Joe Salsberg: A Life of Commitment
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by Gerald Tulchinsky
University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2013
203 pp., illus., $24.95 paperback
Canadian Jewish historian Gerald Tulchinsky has authored an excellent new biography of Joe Salsberg. A leading communist, labour leader, and Jewish community member in Toronto, Salsberg would eventually serve as the MPP for the Toronto riding of St. Andrews from 1943 to 1955.
It was a time when “dignity blew away like topsoil off a Saskatchewan wheat field,” says Tulchinsky. “Many Canadians stared poverty and humiliation in the face, and that ugliness was reflected in their attitudes to others, such as the immigrants who had come after them.”
In Salsberg many people found a voice they could count on. “He was deeply respected,” according to Tulchinsky, for “his devotion to securing better lives for the workers, shopkeepers, women, and the many non-Jews inhabiting the quarter.” Tulchinsky is a tremendous storyteller whose exceptional writing brings meaning and life to Salsberg and his impact on Canada.
— Joel Ralph (Read bio)
Joel Ralph is the director of programs for Canada's History Society.