Anna and Lyle Silverman are well aware of how fortunate they are. They have been happily married for 46 years and happily retired for 36 of those years. That early retirement has given them the opportunity to travel extensively, dine at the best  restaurants, spend winters in a climate that is much warmer than Winnipeg’s, and enjoy many of the finer things in life.

Lyle and Anna met in 1979 at the urging of their common friend Doris Bass. After initially going out on three dates, they paused seeing each other, but when they resumed their relationship a year later, they became inseparable. They went out together every night for three weeks, quickly moved in together, and were married in 1981.

At that point, Anna had been living in Winnipeg for just over a decade. She had spent the latter half  of her childhood in Montreal where her parents, Eva and  Béla Garai, had resettled after fleeing the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Eva, a survivor of Auschwitz, and Béla, a survivor of forced labour camps in Poland,  had just begun to feel as though they had regained control over their lives when the revolution disrupted everything they had built. No longer feeling safe in Hungary, they decided to flee the country, managing to cross the border into Austria after two failed attempts.

Eva, Béla and eight-year-old Anna remained in Austria for a year and a half, living in an army refugee camp that reminded Eva of the barracks in Auschwitz. While waiting for visas to the U.S. that never arrived, they applied to come to Canada and were accepted. In 1958 they immigrated to Montreal, where Eva’s sister—who was her only other family member to survive the Holocaust—had been living for the last six months. With the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Béla found work as an accountant with Lever Brothers; Eva was hired to run the ORT second-hand store; and after initial challenges learning English, French and compulsory Latin, the Hungarian- and German-speaking Anna did well in school. After high school, she enrolled at McGill University and graduated with a degree in zoology.

Moving to Winnipeg shortly after that, Anna taught summer school biology at the University of Manitoba and began studying for a master’s degree in animal psychology. That degree fell by the wayside, however,  when she discovered  real estate, a field in which she successfully worked for a decade. Her real estate career also fell by the wayside when she married Lyle and joined him in his business ventures.

Lyle was born in Winnipeg in 1943 and grew up on Polson Avenue in the city’s north end with his brother Perry, who passed away in 2024, and his sister Ethel (Soronow), who lives in Winnipeg. Lyle attended the Peretz School on Aikins until grade six, then spent one year at Luxton School before becoming a student at Kelvin, when his parents, Fred, who was from Ukraine,  and Vera, who was from Lithuania, moved to Queenston Street in River Heights. After years of working hard and struggling to make ends meet, Fred, a furrier by profession, and Vera, who had been working afternoons in her father’s candy factory,  took over her brother’s grocery store, Elkun’s Grocery at 58 Dufferin Avenue. They did very well at the store and were able to retire comfortably when it was appropriated by the city just a few years after they had purchased it. Lyle recalls helping them out at the store on Friday evenings and Saturdays, and credits that early exposure to their business to his later success as an entrepreneur.

Lyle enrolled at the University of Manitoba in 1961, graduated from pharmacy in 1966 and within a year purchased his own drug store in East Kildonan. After five years and many long days  running the store, he sold it, left his pharmacy profession behind, and purchased Jonespac, a food processing plant on Sanford Avenue. Lyle spent a month shadowing the plant’s former owner and getting to know the business, then quickly expanded it, processing and private packaging not just peanuts—as it had done for years—but every kind of nut imaginable, as well as dried fruit and soup mixes, for a variety of grocers and bulk food retailers across Western Canada.

Once Anna joined the business—which had up to 20 employees—she took over running the office. She also looked after the four Buggy Bath car washes that she and Lyle built and started in Winnipeg. Both remember how Anna often had to don rubber boots and a reflective vest and go out and open the self-service businesses at eight in the morning.

After ten years working together at Jonespac and Buggy Bath, Lyle announced that they had had enough of work, and in 1990 sold their businesses.

During the time that Anna was working and in the years that followed, she was involved with several volunteer commitments—with the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba, the Winnipeg Humane Society, Manitoba Opera, and the Jewish Federation annual campaign. Both she and Lyle have always been strong philanthropic supporters of the local Jewish community, of Israel and of Holocaust education; a commitment that was reinforced a few years ago after they participated in an emotionally draining and unforgettable March of the Living trip that took them to the gates of Auschwitz. Their ongoing support of the Jewish community is also inspired by Anna’s memory of the tremendous help that her family received from HIAS  when they landed in Montreal as refugees.

It was back in Montreal that Anna first developed her passion for art. She purchased her first drawing when she was just 14-years-old with money she earned from gathering up empty Coke bottles from back lanes and returning them to grocery stores, and she has been a collector ever since. To date, she and Lyle have donated significant  art collections to the University of Manitoba and, specifically, to  its Faculty of Law, as well as to the  Asper Jewish Community Campus. Both their home in Winnipeg, which was designed for them by Lloyd Secter  shortly after they married, and their second home in  Phoenix, where they spend the winter with their beloved coton de Tulear dog Princess II, boast phenomenal art pieces  from all around the world.

Anna and Lyle adore their art, their homes, their dog, and each other. They have been lucky in love and in business, and now, as they continue to enjoy a long, comfortable and well-deserved retirement, they are eager to share their good fortune with others.

“We have a wonderful life and couldn’t ask for anything more,” Lyle says. “So now it is time to give back.”

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