O n the August day I visited, a watchful security guard presided over the gate at Beach O’Pines, a community of cottages near Grand Bend, Ont. Get past him, and gain entry to an exclu- sive stretch of beachfront and smattering of cottages that’s been coveted for nearly 100 years. Ambling over the bridge and into the criss-cross of paved roads, even the light seems to soften. In place of urban laneways, footpaths run behind rows of cottages, green- ery cascading overhead and underfoot. The white sand beaches seem made for building castles. Tall, sun-bleached grasses rustle in the wind. The area is a mash of old and sprawling new. Rustic cabins share the roads with four-car garages. In one driveway, a vanity plate on a dusty Jeep Wrangler reads “Bass Lass.” Across the way, wrought-iron fish swim across an ornate gate carved with an underwater scene. Spiky seaweed pokes up from the top, deterring uninvited guests. At the foot of one waterfront property, a sign peeks out amid the trees. “We believe: Black lives matter, love is love, feminism is for everyone, no human being is illegal, science is real. Be kind to all.” Growing up in nearby Grand Bend, Michelle Adelman remembers a different kind of sign. As a child in the ’70s, she spent hours biking along its main drag, which had been a tourist destination for decades. At the end of Main Street stood the imposing Lakeview Casino, a dance hall that opened in 1917. In its early years, two all-Black bands played the hall at night, and even Louis Armstrong travelled in to perform. But while they were allowed to entertain, they weren’t allowed to stay: the venue refused to house Black staffers or entertainers, and refused to accept Jews as guests. By the time Michelle rode by in 1970, the building was in disrepair. But the sign hanging on the door had endured all that time, and, as one of the only Jewish children in town, she remembers it even now. “It said, ‘No Jews and no dogs,’” says Michelle. Back then, signs like those stretched from Grand Bend all across the province, and right up into the Kawarthas and Muskoka.
refused visas. Under the watchful eye of Russian sentries, children were allowed to play together on the ice. Bernard realized he knew enough German to pass for an Austrian boy, and he asked the other river boys to help. They skated him across to safety, and from there, he sent for his brother. The family reunited in London, Ont., in 1904. By then, his father had followed other Jewish thinkers and writers to the south- ern Ontario community. A group of immigrants, incensed from living under Russian despotism, embraced communist ideals, even going so far as to move to Washington state to try commune life. When the commune failed, they moved back to London. Although the Wolfs didn’t partake, they were part of a branch of the freethinking group the Workmen’s Circle, a club that conducted their affairs in Yiddish and pinned five-dollar bills on the wall of the hall where they met, for immigrants in need. “My father was a radical,” Bernard told The Canadian Jewish News in a 1982 interview. “He was imbued with a new ideal- ism, born of the struggle against Russian tyranny. He and other radically minded immigrants made London a stronghold of Jewish radicalism for two or three decades.” The group clung tightly to the concept of tzedakah, the act of granting charity to the needy: the impoverished, the widows, or- phans, and strangers among them. Bernard revelled in the atmos- phere his father created for him and his younger brother, David. Five years after they arrived, Bernard and David opened a bespoke and designer women’s dress shop, one of the first in London. In 1932, Bernard became the inaugural president of the newly formed London Jewish Community Council. Seven years later, antisemitism would rip through the world like a plague as the Second World War wreaked havoc on the world order, and Hitler ordered the deaths of six million European Jews. Across the country, antisemitic hatred led to store boycotts, vicious attacks, and at least one violent riot. In London, Jewish leaders advocated for the Canadian government to take in refugees. “None is too many,” responded one government official when asked how many Jews should be accepted. The London Club, a social club for businessmen, refused entry to Jewish professionals. The University of Western Ontario had an unspoken but firm policy not to hire Jewish faculty. Bernard’s brother, David, was determined to help, and he and his wife welcomed a young girl seeking a safe haven into their home during the war. By 1948, Bernard was a wealthy man. Strolling down Dundas St., Artistic Ladies Wear and its glamorous window displays were impossible to miss. And, inside, so was Bernard, out on the floor in the long, narrow shop filled with formal dresses and furs, as tailors and seamstresses sewed away downstairs. The brothers had built their fortune bringing ready-made designer fashion to London, Ont., travelling to New York and Paris sourcing textiles and trends. “The brothers were partners. David handled more of the business logistics, and Bernard was out front, meeting and greeting. He was the personality,” says his great-nephew Ron Wolf. “He was warm-hearted and really liked people. He liked to do good for people, and he liked people to like him.” In 1929, American resort developer Frank Salter was boating with friends on Lake Huron when a storm rolled in. He sought shelter in Grand Bend and realized its surrounding countryside was ripe for development. Soon after, he purchased 5,000 acres that he intended to turn into a luxury resort, but his plans were foiled by
In the early 1900s, a boy named Bernard Wolf was throwing snowballs on a river between his Russian village of Volochisk and the Austrian village across the water. His father had left Russia for a job in New York, sending money back for his wife and sons every month. The government wouldn’t allow the boys to leave; Ber- nard and his brother, David, were too close to army age and were
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