Dr. Louis Rosenberg, a pioneer researcher in the field of Canadian Jewish demography who helped Jewish farmers settle in the Western provinces after World War I, died here last week at the age of 94. He had been research director of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1940 until his retirement some years ago.
Rosenberg was born in Poland and grew up in Leeds, England. He received degrees from the University of Leeds and the University of London before coming to Canada in 1915. He taught school in Jewish agricultural colonies in Western Canada and was executive director and later president of the Jewish Colonization Association. He also served as executive director of the WJC’s Western Region in Winnipeg.
An internationally known scholar in the fields of economics, sociology and demographics, he was author of “Canada’s Jews,” published in 1939, a detailed study of every aspect of Jewish life in Canada. He wrote “Jewish Population Studies,” a series of monographs on the Jewish communities in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg, and contributed to YIVO publications.
Rosenberg was one of the early members of the League for Social Reconstruction, a group regarded as the nucleus of the CCF Party, now the New Democrats. In 1930 he wrote the book “Who Owns Canada?” under the pseudonym of Watt Hugh McCollum.
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