Interview with Clara Mintz, Early Jewish life in Early Edmonton,

Our interview today is with Clara Mintz. Mrs. Mintz, could you tell us a little bit about your early life, like when and where you were born? And perhaps where you were educated in the early days?


I was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on April 16, 1917 and a few years later my parents moved to a little village [called] Bethune, Saskatchewan. My father was the only Jewish… or we were the only Jewish family in that town. My father had a general store there for 25 years. I have a brother as well. My brother’s gone now, but I had a brother and I have a sister. And of course both my parents are gone.


I guess… well, I spent my childhood and all my elementary education in Bethune. I left there to go to Regina College, it was sort of a set of circumstances… My mother was in poor health and we didn’t have facilities for her care so we used to take her into Regina. So I went to Regina College for 2 years and after the death of my mother I went to the University of Saskatchewan where I completed my Bachelor of Arts and strangely enough I majored in English and Languages. I guess one has a lot of dreams when they’re young and idealistic. There were a lot of things I wanted to do, but women in those days just didn’t fit into those categories. I was interested in Law, and I was interested in teaching but in those days your chances of getting employment as a teacher were rather slim. You had to go into these very small towns. They were depression days and they didn’t pay the school teachers much money, it was all paper money in those days...


[Clara continues her story about attending the University of Toronto to get her degree in social work. She discusses her first job as a social worker in Montreal. She worked in both English and Yiddish. She learned Yiddish from her grandmother and parents. Clara moves between Winnipeg and Regina in her capacity as a case worker. At the end of the war Clara returns with her husband to Weyburn Saskatchewan where her first child is born. Clara and her family move to Edmonton in 1949.]


Why did you choose Edmonton?


Well, we were looking for a good city to raise a family in, and Edmonton had great potential. I mean it was after the Leduc oil discovery, my father happened to live here and he was very excited about Edmonton and it’s prospects and that was a drawing card. We had a university here so we were looking ahead for that and then there is the Telmatorah, the Hebrew school, and we wanted our son to have a Hebrew education. And we wanted to live in a city where he would have his roots in a Jewish community.


Hebrew schools were rather rare at the time, were they not?


There were Hebrew schools but most of them were evening classes. You know the child would go to public school in the day time and would go to Hebrew school after school. But in Edmonton they had this very excellent Telmatorah day school where the child went there from kindergarten to the end of grade six and then went into the public school system and attended night classes in junior high school. So that was a big drawing card and of course we’ve never been sorry we came to Edmonton.


Our second son Jack was born here in Edmonton and he is now an economist. He got his doctorate at Queens University, and he’s on faculty there. He’s also married. Both of the boys received education at the Telmatorah so I have a very profound regard for that school. And now my granddaughter is attending there in kindergarten and at one point I was on the board of the school and I was very active. I founded the ‘Home and School’ at the Telmatorah. However, it somehow petered out; they couldn’t seem to get leadership going to continue it. That’s a story in itself. But parents were very involved because the school was funded totally at that time by the Jewish community...


So with your son at the Telmatorah when did you decide that you’d like to re-enter professional life in Edmonton?


Well, for several years I was a volunteer. I was very heavily involved in the community. Almost as soon as I arrived here I was caught up in it.


Well, you founded the ‘Home and School Association.’ May I ask what other organizations you were involved in as a volunteer?


Yes, National Council of Jewish Women of course. I was the volunteer for their welfare program, their community services. You see… well, before we get to the Jewish Family Services, the volunteer work that I did was at the John Howard Society. I was president of the local council here for three years and then I was on the… I was the first woman provincial president and then I was on the national board of the John Howard Society. They later formed a national board, and so I was on that board for several years.


What was the John Howard Society doing at that time?


It was rehabilitation. It really had two spokes there in the wheel. On one hand they were doing treatment, working directly with the offenders. And then we were working towards social change, better conditions for the prisoners in the jails. I can still remember making visits to the Fort Saskatchewan and conferring with the warden. At that time it was Warden Maclean, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him but he was the warden for many, many years and then the Boden Institution opened and we used to go there and of course we had a lot of contact with the government.


Did you see Boden as a step forward as far as penal institutions are concerned, was it considered to be fairly enlightened, is the word, for it’s time?


Well it was for the young first offenders, and it was certainly a step forward. And we had great hopes but you know crime was certainly not on the level that we see it today. The work is never ending now. I haven’t been to closely in touch with it in the last several years, because I’ve been very much immersed in what I am doing. Other volunteer work I did… Well, in Jewish community of course, I was very active in the National Council of Jewish Women and was… went up the ranks to first Vice President.


Of the Edmonton Association?


Of the Edmonton branch. Then I of course was a Hadalsa member and a member of the Sister of the Beth Shalom Synagogue. We are members of the synagogue.


That’s an orthodox synagogue, is it not?


It’s the conservative synagogue. Yes.


Which is the most liberal of the synagogues, is it not?


Well we now have the reformed temple which is in its early stages of formation. So that it is more liberal. I would say the conservative synagogue is about a little to the right of the center.


Was that synagogue in operation when you first came to the city?


Yes, Beth Shalom. I don’t know the year it was founded but it was quite new when we came and of course Beth Shalom has a lot of memories for me. Both my sons were barmitzvahed in that synagogue. And you know your synagogue is almost a mirror of your life. The Rabbi officiated at my father’s funeral, my children’s names are recorded there at birth, at least my youngest son. They had their barmitzvahs there. My oldest son prior to his marriage called to the Torah and my grandchildren that are living here were both named in that synagogue and so it almost the generations carried through.


Did your father belong to that synagogue?


Yes.


[Clara discusses her faith. Clara discusses the state of Israel. She discusses being the first president of the Jewish Welfare Society. She discusses her role as the Executive Secretary of the Canadian Conference on Social work who held their meetings in Edmonton for the first time in 1956.]


...it’s quite an interesting meeting. It’s Canadian based and they brought in… People came from everywhere in Canada and people from the United States. The chairman of the board was Dr. Andrew Stuart, the president of the University. And so I got back into working professionally and I found it very exciting, very meaningful. It was a big organizational job and it went off very well here in Edmonton. In fact it was the first time that the conference ever made a profit so we were rather proud of that in Edmonton.


They had presentation of papers and that sort of thing did they?


Yes. We brought in top notch people from the United States in all aspects of social welfare.


About how many people were involved in the conference?


There must have been over 600 in attendance.


That’s a huge convention for ’56! It would have been held at the Macdonald I would imagine.


No we had it at the University of Alberta and there were some very exciting people here. I’m having trouble remembering them, I have all of the materials at home somewhere but that took a year. The organization, the running of the conference, and then the clean up.


...and I found myself, very soon I was working full time. And it kept growing. And in the fifties the Hungarian refugees came and then later the Czechslovakian and the Polish and finally in the seventies came the waves of Soviet Jews so that our agency had to grow with it and we took on a full time secretary and I went and got our own office space, we changed our name to Jewish Family Services and we took on an additional social worker but that wasn’t until the seventies.