05-06 Halter-Littman Memories

Grandmother and Grandfather Halter were much loved but became a source of family tension when mother and dad wanted to marry. Grandfather Halter strongly opposed the marriage. Marriage outside the Jewish faith was a serious issue for an orthodox Jew.
But my birth brought them together. In this beautiful photo, taken in their early 60s, they were in their garden at 110 Everden Cres., about a mile west of Bathurst Street near Eglinton.
The year before this photo was taken, grandma and I drove to Chicago to help Aunty Anna, who was expecting her first child. Well, we drove off a cliff an hour past Detroit and rolled down a hill almost 100 feet deep. It was a bloody miracle we both survived.
Here is a delightful photo of our mother at nine years of age performing in a school musical production. It was something she loved as a child and makes me think of brother Robert and all of the productions he played in over the years.
Of the eight Littman children, our grandmother Mille was one of four that emigrated to New York. Although she moved to Toronto to marry our grandfather, her three sisters married and prospered in the US, all going into business for themselves. The oldest and the shortest child of the three Littman girls was Sara Katz, seen in the photo with ten cousins including mother and Aunty Anna, who is the tallest of the Littman cousins.
That was the time when people had large families. Our mother and father had 56 first cousins. Mother lost contact with her cousins when she married my father. The Jewish link was broken, one of the unfortunate aftermaths of inter-faith marriages.
Mother and father were married on August 6th, 1932. Father was told at “Eatons” that if he married our mother, he would not be promoted. So they married secretly, and mother wore her wedding ring on a string around her neck. This photo was taken on their wedding day, and it was at a wedding party with dad’s “Instonian” friends, who were all former students of the Royal Belfast Academic Institution.
The largest population grouping in Toronto in 1928, when dad emigrated to Canada, was Protestant Northern Irish. And, naturally, all the mayors in those days were from Northern Ireland.
Not sure we should boast about this but at that time, Toronto hosted an Orange Parade, second only to the one in Belfast. Something that celebrated the 1690 Battle of the Boyne when the Protestant Dutch William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James ll of England.
Next to our father and mother in the wedding photo, was dad’s brother James. Dad and James were inseparable in their early days of marriage. And when I was a child, Uncle James and Aunty June lived upstairs in the same duplex. I called them “James and Jooms”.
I have childhood memories of parties at our house with mother hosting dad's Irish friends, playing the piano, smoking a cigarette, and drinking Irish whisky. More Irish than Jewish already.