Simon Petersky (and family)
Simon Petersky was among the first Russian-Jewish immigrants to arrive in Winnipeg as part of the Canadian government’s efforts to increase settlement in the Canadian west. Fearing the abandonment of western provinces and the risk of losing the land to the United States, the Canadian government was eager to find farmers to fill the Prairies. At the same time, many Jews were streaming out of Russia, fleeing the pogroms of Eastern Europe. They were congregating in the major cities of Montreal and Toronto, testing the limits of these cities’ capacities. When the Canadian government offered land plots of 160 acres in the Prairies for only $10, under the condition that at least 50 acres be cleared within three years, many Jews jumped at this opportunity for safety and a chance of full land ownership. As a result, small Jewish farming communities began to spring up in the fertile lands of Alberta and Saskatchewan
In 1884 Simon Petersky, along with twenty-seven other Russian-Jewish immigrants, created the first Jewish farm colony, which they named “New Jerusalem." Moving out of the comfort of Winnipeg and into the wilderness of Southern Saskatchewan, Petersky and his family tried their hands at agricultural production. The colony was largely successful until a series of devastatingly cold winters, droughts, and an unsolved arson fire forced them from their homes by the spring of 1890. Petersky, along with many others from New Jerusalem, resettled in Vancouver.
Simon and his wife Fannie settled in Vancouver’s East End with their six children in late 1890. Simon served as a trustee of Vancouver’s Orthodox synagogue, Agudace Achim, and later as president for the Reform congregation, Temple Emanu-El. He opened a shop called Simon Petersky & Co. on 37-39 Cordova Street, selling candy, tobacco and fruit. In 1899, Simon was among the first Jewish businessmen to capitalize on the burgeoning salmon cannery village of Steveston. The canning boom of this “Salmonopolis” – as one newspaper coined it – drew to a close with a series of poor salmon runs in the years preceding the First World War. Simon died on October 24, 1918 at the age of sixty-one.
Simon’s son Samuel was an accomplished physician. He graduated from McGill University in 1906 and practiced in small towns throughout BC before settling in Vancouver with his wife Amelie (née Jacoby) at the end of the First World War. Both were very involved in the Jewish and non-Jewish community, Samuel active in the founding of Temple Emanu-El, an officer of the Vancouver Zionist Organization and a member of B’nei B’rith, while Amelie served as president of the Vancouver chapter of National Council of Jewish Women. Sadly, Samuel died suddenly in 1934 while delivering a speech. He was only fifty years old.
The world Simon knew
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