Cofounder of Bick’s Pickles dies

Walter and Jeanny Bick

Story here: Walter Bick was a Jewish coat-maker at a time when Canada wanted Christian farmers. Sadly, there was once a time when, even with Hitler rattling sabres and spewing anti-Semitism, Canada could get away with denying entrance to Jews because of their religion.

Walter Bick’s only ticket into Canada was as a Christian farmer.

A lifelong pragmatist, he didn’t let the minor details — his Jewish faith, his occupation in the woman’s coat industry — get him down.

So in 1939, the Bick family — Walter, Thomas and their parents — left an increasingly hostile Europe behind, posing as a family of farmers who believed in the New Testament.

Before they left Amsterdam, they purchased the farm. While other faux-farming Jewish families sold the farms upon arrival, the Bicks made good on the lie, learning to farm and eventually creating a pickle empire.

They ended up farming in Scarborough, Ontario, which I guess is why the Bick’s Pickle factory is still there on Progress Road.

He also helped found the Jewish Vocational Services, an organization that helped Jewish people find jobs, which, he later remarked, was a lot harder than selling pickles.

What have you done with your life?

If you’re remembered for your peripheral part in a big story, will that satisfy you?

Photography Month on TVO

This is Photography Month and TVO is showing lots of fascinating retrospectives of famous photographers, including some newly discovered ones–Mike Disfarmer of Heber Springs, anybody? Disowned his family, changed his name, lifelong bachelor, atheist, and photographer.

His pictures of Americans from the early 1900s to World War II seem to speak of those perilous times: the adults look grim or uneasy while the children look sullen or frightened. In fact, he was probably just an unnerving guy, but the pictures are very evocative.

Catholics wonder how to leave the Church

A lot of Roman Catholics are fed up with being associated with an organization that covers up sex crimes against children.

Getting off the Catholic roll: it’s too slow to be provocative and hope they’ll excommunicate you.

• I suggest placing an announcement in the paper, the way people used to when they got divorced, that you are no longer a Catholic and will not be held responsible for their crimes, either moral or legal.
• Also, write to your census bureau, telling them to change your religion to NONE as you no longer with to be associated with the church.
• Then write to the parish where you were baptized and demand that they add a note to their register and their files that you refuse to be counted as a Catholic any more. Follow up in a month and ask them to check your file and see if there are any annotations. If not, make a fuss. Repeat weekly until they tell you it’s done. Then ask to see a certified copy. Repeat until they are so sick of you they add the note. If it takes too long, start calling the diocese and the archdiocese regularly to complain that they’re not doing it fast enough. Ask them to address the problem in their governance meetings and let you know how procedures are being changed.
• Write to your most recent parish and tell them to take you off their membership list and remove you from all mailing lists. Explain that you refuse to be part of a criminal organization. Again, follow up to ensure that it’s done.
• The principle here is to cost them enough in wages dealing with your polite but firm request that it becomes cheaper to comply. If enough people phone them every week — a dozen, a hundred? — maybe they’ll get the picture and create a streamlined procedure. Remember to phone back every year or so to make sure that you haven’t crept back onto their membership roll.
• Finally protect the future. Look for any place in your government or educational or child welfare system where a church is consulted and express your opinion that they are not suitable advisers. Ask when and how they can be removed from those positions. Work towards it.

In memoriam: Hazel Dickens

Songwriter and singer Hazel Dickens has died at the age of 75. Here’s her song, “Black Lung.”

Random thought: Woman is closer to nature

I think it was E.B. White who said something about women being kept in their place and given a couple of Natural Forces to play around with. And being cozened with talk of “Mother Nature.” He wrote, “What about Father Nature? Good ol’ Pop?” etc. He was onto that mystical bamboozlement, even back in 1935:

It is as keeper of the life-tides, according to Old Know-it-all, that woman has a truly great kinship with Nature, far greater than man’s. “Once let a man understand this relationship between woman and Nature, and he will bow before her outbursts and condone them.” Oh, is that so? Well, sir, I have found out that when a woman has burst out at me, it wasn’t because of any kinship with Nature, it was usually because I damn well had it coming to me. Furthermore, if anybody around my house is going to have kinship with Nature, I’ll handle it. That’s understood. I am just as “natural” as any woman, and I’m far naturaler than a lot. I know enough about Nature not to call her Mother, for one thing. I call her Father. Old Father Nature. Good old Pop! I have been out messing around with old Pop Nature when a lot of my fine women friends were safe indoors with their lares, penates, bridge lamps, and old copies of Harper’s.

And

Manage, manage, manage. The picture I got of Anonymous’s woman, after reading his article, was of a little girl whom he kept out in the kitchen and fed on Ken-L Ration. Once in a while he gave her a couple of life-tides to play with, and some praise to keep her from screaming and annoying the neighbors, and all the time he kept murmuring to himself what a wonderful creature she was (for him to manage)…