J.D.B. News Letter

(By our Montreal Correspondent)

The closing of school activities has not lessened the efforts of those interested in providing extensive Jewish schooling in Montreal. The campaign for the new Talmud Torah Building is still going on and the new building will be situated in the heart of the thickly populated Jewish district, where some five thousand Jewish children are registered in the schools of the vicinity. The new Talmud Torah will provide accommodation for the Jewish education of these children as well as for some eight hundred Jewish children attending school in the City of Outremont, a surburb of Montreal.

The Jewish People’s School is also planning to build a new, up-to-date school in Outremont.

Work has also been started on the new Young Men’s Hebrew Association building which was made possible through a gift of $250,000 from the late Sir Mortimer B. Davis. The new “Y” will be known as the Sir Mortimer Davis Memorial Young Men’s Hebrew Association and will be ready by March first of next year.

Montreal Jewry, while busy with its summer plans and activities, has not forgotten the under-privileged. This summer has seen the opening of a number of free camps in the Laurentian Mountains by various societies for the benefit of those who cannot afford a summer vacation. B’nai Brith Camp, which has been in existence for a number of years, is looking after five hundred young Jewish boys; while two new camps for girls were opened last week by the Montreal Council of Jewish Women, of which Mrs. Max Bernfeld is the president, and by the Sons of Israel. A camp for mothers and young children is conducted by the Laurentian Fresh Air Camp Fund. The selection of the campers is looked after by the Family Welfare Department of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of Montreal, under the supervision of Miss Malco H. Friedman.

A group of Jewish Boy Scouts, under the charge of Scout Master A. M. Machlovitch, secretary of the Jewish Advisory Committee, will camp this year at the Montreal Bov Scout Camp Tamaracouta. Arrangements have been made for kosher meals and Sabbath services for the Jewish scouts.

Immigration to Canada for the month of May amounted to 23,461 as compared to 23,941 for May of last year, showing a decrease of one percent, according to official figures made public today. Of the May immigration, 7,195 were British, 3,096 from the United States and 13,350 from other countries. For April and May, the total immigration was 50,624 as compared with 59,382 for the same period a year ago.

Leo Edel of McGill University won one of the sixteen provincial scholarships awarded by the Quebec Provincial Government. Mr. Edel is a brother of Abraham Edel who won the Moyse Travelling Scholarship at McGill University this year.

Announcement has been made by Dean Ira MacKay, of the Faculty of Arts, McGill University, that excess in attendance over the limit of maximum class-room efficiency has resulted in an order to limit the number of students in first year arts at McGill. It has not yet been decided what the entrance requirements will be. How this will affect the large number of Jewish students who are matriculating this year from the various high schools, is not yet known. Dean MacKay, in an interview with the press, stated that the ruling is a general one and made necessary by the fact that an increasing number of students in the first year fail to keep up with their work and only hamper the other students by over-crowding the class-rooms. The Faculty and Corporation of McGill last year fixed the maximum number for admission into the first year at 375, but the number of application was so great that it was not possible in practice to fix the limit at this number. However, Dean MacKay is of the opinion that no more than four hundred will be admitted this coming term.

A record income for the fiscal year ending June 8, has been announced by the Zionist Organization of Canada, whose income this year is fifty thousand dollars higher than any previously established record for a single year in Canadian Zionist activities. This is the first time that more than one-quarter of a million dollars has been collected by Canadian Zionists in a single year.