[QUOTE=RickJay]
One hesitates to demand cites for such emotional things, but really, it would be nice in a case like this to see a photograph of something like this happening. Without that, I’m afraid it’s fair to very seriously doubt it.
People’s memories are remarkably malleable things, and what they remember their own experiences to be can often be heavily coloured by the media and by the retelling of stories. I find it quite reasonable that psycat90’s mother may in fact have simply gotten into a brief verbal joust with someone opposed to the war, which over the years became embellished with details that never actually happened. This is in no way a shot at your Mom, psycat90, it’s something that virtually EVERYONE is prone to doing.
A few years ago the story began to circulate in the Toronto media about how Toronto beaches used to have signs saying “No Dogs or Jews.” (This is a story you’ll hear elsewhere, too.) The idea that such signs adorned Toronto beaches in the 30s and 40s was the subject of many letters to many editors and such, used as a rueful example of our shameful past. But nobody ever managed to produce a single photograph of such a sign - truly an amazing thing, really, when you consider that there are zillions of photos of just about everything else in Toronto. Eventually a few people starting doing some research into the matter and found, not entirely surprisingly, that there is simply no objective evidence of any kind that any such sign existed, and in fact there is considerable evidence it’s pure hokum. But people were very insistent they really did exist, mostly along FOAF lines.
I am similarly inclined to disbelieve the spitting stories. We’ve heard these tales for many years but I have never, not one single time, seen a photo of such a confrontation, nor have I ever see a reliable contemporary account of it happening. If in fact these sorts of things occurred, that should not be the case.
[/QUOTE]
Interesting you should mention that. I had a similar experience, also in Toronto, of a “folk memory” that turned out to be incorrect.
I now live in a neighbourhood called the Kingsway, which was built as a “planned community” in the '20s - '40s. Part of this planning was that anyone who built there had to sign a “restrictive covenant”, which specified what they could or could not do with their house. It was mandatory.
Now, when my mom grew up in Toronto, she said that “everyone knew” that one of the terms of this famous covenant was that it had a “No Jews” clause. Thus, she found it funny/ironic that I ended up living there.
Well, I was kind of intrigued, so I did a bit of research. Found out that the “covenant”, while restricting uses in all kinds of ways, made zero mention of Jews.
On the other hand, there was in fact during that time a lot of anti-Jewish prejudice - much of the “not one of us” type which now seems almost unbearably quaint, and involving beach facilities. My grandfather was a (relatively) famous long-distance swimmer at that time, and he was not allowed to participate in swim competitions because he was Jewish. One day, to make a point, he attended such a meet, waited until everyone else started, then jumped in himself and swam after the competitors - and he won. It made the newspapers, and in fact we have a copy of the newspaper with the following headline:
“JEWBOY WINS RACE”
