Family of Isaac MENDELSOHN and Eihivet (Ida) (Regenstreif) OLARIU

Isaac was a stationary engineer who served most of his career at the

Sanitarium in St. Agathe. He was a brilliant craftsman who built

furniture and could repair anything mechanical. He was an inveterate

pipe smoker and died of cancer. In a separate chapter Bert speaks in

detail about his parents:

My father was Isaac Mendelsohn. He was born in 1886 in I think, Braila

in Romania. Braila is a town on the Danube. His father, Meyer

Mendelsohn, was a tallier of some kind. I gather his job was to stand

at dockside or on ships and count what was loaded or offloaded to and

from ships that sailed up the Danube from the Black Sea.

My dad was apprenticed to an ironworker, a machine blacksmith; I

really donʼt understand what it was. I have one of his first gadgets

he made as an apprentice, a little ball peen hammer. Iʼve kept it ever

since, one of the few things Iʼve kept of my dadʼs.

He left home at the age of 15. The reason for that as I understand it

is that his mother had just died, I gather in childbirth. At that time

there were two brothers and some four or five sisters. He was the

oldest in the family and he left. He made his way somehow to Hamburg,

in Germany and sailed aboard ships and because of his so-called

technical training they put him below decks in the boiler room-steam

engine room of the ships. He sailed German ships out of Hamburg for

some time.

One of the ports of call was in Buenos Aires. At that time Buenos

Aires was undergoing quite a change and they were building large

irrigation canals somewhere in the interior of Argentina. A number of

British and Germans and others stayed there. To this day there is a

very large English Community in Buenos Aires, and quite a large German

one as well. Any way, my dad stayed ashore and worked there as an

engineer and eventually he received a letter from his father in

Montreal.

His father had apparently gathered his family and his second wife and

had migrated to Montreal. So my dad gave up his job and came to

Montreal. I donʼt know what the exact year was, but it was somewhere

between 1909 and 1911 or 12. Something like that.

As I said, my dad came to Canada somewhere around 1910. He got a job

in a steam power plant in what is now Old Montreal. In those days they

used to generate steam down there and pipe it to various buildings in

the area and sell the power so that people didnʼt have to provide

power in each of their own buildings. They also generated electricity,

locally, and he had a job as an engineer there.

It was at that time that he met my mother at something or other and

they became engaged in 1915. They married in 1916 and as I said

earlier I was born in 1917. My sister was born in 1920.

Sometime around 1915 when my dad became engaged he got a job up at

Ste. Agathe working in the beginnings of the Laurentien Sanitarium,

the TB San that I spoke about before. He stayed with it as it grew

except that shortly after the war the SCR. The Soldiers Civil

reestablishment in Ottawa decided to stop its support of this TB San

for vets, veterans of the First World War and they closed the

sanitarium. My dad got a job in Asbestos in Quebec in the power plant

there and then got to Ste Anne de Bellevue in what is currently the

Veterans Affairs Hospital. They reopened the Sanitarium in I think

around 1924 or 5 and he went back to Ste Agathe and stayed there till

he died. He retired when he was 65 and he died before he got to 66th

birthday. So we have roots principally in Ste Agathe.

Every family should be blessed with one person who is universally

loved and admired. That person should be as kind, as understanding, as

forgiving and as giving as Aunty Ida was. She was warm, she was

friendly, and she gave and forgave. She was welcoming and she cared

deeply for us all. She was a great housekeeper. Her kitchen shone and

her home sparkled. She was a great cook and a master of feeding hungry

hordes from one chicken. She was famous in the family for lemon pie

and oatmeal cookies. She gardened and preserved. She exercised,

swimming in the summer and walking every day of the other seasons. Her

home was a gathering place for her family in all its dimensions. She

had great wit. Once when asked about her slim figure and how she must

watch her diet, she replied that she watched her diet very carefully

but did not let it affect her meals.

Aunty Ida was murdered during a mugging after the second Seder in

1981.

Well, you asked about my parents. My mother got to Canada before my

dad did. Iʼll start with her. My mother was born in Dorohoi, in

Romania in 1894. Her name was Ida Regenstreif when she came to Canada.

On the other hand her birth certificate shows her as Eihevet Olaru. I

am told that Olaru in Romanian means the potter. So she was Eihevet

which I guess is close to Ida, the daughter of the potter.

Her father and their whole family and her mother, the family about

eight or ten, Iʼll have to stop and count them for you came to Canada

on the 7th of November 1907, when she was aged twelve or so. They came

on the ship called SS Corsican, which was then the Allen Line. Later

Canadian Pacific bought it. They stopped off in Montreal and stayed

there. Why they left Romania is unknown to me.