I was born in Calgary, Alberta on Oct 31, 1934. I am the youngest daughter of Mendel (Max) and Lena (Speir) Belzberg.  My maternal grandparents came from the Romanian region of Austria. There are many stories and mysteries about when and how they made it to Canada, with my mother’s father arriving first and other members, including my grandmother and 3 children coming later. They had 2 daughters in Canada; one was my mother, born in Toronto, 1906. I never met my maternal grandfather. Some of the stories include him marrying and having another family while my grandmother was still in Austria. I am in the process of trying to piece their complicated story together.  

On my father’s side, I am part of the Switzer/Belzberg family that traces our family back to my great grandfather Wolf Baer Switzer born in 1843, in Radom, Poland. My paternal grandmother Rifka was one of his eleven children. Her sister, Bella (Switzer) and husband Abraham Singer, immigrated to Toronto 1905. In 1907, Bella returned to Radom for a few years and Abe moved to Calgary. Over the years, many of the family followed, owing to Bella’s observing the impact of growing anti-Semitism in Poland and her determination to get them out of Poland. She returned to Canada in 1910 and began to sponsor her family to immigrate to Calgary. Each family member she sponsored was expected to work hard and bring more family members. My father, Mendel Belzberg was one of the lucky ones. He immigrated to Calgary in his late teens, around 1920 and his parent’s, my grandparents Rifka (Switzer) and grandfather Luzer Belzberg in 1929. Many family members chose to stay and were murdered in Treblinka and Auschwitz.

A Switzer/Belzberg/Aizenman family reunion celebrated its first family reunion in 1990 with 450 family members of approximately 800 at that time in attendance.  Currently the family members are in excess of 1400. All are listed on our family tree, updated annually.  Allan and I presented the first family tree to Beit Hatfutsot in Israel, on one of our many winters spent in Israel.

My parents owned a secondhand furniture store. As a child I would love to be at the store where bikes, kitchen utensils, old furniture, musical instruments, and a freight elevator would allow my imagination to roam. My father learned to speak English quickly; he didn’t have the time to learn to read and write and depended on my mother, my sisters and me. On Saturday, farmers came to town to sell eggs, cream, live chickens, ducks and geese.  On Saturday evenings, I went to the shoichet with my dad where the chickens were killed and plucked. Before Yom Kippur, dad would bring the live chickens home for us to shlug kappurus. We would cover our heads while the chickens were twirled over our heads.  

My school friends were all Jewish. I attended Hebrew school after 4 o'clock. I was a regular Young Judea participant. I would often canvas for JNF with a blue box.  My grandmother lived near my parent’s store, and I would visit her often. She had a big swing to ride, a chicken coop and garden- we gathered eggs and often raided her vegetable garden. She was very orthodox, more than us, so much so that we had our Seders at her house. She felt ours wasn’t “koshered” to her standards.  

I was the youngest of four sisters. We were all married in Calgary.  My oldest sister Jean (Dick Barron) raised her family there. My sisters Lil (Fred Segal) and Mamie (Milt Sorokin) raised their families in Edmonton. In 1953 at 18 years of age, I married Allan Stern who was 20 and after a short honeymoon we settled in Raymore, Sask.

Allan was born in Winnipeg. He grew up in Verigin, SK where his parents owned Stern’s General Store, built by his grandfather in 1925. His father Joseph, was born in 1898 in Russia; his mother, Bessie (Levy) Stern in 1900, on the Hirsch Jewish colony in SK. His father died when Allan was 5, leaving his mother with 6 children (5 boys and 1 daughter) to raise. He was the second youngest. At 13 he went to Winnipeg for a year to live with his first cousin’s – his dad’s sister, Pearl (Stern) and Charlie Gunn to prepare for and celebrate his Bar Mitzvah. His mother sold the store in 1949 and he along with his siblings, Layla and Cyril moved to Calgary. Allan wrote a book, dedicated to his granddaughters, documenting his life until age 16. At 17, he quit high school and moved to Raymore, SK to work for his cousin Sam Stern. Sam started Stern Motors, a General Motors and Massey Harris farm machinery business where Allan began fixing tires and cleaning engines. Within a short time, he became a successful salesman, selling cars, trucks and combines all over Saskatchewan. With a paycheck in hand, he felt financially secure enough to propose. On Sept 6, 1953, we married in Calgary.

Raymore, population 350 was a small farming community. For the first few months I adjusted to a water pump in my kitchen and no indoor bathroom. I had a real bath when visiting Allan's brother Walter in Wynyard 40 miles away. Within the first year we helped build our own house. Our social life consisted of curling, going to hockey games and attending a weekly movie at the town hall, visiting family in Moose Jaw and Wynyard and the few Jewish families in nearby towns. Allan wanted us to live in a Jewish community, the nearest one was Regina, and we did way sooner than anticipated. Allan met a farmer visiting his hometown in a Raymore coffee shop. During the conversation, they learned each wanted to live where the other did, he in Raymore, Allan in Regina. They decided to trade houses, the next week we packed up and moved to Regina. Allan commuted to Raymore and continued to work for Sam.

Allan was known throughout SK for his salesmanship and integrity - he always said a sale had to be as good a deal for the customer as for the seller. In Nov. 1955, Massey Harris recognized Stern Motors as the most successful farm machinery dealership in Canada. Allan was a key contributor to its success and was selected to accept the award. Massey Harris flew us to Toronto in their private plane for the awards ceremony and weekend of celebrations. There were many contributing factors for Allan’s success- including convincing Sam to take grain, lumber and cattle in trade for vehicles when purchasers on and off first nations reserves had no cash. He eventually convinced him to build grain bins to store grain received in trade.

We had 3 daughters. Susan our eldest daughter was born in Calgary on Mar 25, 1955. There was no doctor or hospital in Raymore. Not wanting to risk getting stuck in a winter storm, I went home to Calgary to give birth.  We drove to Regina for our middle daughter Marlene’s birth on July 3, 1956. We moved to Winnipeg in 1958. Jocelyn, our youngest daughter was born here, on May 1, 1961.

Allan and his older brother Gerald and younger brother Cyril opened Stern GMC Trucks, a General Motors dealership exclusively for trucks in 1958 on Main Street. In 1966/7 they built a new dealership on King Edward St. and relocated.

We lived in Garden City from 1958 until 1961 when we moved to Mathers Bay West, where I still live.

Allan had a close family living in Winnipeg who welcomed me immediately. I like many of my generation did not work outside of the house. I volunteered at Ramah School, Shaarey Zedek Synagogue and Hadassah Wizo, baked many tortes, cookies, strudel for weddings and bar mitzvahs, sewed my children’s clothes, and followed and supported Allan’s many whims and adventures. Allan was involved with the Jewish National Fund. He travelled back to Saskatchewan where he raised substantial funds from primarily Jewish farm families.

Our first summers in Winnipeg were spent on our cabin cruiser, the SuMarJo, (slept 6). exploring the Red River, Winnipeg Beach, Gimli and further north on Lake Winnipeg and tent camping largely in MB.  When Allan discovered Lake of the Woods, we left Lake Winnipeg for calmer waters. We were one of a very few Jewish families on the lake. We explored Lake of the Woods on the SuMarJo with our children and sometimes left them with sitters and took our friends instead.  We rented at Clear Water Bay for a number of years and in 1973 we bought a cottage we loved and where our children invited their friends and we ours. I planted a huge garden where friends u-picked their vegetables.  

In the early 60’s, I wanted an antique clock. That purchase led to Allan becoming a collector of antique clocks and pocket watches. His clock collection exceeded 400 items. A few of grandfather clocks and other notable clocks have been donated to the Simkin Centre, Deer Lodge Centre and The Manitoba Museum.

Allan's appreciation of antiques was not only limited to clocks. He became interested in old cars when a farmer in Verigin gave him a car that had sat for years. He fixed the car and used it for his battery and potato business. He had to stay off of main roads, since he did not have a driver’s licence. Later in life, he bought and sold several vintage cars.

The winter of 1965, my sister’s and their husbands came up with a family trip idea. Allan had a 40-passenger school bus retrofitted with greyhound seats, storage for tents, luggage, coolers, etc., had Disneyland A-Go-Go painted on the front and Winnipeg’s upcoming Pan Am Games and This Bus Stops at All Swimming Pools on the back.

Our family left Winnipeg on July 1, 1966, for Calgary to pick up the family. On July 03, we left on the adventure of a lifetime; seven adults (ages 32-38), 14 children ages (4-16). Our journey took us to the Montana Rockies, Yellowstone National Park, San Diego Zoo, Tijuana, Disneyland, Universal City, and Hearst Castle, along the West Coast through Oregon to Vancouver. We camped most nights, each family in its own tent, most having never camped before. Our trip was written up in small town newspapers. The bonding and memories endure, and the family reminisce about the trip when together, which gratefully is often.  

Our 3 daughters had Bat Mitzvahs; Susan and Marlene celebrated theirs in 1968, nine months apart.  When my father came to Winnipeg for Susan’s, Allan and my dad went to a tailor to get a new suit made.  My dad said the last time he had a made to measure suit, he was 16 and in the Polish army. Being conscripted into army was his tipping point to immigrate to Canada. My mother passed away at age 62, in Calgary, two weeks prior to Marlene’s Bat Mitzvah.  

In 1971, Allan Stern, saved a piece of Winnipeg history from the wrecking ball. The Royal Alexandra Hotel was slated for demolition.  Allan recognized the unique beauty and historical significance of the Hotel’s Selkirk Dining Room and was determined to preserve it for generations to come. Alex Billinkoff, a friend of Allan’s was hired to demolish the hotel. To obtain the dining room Allan partnered with Alex and together they had an auction sale of the contents. Allan contracted a craftsman to dismantle the room. Allan and I spent several weeks helping to deconstruct and pack the room into a truck trailer. The process was documented in detail and each piece numbered, coded and photographed. It was a larger-than-life jigsaw puzzle. Thankfully the puzzle worked when it was reconstructed 30 years later when acquired by and rebuilt at the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel, in Cranbrook, BC. My daughter, Marlene has the 1954 and 1956 reservation books. The booking parties (corporate and personal), menus and costs are all beautifully scribed. Many Jewish milestones are recorded.

Allan originally planned to build a museum featuring the dining room for his extensive antique clock collection on land he owned across from Lower Fort Gary. The province expropriated the land to twin the highway. Our attempts at engaging the city to rebuild it for the public to enjoy were unsuccessful. We stored it for well over 20 years until the Canadian Museum of Rail Travel in Cranbrook acquired and rebuilt it as its celebration hall. In 2001, we were celebrated with lots of pomp and ceremony at the grand opening weekend and were the VP of CP Rail’s guests of honour on the inaugural train trip on its restored steam locomotive. Hundreds of people lined the track waiving along the journey from Cranbrook to Fernie.

Allan sold Stern Trucks in the mid 70’s, then developed a few buildings. We started traveling more in our motorhome (we drove to and traveled throughout Mexico, the East Coast and more), then wintered for several years in Stuart, Florida, then Israel, and finally in Palm Springs until Alan’s health prevented him from traveling. Our daughters joined or traveled to see us at some of these destinations.

Our daughters all graduated from university, the first graduates of our nuclear family. Susan’s career as a jewellery designer, teacher, and long-time volunteer at the Winnipeg Folk Festival and Klinic were cut short, as was Jocelyn’s primary role as a mother and volunteer. Marlene had an impressive leadership journey as an occupational therapist holding senior health management roles for many years. After leaving health, her time has been spent as a consultant, entrepreneur, and as a volunteer board member on not-for-profit boards in the arts and educational sectors.

The sorrow Allan, Marlene, and Jocelyn and I experienced on the sudden death of Susan, in August 1997 cannot be conveyed in words. The death of Jocelyn in February 2017 threw Marlene, Allan, Jocelyn’s daughter’s Amanda and Jordana and me into despair. Allan’s passing 4 months later added to our grief. While our family had many joyful years, we had to absorb and work hard to overcome and find hope after much loss. Fortunately, our dear family and friends walked beside us and helped lift us up.

We were fortunate that Jocelyn, Benjy and her daughters moved from Hamilton to Winnipeg for 4 years. Luckily my daughter Marlene and son in law Peter live in Winnipeg are here for me always. The joys of my life are my granddaughters in Toronto. L’dor V’Ador.

Allan and I chose to live in Winnipeg. It has been a very good choice. I boast of the community wherever I travel. I say it is the best kept secret in Canada. Our family has been overly affected by bipolar illness. In giving my donation to the Endowment Fund with a focus on mental health recovery, it is my hope that it will improve the lives of future generations in this wonderful City.

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