This is Session 8 of 8 of the Abe Arnold interview.

Arnold begins the session recalling several vacation trips his family took in Canada over the years, and trips he and Bertha made overseas. He tells about his retirement, and his going back to research and writing then, and continuing his involvement with the Canadian Jewish Historical Society (while still writing for the Beaver and Outlook magazines), eventually taking the position of Acting President and then President. Arnold recalls some of the articles he wrote during this time which led him to complete his second book: Judaism: Myth, Legend, History, and Custom from the Religious to the Secular, and recalls the traveling he did for a book tour. Arnold then returns to 1966 to discuss the trip to Israel he and Bertha took that year. He then recalls traveling to Guyana with his wife Bertha, who was there in her capacity for Canadian Executive Service Organization, with which she became involved after her own retirement. Arnold recalls many of the people they met and visited there. He also recalls traveling to Costa Rica with Bertha, their daughter, and their grandson, to promote Jewish books. He recalls traveling to Russia in 1999 on a writing assignment, where he and Bertha visited several Jewish organizations and synagogues, a trip which they returned from early, as their daughter was very ill. Arnold reflects on some of the historical and fictional writing he did through the 1980s through to the 2000s and receiving an honorary degree from the University of Winnipeg in 2001, the Shem Tov award in 2003 (Jewish Community Council), the Manitoba Human Rights Award in 2004, and the Order of Canada in 2004.

A video (31mm 32ss) created by Nolan Reilly (with technical assistance from the Oral History Centre) for Roz Usiskin’s memorial service held on October 16, 2023. The video is created using clips of the 7 interview sessions in this collection.

Oral history interview session (01hh 05mm 01ss) with Roz Usiskin, conducted by Nolan Reilly, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2018. Interview is indexed and transcribed in full.

Nolan Reilly, the interviewer, outlines the objectives and procedures for the interview with Roseline (Roz) Usiskin. Usiskin agrees to be recorded. Usiskin begins this recording session with a deeper explanation of the difficult circumstances her father, his sister and mother experienced in Ukraine before emigrating to Canada. Usiskin next provides a detailed exploration of her involvement in the United Jewish Peoples Order’s Order (UJPO) from in the early-1940s to the present. The UJPO proved to be a significant personal, cultural, and political centre of Usiskin’s life. It was through the UJPO that she became the director of the organization’s summer camp for children. She also taught as a young woman in the Peretz school in Winnipeg. Usiskin continues on to describe the growing awareness in the 1940s of the Jewish community of the Holocaust. She explores the difference she experienced between the response of the UJPO and other Jewish organizations to the Holocaust. UJPO always emphasized resistance from its earliest to its present-day activities undertaken to commemorate the Holocaust. Usiskin describes a particularly emotional visit with her husband to the Anne Frank Museum.

Oral history interview session (51mm 32ss) with Roz Usiskin, conducted by Nolan Reilly, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2018. Interview is indexed and transcribed in full.

Nolan Reilly, the interviewer, outlines the objectives and procedures for the interview with Roseline (Roz) Usiskin. Usiskin agrees to be recorded. Usiskin begins with a description of personal changes she confronted in the early 1960s with the death of her parents and several other individuals to whom she was close. Her children were more independent by this time and all these changes led her to consider what she might do going forward in her life. She decided to return to school and continue onto university. Her husband supported this decision. The small business they owned was doing well, which meant they could afford Usiskin’s desire to attend university. She describes in detail her experience at university, including the lifelong friends she made there among the students and professors. Usiskin did exceptionally well in her undergraduate years at the University of Winnipeg. She next describes the completion of her MA degree in Sociology at the University of Manitoba. Her research that she describes here focused on the history of the political, religious, and cultural diversity of Winnipeg’s Jewish community, a subject she continues to work on to this day. Usiskin provides a detailed description of being a married woman of thirty-nine with three children attending university with students much younger than herself. The feminist debates of the time led her to reflect on her view of the world. Her generation was politically radical but conventional in their personal lives. Discussions of gender and sexuality, for example, she explains introduced her to new and exciting perspectives. She concludes with a lengthy reflection on the fact that progressive changes are being made on issues of gender and sexuality but they made not be as radical as some think them to be.

This is Session 2 of 8 of the Abe Arnold interview.

This session includes Arnold speaking about his maternal grandparents and children; father’s siblings; Jewish holidays with his family; his work from the early 1940s (Joseph Gould and Sons in Toronto); education in drafting and mechanical drawing; service in the army; the onset of his illness; involvement in the Young Communist League; first article in Volchenblatt and Modern Digest; marriage to wife Bertha in 1945; freelance work for Montreal Standard, Canadian Film Weekly; work at Anglo-Jewish News Service (1946-47); attendance at meeting of the Jewish Press Association (1946); influential leftist literature; Gouzenko Affair; political climate in Ontario through the 1940s; and his family in the 1940s.

Oral history interview session (51mm 32ss) with Roz Usiskin, conducted by Nolan Reilly, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2018. Interview is indexed and transcribed in full.

Usiskin tells about the circumstances that led her father to leave the Ukraine and eventually arrive in Winnipeg, Manitoba just prior to the First World War. Family life in the Ukraine was one of impoverishment and persecution for being Jewish and engaged in left politics. Describes attempts to bring his mother and sister to Winnipeg during the War, father joining the Jewish Legionnaires, and returning to Winnipeg to take up his job as a tinsmith. 1919 father participated in the Winnipeg General Strike. Usiskin describes her aunt, her father’s sister, in the Russian Revolution and her father’s successful efforts to bring his sister and mother to Winnipeg, her father and mother’s meeting in Winnipeg and subsequent marriage. Explores the hardship of the family’s life in Winnipeg, and difficulty of finding steady employment. Yiddish was spoken at home, Jewish education was emphasized, and Jewish traditions followed, although her father was a secularist and labour supporter. She speaks of the special relationship her father had with the children. Describes the Cold War and its effect on the family and friends is explored in some detail. Ms. Usiskin’s aunt joined the Communist Party of Canada and was a union organizer in Winnipeg and Toronto before moving to New York.

Oral history interview session (01hh 06mm 16ss) with Roz Usiskin, conducted by Nolan Reilly, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2018. Interview is indexed and transcribed in full.

Nolan Reilly, the interviewer, outlines the objectives and procedures for the interview with Roseline (Roz) Usiskin. Usiskin agrees to be recorded. In her narration, Usiskin elaborates on themes raised in the first interview session on her father and his family’s immigration to Canada, his search for work, and his meeting her mother. She describes her childhood and her family’s close relationship to the Jewish community. Yiddish was spoken in the home. Usiskin describes her mother as devoutly religious and her father as an atheist and a socialist. Jewish traditions she indicates were and still are important to her family but from a very secularist perspective. She describes in good detail her education through grade eleven as a combination of parochial and public schooling. Usiskin for many years attended public day school where she experienced what she describes as a process of Canadianization and then spent several hours each late afternoon and evening in the Jewish Peretz School. She describes a vibrant Jewish culture in North End Winnipeg that continued into the post-Second World War years. The family lived in the Boyd-Burrows neighbourhood, an area of primarily Jewish and Ukrainian immigrants. Her family home often had boarders to help with their finances. Usiskin concludes this recording session with an introduction to her siblings.

Oral history interview session (51mm 32ss) with Roz Usiskin, conducted by Nolan Reilly, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 2018. Interview is indexed and transcribed in full.

Nolan Reilly, the interviewer, outlines the objectives and procedures for the interview with Roseline (Roz) Usiskin. Usiskin agrees to be recorded. Usiskin begins with reflections of historical and contemporary antisemitism. A recent, deadly attack on a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh prompted this discussion. She expresses concern for her children and grandchildren. Usiskin also raises her concern with the state of Israeli politics which disturbs her greatly. The history of Zionism and Israel is a subject raised on several occasions in previous interview sessions. She next describes teaching at the University of Winnipeg for a number of years after gradation. However, she preferred to work in the community and left academia to become the first Executive Director of the newly created Multi-Cultural Resources Centre of Manitoba. She describes her extensive involvement with this organization that encouraged cooperation among Manitoba’s ethnic and immigrant communities. It was a very active organization under her direction, and she details much of that activity. Usiskin left this organization to become deeply involved through the Jewish Historical Society in the creation of the Jewish Heritage Centre to be located in the newly founded campus of the Jewish Asper Centre in south Winnipeg. She describes how these decisions reflected significant differences among Jews in Winnipeg about their relationship to the broader community. It also spoke to the different aspirations of many Jews who were moving from the North End neighbourhoods of their immigrant parents to the more affluent areas of south Winnipeg.

This is Session 6 of 8 of the Abe Arnold interview.

Arnold begins this session speaking about his involvement with the Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada in 1968. He details his growing interest in Jewish history in Canada, receiving grants to do research on the topic, becoming involved with an expanding circle of academic colleagues through these years and reviews the topics he researched and wrote about. He describes his role as the Regional Director of the Canadian Jewish Congress in the late 1960s and celebrating its 50th anniversary in 1969. Continuing with 1969, Arnold speaks about the establishment of a Manitoba Branch of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (related to the Manitoba Human Rights Association), and about the interaction the group had with the provincial N.D.P. at the time. He details some of the research he did during the late-60s and early-1970s, and details how he contributed writing to various Jewish cultural activities and events. Arnold remembers in detail his extensive involvement in establishing a temporary exhibit for the Manitoba Museum, which resulted in the first office space for the Jewish Historical Society. He recalls some of the oral histories the exhibit included, and also the production of short films by the C.B.C. Arnold recalls his involvement with the Plenary Assembly, and writing for the Winnipeg Jewish Post, and the Canadian Jewish News in Toronto while continuing to work part time at the Historical Society (until resigning in 1975). Arnold recounts his collaborating on a book with William Kurelek. He concludes the session by describing the dissolution of the Manitoba Branch of the CCLA and the formation of an ad-hoc committee on human rights and subsequently the Manitoba Association for Rights and Liberties in 1978.

This is session 3 of 8 of the Abe Arnold interview, including session log and transcript.

Arnold begins the session by sharing the story of Abram in the Idolshop, a play he participated in as part of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. He discusses growing into political consciousness. Arnold recalls his time living in Toronto then the move to Vancouver in 1948. Arnold recalls the work he did while in Vancouver, including detailed recollections of running the Jewish Western Bulletin, where his wife Bertha also worked. He recalls his activities and affiliations with several organizations, including the Canadian Jewish Congress, B’nai Brith, and the Civic Unity Association (a human rights group), the U.J.P.O. and the Peretz School. He recalls the political climate in B.C. in the early 1950s, including elements of antisemitism that were apparent at the time, and the politics between Canadian Jewish organizations during this time. He recalls the purchase of their first car and house, and the birth of twin daughters all in 1951. Throughout the interview session Arnold recalls key players in organizations and politics, illustrating the relationships and interpersonal dynamics between them.