at the Sing-Along-Messiah remembered Elly quietly tracing the
alto part with her finger, without being asked.
Attending services in Elly's memory were gourmet cooks, actors,
musicians, composers, artists, canoeists, writers, dancers, teachers,
scientists, scholars, activists -- all telling stories of this
comet who had streaked through our lives.
Rose "grannied" with friend Elly.
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SEGSWORTH o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-06-23 published
BAL,
Mary
Evelyn (née
ROBERTSON)
Wife of the late Kenan Y.
BAL.
Died
June 17, 2003 in her 96th
year at her residence in New York. Born in Stratford, Ontario
to Robert Spelman
ROBERTSON and Laura Gertrude
(SEGSWORTH)
ROBERTSON,
Mary attended Havergal College on Jarvis Street in Toronto. After
graduating from the University of Toronto she obtained her PhD
in Food Chemistry from Columbia University in New York in 1942.
She will be remembered with affection by her nieces and nephews.
Interment at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Tuesday, June
24th at 3 p.m.
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