Features
Part 2 of the story of the delusional Winnipeg con man: Meeting him for the first time in the summer of 2021
By BERNIE BELLAN (This is the continuation of a story that begins elsewhere on this website at The delusional Winnipeg con man who actually believed his own elaborate con and led one victim in Africa to consider committing suicide)
I actually met Fred Devlin several years ago – but never imagined that he was as delusional as I’ve now been made quite aware. As I noted in the story that did appear on my website until I removed it, Devlin believes that he is someone of incredible wealth. Not only that, as I noted at the beginning of that story, he also believes he has had a brilliant business career (and owns over 300 companies or 3,000 companies – depending on when you may have been talking to him. For instance, when I first met him – in 2021, he told me he owned over 300 companies. When I met him again just recently that figure had grown to over 3,300 companies).
He also claims that he is a fervent supporter of the State of Israel, has strong connections to the Mossad, and owns a great deal of land both in Winnipeg and in Israel. Finally, now that he had made his billions (or his trillions, as the case many be), he maintains that he only wants to devote himself to helping others – whether it is by investing in various business ventures or by engaging in philanthropic endeavours.
The problem, as I was to discover as I waded further and further into Devlin’s bizarre story, is that nothing he believes about himself is true. That, in itself, is not so unusual. Many people suffer from different forms of psychosis. The difference between most people who suffer from a psychosis and Fred Devlin, however, is that he has not stopped believing his fantasy for many years now. How long he has been suffering from his psychosis I am not quite sure because, as you might expect, no one close to him in his family is willing to talk about his illness.
And, that is one of the questions that has been plaguing me as I set out to do research for this story: Could Fred Devlin have been stopped through early intervention by individuals close to him? This fellow has been married for many years. What role has his wife played in enabling his delusional behaviour? And what of his parents? As I will explain, they have been well aware that their son is very sick. For how long, I’m not quite sure but, as I will relate, his psychotic behaviour clearly began manifesting itself when he was in his thirties – and he’s now over 60.
Devlin has been in and out of psychiatric wards – that much is apparent from stories I have been told by different people who talked to him at different stages in his life when he was actually hospitalized in different psychiatric wards. (When I was finally able to confront him about his history of being hospitalized because of his psychiatric disorder, of course he denied that’s ever been the case, but then said he didn’t want to talk about it.)
Still, after learning so much about the hurt Devlin has caused to so many people, I kept coming back to wondering what more could have been done to prevent him from inflicting so much damage – and pain, upon so many individuals over a very long period of time, as a result of his harbouring such a deep delusional psychosis? That question is at the heart of what has been motivating me to write this story.
Even as I write this – and so far the process has taken me several months, I continue to receive communications from different individuals whose lives have suffered terrible impacts as a result of having come into contact with Fred Devlin. I feel so helpless when I receive another message – whether it’s through an email, a text, a WhatsApp message, or occasionally a phone call, telling me that someone has just received another message from Devlin – again repeating the same delusional nonsense about his being fabulously wealthy and, that if they waited just a little bit longer, he was going to come through with the financial help he had promised them.
As I’ve already noted, at the beginning of February 2026, I had written the first two chapters of what I thought would be an interesting and probably for most readers, an absolutely unbelievable story about Fredl Devlin. I had posted those chapters to my website with the idea that it would certainly attract interest – and it sure did. It had over 1,000 views within two days.
But, the idea of turning that story into a story? That was the furthest thought from my mind at the time – for a number of reasons. For one, I’d never written a story and I knew how challenging an assignment that is (at least, that is – to write a good story. In the course of my career as a publisher and editor, I’ve received many books from publicists – often authors themselves, that I thought were simply awful – and could, at the very least, have used a good editor. The advent of self-publishing has led to a flood of poorly written books that, had they been submitted to a real story publishing firm, would no doubt have been rejected without hesitation.)
The other reason I was reluctant to turn what I had already written into a full-scale story was that, at first, I thought I didn’t really have enough material to warrant taking on such a daunting project. As time went on, however, and as I began to delve ever deeper into the subject matter that first attracted my attention, I began to hear from more and more individuals who were eventually to become part of the story you are about to read. I soon realized that the story was so much more complicated than I had first thought. In fact, I thought, it probably would best be treated as a continuing series of stories – much like a blog, on my own website, in which I could add new information as it came to me each day.
I wanted to expose that individual by having his name out there for anyone else who might be contacted by him with him telling them he wanted to invest in their projects. That way, I thought, anyone doing an internet search for his name would come across my story and immediately realize that this character is totally delusional – so no one would be duped by him again.
Could I have changed what I had written into something semi-fictitious by changing everyone’s names and kept that story up on my website? Perhaps. But then the story wouldn’t have had the same impact, would it? Who would have known who it was about whom I was writing? That’s the problem with writing a “roman `a clef” which, I admit, is certainly a problem with the way I’m telling the story here. My hope is that this story will serve as yet an added warning to be on guard for con artists, especially when advancements in artificial intelligence have made it so much easier to fool people into believing stories that sound quite credible. The difference in Fred Devlin’s case though has been that as he tells his stories, he sounds all the more convincing because he actually believes them. When I finally got the opportunity to confront him about his trail of deceit, however, even though he kept sticking to the line that everything he says about himself is absolutely “true,” I was able to trip him up by asking him why essential details, such as how many companies he owned, had changed from when I talked to him in 2021 to now. (You’ll see that if you read my entire interview with Devlin, which will be posted later this month.)
Here’s a short excerpt from my asking him about the number of companies he alleges to own:
“Me: How many companies now is it (in the group of companies)?
“Devlin: 3,300… 3,306.
Me: When I spoke to you in 2021, it was 300.
“Devlin: I was being honest. Okay.”
The absurdity of it all might leave you laughing, but bear in mind that I was firing rapid questions at him during that interview, trying to expose how ridiculous he was in talking about how wealthy he is. For almost everyone else to whom I’ve spoken about Fred, however, the impression he leaves is of someone who has quite a bit of money but doesn’t like to disclose the source of that money for reasons of confidentiality. That doesn’t sound so far fetched, does it?
Even as I write this I’m still in touch with people who have been contacted by the person I’m calling Fred Devlin. Several people have already read my first chapter and got in touch with me to tell me their own stories of being acquainted with Devlin.
I’m now so deeply involved in trying to help various characters in this story obtain some degree of justice over what Fred Devlin has done to them though, that I feel I owe them a duty to see this story though to the end – which may mean that I’ll be adding to this story for quite some time.
For instance, as I mentioned, I am now engaged in attempting to facilitate a lawsuit against Fred Devlin by one of the individuals who suffered the worst financial loss at his hands. While others with whom I spoke wasted hours of their time thinking that Paul Devlin was going to invest in their projects, this particular individual actually suffered real monetary loss as a result of his having signed what he thought was a fully legitimate contract with Devlin – in which Devlin assured him that he would be compensated if he were to stop paying any debts he owed to creditors. That promise to be compensated for debts ended up costing that individual a huge amount in penalties for unpaid debts.
And, even though, as I’ve explained, the lawyer who said he’s ready to file a lawsuit advised against it for the reason that Fred Devlin doesn’t seem to have any real money of his own, who knows? Maybe we’ll find that he has been given a great deal of money by his parents. Someone has been paying the charges he’s been racking up at the Fairmont, Hy’s, and other pricey establishments in Winnipeg.
As well, I’ve been helping another of Devlin’s victims – this time someone who lives in Africa. As I write this, that poor fellow has been contemplating committing suicide, he tells me; his life has been ruined so badly by his having fallen for another of the con man’s schemes. I’ve been spending a great deal of time with this poor African fellow – in fact, helping him quite a bit financially, in order to keep him from doing anything rash. That’s how badly some people have fallen prey to the con man who is the subject of this story.
Devlin’s story of conning people goes back to at least 2008, I discovered in talking to one individual who has had contact with Devlin for at least 18 years. Over a period of many years, I found in talking to others, Devlin had convinced a great many individuals that he was someone of immense wealth who was interested in helping them further their ambitions – whether those ambitions were related to business or, in another instance, to creating a charitable foundation.
But, as I’ve already noted, I did publish two chapters about the con man on my website, and I received that warning letter from the lawyer telling me that I could be sued for defamation if I didn’t remove what I had written from my website.
I had previous experience with being threatened with a defamation lawsuit. I had written an exposé of a prominent Manitoba investment fund which, I alleged, was hiding the true state of its precarious financial situation from investors in that fund. I learned from that experience that a lawyer can pick apart a story to find minute flaws and claim that his or her client was defamed as a result, no matter how inconsequential those mistakes may have been to the larger story. Even though I was vindicated in the end in that particular instance by my story eventually proving largely right – and the investment fund was forced into receivership, having to hire a lawyer to fend off a lawsuit taught me that “libel chill” is a very effective tool when someone powerful wants to squelch criticism.
Something else happened to me though, after I published those two stories to my website, and as I continued to probe ever more deeply into the story about which I had begun to write. I began to hear stories from more and more individuals how they, too, had been duped by by the individual whose real name had been exposed in the stories on my website. Their stories were all so fascinating – often bizarre, that I began to think: No one is going to believe this; it’s so outlandish.
So, if it will make you want to read on but, as you’re reading you’re going to say: This is so absurd I can’t believe this really happened, then consider it fiction in the same way that writers such as Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Gay Talese would combine elements of fiction in writing about events that were largely true. I myself don’t know how much to believe of the stories I was told by so many individuals about the person who ensnared them all in what ultimately was one giant delusion, but regardless how much of what they told me was true, the stories were endlessly fascinating.
And that’s what this story is really about. It’s about someone who was – and still is, so completely deluded that when he tells someone that he’s a “trillionaire,” for instance, or that he owns “3,339” different companies around the world well, hard as it is to believe, this guy actually believes what he is saying is true.
As I began to do research for this story I read about individuals who suffer from a delusion psychosis. I referred previously to a definition of delusional psychosis, but just to reiterate, according to the Cleveland Clinic, “delusional psychosis is a mental health condition in which a person can’t tell what’s real from what’s imagined. There are many types, including persecutory, jealous and grandiose types. It’s treatable with psychotherapy and medication.”
During the course of my over-40 year career as a newspaper publisher, I’ve met a number of strange individuals – a few of whom deserved to be put into straitjackets, but never had I met anyone whose story was so strange that when I began telling friends the story, their almost immediate reactions were along these lines: “We don’t believe you. It’s too crazy to have happened.”
I take as inspiration for this story a story that I read and reviewed several years ago, titled “Proof of Life,” written by someone by the name of Daniel Levin. That story tells the story of Levin’s having been engaged to seek the whereabouts of a young American man who had gone missing in Syria in the early days of Syria’s civil war.
Levin describes meeting a wild mix of characters in various parts of the Middle East. Whether the stories they were telling him were true or not he couldn’t actually tell for certain, he admits, but they were all so alluring that he followed up each and every one of them. In the end, he does come to a rather sobering conclusion about what happened to that young American but, like just about every other story about someone who’s gone missing during a period of great turmoil, it’s almost impossible to distinguish fact from fiction as to what really happened.
Still, it’s Levin’s telling of the story that I found so captivating. In the end, it didn’t matter whether he had cobbled together a series of disparate stories that often contradicted one another; the cast of characters he assembled was interesting enough to hold your attention without wondering whether anything Levin says they told him was true or not.
I actually interviewed Levin because I was so interested in knowing what motivated him to enter into a story that was labyrinthian in scope – and I wanted to know more about the techniques he used to get stories from some very scary characters.
I admired his perseverance in chasing down the story – at great risk to his own safety, and I have often thought of his determination not to be deterred from following wherever his story may have led him – no matter how dangerous following that road may have been.
And, because I myself still have such a hard time believing what I’ve been told in the story you’re about to read, rather than simply writing a piece of journalism based on accounts I have been told – which all contain so many gaps and rabbit holes, I thought it best to write something more speculative in which I will imagine what may have led different individuals to fall prey to Devlin’s delusion at different times. In the same way that Daniel Levin had to fill in many gaps when he was writing his story – to the point where it could easily be considered a work of fiction, I’ve had to fill in many gaps in writing this story – also to the point where I now wonder how any of what I’ve heard and read happened could really have happened?
The story begins in Winnipeg, where Devlin grew up – and still lives. According to individuals with whom I spoke who knew him when he was younger, Devlin had a normal childhood. Further, he showed exceptional promise as a student and looked to be headed toward a very successful career path. His wealthy parents were both successful in their respective careers.
Fred claimed to have been successful in business, starting from a very early age – when he was only 18 years old. In one published account he says that he had already developed several properties in Winnipeg by the time he was in his early twenties, and was already CEO of an Ontario-based development company.
Following is a story written about Fred in 1990, when he was just 24. (For the purposes of this story, I’ve changed his name in the 1990 story from how it appeared in the real story.) The story appeared in a business publication, a copy of which you are not likely be able to find anywhere. Luckily, I was able to obtain a copy of the story from someone who had managed to get a hold of a copy of the story. How he was able to do that he would not tell me.
Here is the story:
“When you first meet Fred Devlin, you are immediately impressed both by his youth and his sincerity in what he is doing with his life. At 24 years of age, he has already spent several years in the business trenches, having been the president of his own company since 1986.
“As careful with his words as he is with his investments, he has been programming himself towards success since his initial reach into the speculative market of real estate.
“With his first acquisition of a small property in Winnipeg, he formed Xanadu Enterprises (note: also not the real name of his company). While buying and selling properties yielded significant financial reward, making a fast buck was far from this young entrepreneur’s dream.
“ ‘The property market is not one which facilitates speculative investment and overnight profit,’ he says. ‘Rewards are gained through the acquisition and development of real assets, which, only under proper care, over time, can reach their true potential.’
‘ “Though Fred continues his career in the real estate industry, he decided to return to University to complete his degree in Economics, and target his newly expanded company, Xanadu Corporation, in 1987.
“Combining business with his classes has kept this self admitted workaholic on a six-and-a-half day killer schedule. From seven in the morning to midnight, his days are divided into six hours for classes and related study and six hours are devoted to his business ventures.
“Intending to enter the Master of Business Administration program in the fall of 1990, he has found that the practical experience gained through his real estate developments has complemented his classroom theory.
“With developing and managing real estate projects as his company’s mandate, Fred has concentrated on the Osborne Village area. (Osborne Village is an area in Winnipeg that is close to the downtown.) He finds the area to be ideal for his projects, with its trendy restaurants and shops, while being in proximity to the amenities of downtown.
“To this end, he recently developed Cauchon Place, a luxury condominium project, in conjunction with Tri-Star Development, an Ontario-based company of which he is Chief Executive Officer. The first phase of the project, located at 99 Cauchon Place, has been completed, and all units, valued at $130,00 and up, have been sold.
“Within two to three years Xanadu Corporation expects to have five more units ready for mixed commercial and office space. The expansion of his company has allowed Fred to take on new investors, secure a larger line of credit and utilize various tax advantages.
”Foregoing much of the immediate gratification of someone who has achieved financial success, Fred still lives at home with the two people he refers to as his best friends, his mother and father.
“ ‘I’m a fairly family oriented person and they support me unconditionally in whatever I attempt, even though I don’t always take their advice,’ he says with a smile.
“Always looking for new projects to develop, either independently or with a small group of investors, Fred is now acquiring two apartment complexes that have been converted into commercial space, again in the Osborne Village area. He also has his eye on another type of development: ‘A senior citizens’ complex,’ he says, ‘where the environment is designed to suit the tenant’s specific ethnic and social needs, rather than the needs of the developer,’ is ‘high on his priority list.’
“Anther project on the drawing boards, with a long-time friend, is a medical office, with a group of interdisciplinarian specialists who would have direct ownership in the building. ‘I’m not a fan of strip malls,’ says Fred. ‘They become indistinguishable from one another and attract an eclectic assortment of tenants. What medical office wants to be next door to a video store selling adult films? You want some control over your working environment.’
” ‘We need to stop trying to copy other cities. Just because something works for Toronto or Vancouver does not make it automatically right for Winnipeg.’ Fred adds that ‘a city has to grow to justify developments like The Forks, The Exchange District and Portage Place, with the buildings following a logical and consistent plan.’ He foresees a trend in multiple use space, combining commercial, retail and living areas in one well designed building. ‘I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I feel I have a destiny to do something of great value with my life,’ he says. ‘I want the world to know I was here.’
” ‘A building, for example, should be more than just a structure; it should improve the quality of life for the people who work and live there. That’s what I want to achieve.’
“W hen you consider that this young man started off in 1986 with an investment of $3,000 and is now 50 percent owner in a million dollar investment company, maybe we should listen.”
Pretty impressive, huh? How much of what was written in that article was true is impossible to know, but I did some investigating of some parts of what Devlin claimed to have done. I did a search for Tri-Star Development, for instance, but could find no reference to a company in Ontario by that name – although it’s possible that one may have existed in 1990. As for “99 Cauchon Place,” all that turned up was a nice looking two-unit town home on 99 Cauchon Street – but no luxury condominium project called 99 Cauchon Place.
And, as for the project that Fred wanted to develop with a friend – I contacted that friend, whose name I recognized in the original article – and was someone I knew. He told me that he had left Winnipeg in 1989 and had never entered into any sort of a plan to develop a medical office with Fred.
The author of that article passed away several years ago. I would have loved to have asked that person whether they ever did anything to corroborate any of Devlin’s story. Looking back on the inconsistencies that I was able to discern, it points to an early pattern of Devlin’s dissembling – something that was going to emerge as a much more severe issue later in his life.
One line in that story though, really resonates, when Devlin says: ” ‘I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I feel I have a destiny to do something of great value with my life. I want the world to know I was here.’
Was that the first hint that Devlin had delusions of grandeur? Perhaps, but as I was to discover, Devlin actually did embark on a course that would most likely have led to his becoming a very successful businessman had something not happened to him at some point when he was around 30. In fact, Devlin did obtain a Masters of Business Administration – in 1992.
The only other chapter of his life that I could come across, aside from that article written about him in 1990, was when he assumed a position of some authority in the area of aviation and there was a reference to him in a 1998 article noting his having become executive director of something called the Airport Area Business Development Zone. (Later, when I received a surprise message from Devlin inviting me to meet with him and did actually meet with him, he claimed to have been involved with the opening of something called Winnport. You can read the complete transcript of that meeting at the end of this story.)
What happened in Devlin’s life in the intervening years between 1998 and now I’m not exactly sure. I happened to know Devlin’s parents – not well, but well enough to have asked them years ago when it was that their son started to develop the delusion that he was a fabulously successful businessman? As one might expect when it comes to talking about a son or daughter who is clearly disturbed, Devlin’s parents did not want to discuss his situation beyond admitting that he “wasn’t well.”
That conversation with his parents – specifically his mother, however, did not occur until about six years ago, when Devlin himself had called me out of the blue, saying that he wanted to meet with me because he wanted me to write a story about him. I did agree to meet with him. I vividly recall that meeting because it was quite a warm summer day in Winnipeg and we had arranged to meet on the outdoor patio of a well-known Winnipeg pizzeria.
Not knowing what Devlin looked like, but since he had told me he knew who I was from seeing my picture in my newspaper, I arrived early so that he would be able to find me seated at a table. I was quite surprised when, despite the warm temperature that day, up walked a man wearing a trench coat – and dark glasses. He didn’t take off those glasses until well after we had begun to talk. That in itself was not so unusual; keeping that trench coat on though? That was simply weird.
As we engaged in conversation, Devlin mentioned that he quite admired my writing and what I had done with my newspaper. In fact, he said, he’d like to talk about buying it.
“Oh really?” I thought. Well, that’s interesting. But, it was when he began to describe his vast business enterprises that I began to wonder whether this guy was for real.
However, Devlin had come prepared. He had a briefcase with him – and out of that briefcase he pulled a small photo album. Among the pictures he showed me were ones of an executive jet. That jet had a logo on it – a logo, which Devlin said, was the logo of his company. He also mentioned that the late Winnipeg business mogul Izzy Asper had taken a liking to him and, in fact, had mentored Devlin for a time.
“Impressive,” I thought. But why hadn’t I heard of him? I wondered. I asked him that same question.
His answer was that he kept a very low profile, so as not to attract attention to himself. Also, since he was now so fabulously wealthy, his main goal in life, he explained, was to devote himself to what he described as “tikkun olam,” which is a phrase in Hebrew meaning “repair the world.”
To that end, Devlin said, he had established a charitable foundation and was engaged in various philanthropic projects around the world. And that’s why Devlin wanted to meet with me, he noted. He wanted me to write about all the good work he was doing in the world.
Well, that didn’t quite fit with keeping a low profile, I thought, but then again I was just the publisher of a small Jewish newspaper in Winnipeg. Writing an article about him for my paper wasn’t necessarily a contradiction of his wanting to keep a low profile. (It’s not as if you can say about being profiled in what was then The Jewish Post & News or what is now jewishpostandnews.ca: “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”)
So far, so good, I thought. What Devlin was saying might be true. He just might be a very wealthy businessman – one who wanted to do good in the world. (Remember that description he gave of himself in that 1990 article.)
To reassure me that he was on the up and up, Devlin handed me a business card – with his group of companies logo emblazoned on the front. What was even more impressive was the address that the card gave as the headquarters for his group of companies: Luxembourg!
“Wow!” I thought. This guy might be the real deal. Luxembourg? You have to be of some substance to be headquartered in Luxembourg. Devlin told me to contact the CEO of his company, someone I had also never heard of, by the name of David Simkin (and, in this case, I’m using the real name that was printed on the back of that business card rather than a phoney name because, as far as I could ascertain, there is no such person as David Simkin. He’s just another figment of Fred Devlin’s delusion.)
Simkin’s name and email address, Devlin indicated, was on the back of the card. The card said that the head office for his company was in Luxembourg. At that point I told Devlin that I would look into his company with an eye toward doing a story about him. Despite his rather strange appearance and the fact that I had never heard of him, who was I to dismiss him as inauthentic? One thing about our leaving to go our separate ways that set me wondering about him when we both got up to leave, however, was his obvious discomfort when I thanked him for my meal. He seemed quite uncomfortable with having to pay the bill, small amount that it was notwithstanding.
I returned home and immediately began to look up his company name on the internet. I could find a name all right, but nothing beyond that. There was no description anywhere just what is was that this group of companies actually did or even what were names of any of the companies in the supposed group of companies.
I did send an email to the email address for David Simkin that was given on the card Devlin had handed me – and it didn’t bounce back. But when, after a couple of days of not hearing anything from this Simkin character who, Devlin had said, was the CEO of his vast group of companies, I began to suspect that the whole thing was some sort of twisted joke.
I happened to have Devlin’s mother’s phone number, so I called her. I told her about my meeting with her son. Her response, as I’ve already noted, was: “He’s not well.” She also added: “Go easy on him.”
All right, it wasn’t the first time I had met someone who had embellished their achievements and wanted me – or one of my writers, do a story saying how successful they were. I simply put Devlin out of my mind and left it at that – for a while.
Several months later, however, I got another phone call from Devlin, this time saying he wanted to talk seriously about buying my newspaper. Now, I should explain that, while I could dismiss him as a phoney, I did know his parents had money. I figured that even if he himself had no money, he could probably get his parents to put up the cash – depending on what amount we were talking about. (I should also explain that, at that point, I was quite willing to sell The Jewish Post & News. In fact, I had been actively seeking a buyer for some time – to no avail.)
I did agree to meet with him, this time at a very well known hotel in downtown Winnipeg, the Fairmont. (That hotel would come to figure prominently in many of the stories I was to hear later from many of the individuals who had fallen prey to Fred’s tangled web of deceit. And, as you will see if you read to the end of this story, it was to the Fairmont I headed when I received a surprise phone call from Devlin months after I had begun to write this story, inviting me to meet with him in person.)
We met, had a cup of coffee, but nothing ensued. There was no discussion of his buying the paper beyond his saying it was something he still wanted to do. But, what of all the good works he was doing all around the world? he asked me. Was I still willing to do a story about him?
“Is this guy for real?” I thought. I remembered the words his mother had used: “Go easy on him.” I told Devlin that I was sorry, but I just couldn’t find anything at all to substantiate what he had told me about his vast group of companies, so unfortunately there would be no story. I didn’t want to say to him what I really thought, which was that he was a total nutcase.
And, that’s where my involvement with Devlin ended – except for a chance meeting somewhere a few year later (where it was, I can’t remember) when Devlin happened to be with a woman whom he introduced as his wife. I was also with my wife, whom I also introduced. We left it at that.
Features
Israel pavilion ambassadors – then and now
By BERNIE BELLAN Given that Folklorama is on again and the Israel pavilion – Shalom Square, is in full swing, I thought it timely to resurrect an article I first posted to this website in August 2023.
But before reading that article, I wanted you to see who this year’s ambassadors are for Shalom Square:
It was back in 2023, however, that I set out to answer a question that I had asked our readers to help answer: Where was the very first Israel pavilion located? Some readers had thought it was the Golden Age Club, which used to be located on Pritchard and Salter. But others weren’t so sure. Here then is what I wrote back in August 2023 – when, with the help of a librarian at the Winnipeg Public Library, I was able to solve the riddle of where the first Israel pavilion was located:
It was earlier in August 2023 that I had raised a number of questions about the history of the Israel pavilion at Folklorama.
Among those questions were: Where was the first Israel pavilion located and when did the Israel pavilion actually become a permanent fixture in the YMHA on Hargrave (before moving to its current home in the Asper Campus)?
As part of my search for answers to those questions I turned to David Cohen, who had long been the coordinator of the Israel pavilion when it was located on Hargrave, but who didn’t step into that role until 1975.
David thought that the Israel pavilion hadn’t moved to Hargrave until 1974, but he wasn’t sure where the first Israel pavilion had been located.
I tried to find information using the Winnipeg Public Library online digital archive. In case you didn’t know, anyone with a library card can access the library’s online archive. You can also have access to newspaperarchive.com through the library’s digital archive. Newspaperarchive.com is an invaluable reference tool for journalists especially – or anyone wanting to access old newspaper archives, for that matter, but ordinarily you would need a subscription to newspaperarchive.com in order to use it. For some reason, however, the search function in the Winnipeg Public Library’s digital search engine didn’t produce results when I entered the word “Folklorama.”
As a result I called the Winnipeg Public Library for assistance and received great help from someone by the name of Louis-Phillipe. After taking my information, Louis-Phillipe phoned me to say that he had found out that the library had compiled a file of press clippings related to Folklorama going back to the very first year, 1970.
Further, Louis-Phillipe said, he had found a list of the 22 pavilions in that first year of Folklorama, along with where they were located. It turns out that the Israel pavilion was actually located in two different venues that first year: the Rosh Pina and the Shaarey Zedek.
The next day I also heard from reader Phyllis Dana, who confirmed that the Israel Pavilion had been in both synagogues. Phyllis also remembered that the only food served that first year was honey cake.
But the pièce de resistance came when I heard from reader Marilyn Breitman (née Stitz), who now lives in Calgary, when she phoned me on Monday, August 21 (which is when she received the August 16 issue of the paper with my story about Folklorama).
Marilyn told me that, not only did she remember that the first Israel pavilion alternated between the Rosh Pina and the Shaarey Zedek, she had actually been the female representative of the Israel pavilion that first year. Her title, Marilyn said, was simply “Jewish.”
But, as you might also recall, the entire confusion over where the first Israel pavilion was located began with an email I had received from Roz Greenfeld, who had written to correct my mistake when I had written in the August 2 issue that the Israel pavilion had been located in the YMHA from the very beginning.
Roz pointed out that, in 1971, the second year of Folklorama, the Israel pavilion was located in “Council House” or, as it was better known, “The Golden Age Club,” on Pritchard and Salter. How did she remember that? Roz was the female representative of the pavilion that year. Her title, as I found out was “Miss Judea,” she said.
So, if the Israel pavilion was located at both the Rosh Pina and Shaarey Zedek in that first year of Folkorama, and in the Golden Age Club that second year, where was it after that?
It was left to Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada archivist Andrew Morrison to come up with the answer to that question. Andrew informed me that the Israel pavilion did indeed move to the YMHA in 1972 and remained there for the next 25 years, until it moved to the Asper Campus in 1997.
There was a further footnote to the story, which is when I decided to try my luck with the Winnipeg Public Library’s online archive one more time. This time, rather than searching for “Folklorama,” I tried searching for old copies of both the Free Press and the Tribune from August 1970. I did manage to get results for the Tribune and when I entered a specific search within the Tribune I found a picture of all the famale representatives of pavilions – in bathing suits.
It turned out – and this was corroborated by both Marilyn Breitman and Roz Greenfeld, the female representatives had to parade in unison – in bathing suits, as part of Folklorama festivities. Each year, as well, a queen of Folklorama was chosen. Neither Marilyn nor Roz was made queen, both of them told me, although Roz was voted “Miss Congeniality.”
In addition to finding out about the early days of the Israel pavilion, I also learned that the Chai dancers were not regular performers at the Israel pavilion in those early years – as they eventually did become. Chai performers would dance only one night in those first years, with other entertainment the other nights.
I did enlist Andrew Morrison’s help once again and did find that Chai performed only one evening during the first few years of Folklorama – from 1970 to 1976. In 1977 Chai began performing every night of Folklorama, but there were other performers on hand as well, including Jerry Maslowsky and Rabbi Yosel Rosenzweig. In 1978 the Chai Folk Ensemble was the featured entertainment every evening; however, a notice that appeared in our paper did say that whistler Harvey Pollock would “be on hand” to entertain – whatever that meant.
While some may wonder of what earth shaking importance all this is, I ask: Isn’t it fun to look back in time – for just a little while, instead of worrying about more immediate problems, such as global warming, inflation, terrorist attacks in Israel, and whether Donald Trump will be president while he’s in jail?
Features
EINSTEIN, RITA AND ME
By DAVID R. TOPPER In the early 1960s, when I was an undergraduate student majoring in Physics at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh – there was only one girl in my advanced physics classes. As I learned later, nothing much had changed since the days of Einstein. When he was studying Physics at the Polytechnic in Zurich, the physics classes were all male – except for Mileva Marić, a Serbian who was the first girl in high school ever to take a physics course in the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because Switzerland was the only place where women were admitted to university classes, she was there with Albert in Zurich.
She was very smart, especially in math, and also proficient at the piano. Born with a dislocated hip, Mileva had a slight limp, and the men in the class ignored her – except for one, Albert. They became a couple and eventually married.
Back to me in my university physics classes – where it seems that little had changed for over sixty years. In my advanced classes there was only one girl. Her name was Rita. She mainly stayed to herself. Majoring in Mathematics, she took all the advanced physics courses available, right through the fourth year. In short, in those predominantly male classes, she was an anomaly – alone and ignored by her classmates.
Except me. No, I didn’t date her, yet I didn’t ignore her. During those undergraduate years, I lived at home and took a bus or a trolley to school five days a week, leaving early in the morning. The university is in downtown Pittsburgh. Walking to the campus, I first went to the Physics Department, using it as my base. From there I went to my other classes during the day. There was a small classroom in the Department that was almost always empty, especially in the morning. It could be used for individual studying or small group discussions and such. In the early morning, I was usually the only one there – except for Rita, who used it for studying, too. She often was there, even before me. Usually the conversation started by me saying something like: “Hi Rita, did you get the last problem in mechanics class homework?” Her response was invariably, “Yes.” We would go over it, with her finding my mistakes. We had an amiable relationship that never went beyond our interactions about physics – right up to the end of our university years. As far as I can remember, I don’t think I knew much about her beyond the classroom.
But one event, which I’ll never forget, stands out. It was during our last year of classes in a course on the theory of relativity. For the textbook the prof used a paperback edition of the original papers on the theory. Early in the course, we went through Einstein’s first paper of 1905 – step by step. On this particular day, the prof came in and said he had a problem with the next step in the paper. As we all sat with our books in front of us, he pointed to a certain equation where we ended in the previous class. In the next sentence, Einstein says that such and such follows. The problem for the prof was that he didn’t know how Einstein got that deduction. I looked at it, and didn’t have a clue either.
Just then, Rita’s hand went up. She said she thinks she knows how Einstein got it. The prof asked her to come up to the blackboard and show him. Rita did, and the prof said that she was right. I’m quite sure that – then and there – Rita got an A in that course, if not an A+.
That gives you some idea about Rita and my relationship with her at the time. Not a very significant part of my 4-year undergraduate years – except for this one event in a physics course.
Why then am I bringing this up now, so many years later? Here’s why.
I graduated with my BS degree in the fall of 1964. I then went to graduate school at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, majoring in Physics. (It’s now Case-Western Reserve University.)
When I moved there, I lived in a formerly swanky hotel on the edge of the campus, which was purchased by the university as a residence solely for graduate students. They called it The Graduate House. Eleven floors, the top 8 with suites for students, with one floor solely for female students. It was a radical experiment in co-ed living for the time.
My first day there, after getting my room and putting my things in drawers and so forth, it was late in the afternoon – and I was hungry. I had been told when I registered that the dining hall would open the following morning, but for now there was no food. However, on the third floor there were vending machines with sandwiches and such, so I went to find them.
Going down the elevator, exiting at the third floor, and walking down a hall – suddenly I heard my name called. “David, what are you doing here?” Turning around – there was Rita! It was quite a surprise for both of us. This tells you how minimally we interacted before; not even knowing that we both were going to the same graduate school.
I told her that I was majoring in Physics at Case. She, of course, was majoring in Math. After a chat about all this, I said that I was looking for the sandwich machines. She said that there was a diner nearby, and she was going there for dinner with someone else she had just met so I went, too. Thus, Rita and I reunited in Cleveland, now living in the same building.
In a short while, I made friends with a group of people in the Graduate House with diverse majors. Some were in various sciences, others in humanities. It was a lively group, with animated discussions on a range of academic topics, including politics, especially as the Vietnam War became the center of the news in the USA.
Rita was not a part of that group, but I did often see her. Being the eager student that I was, I was up early, getting to the university to study in the library before classes started. Coming to the dining room for breakfast, not long after it opened, I often saw Rita, too – all alone in a far corner. I took my tray and we had breakfast together. Except for that morning ritual, I seldom had any interactions with her.
Thinking about this now, I find the parallel morning rituals (first in Pittsburgh and then in Cleveland) a fascinating serendipitous episode in my life. The difference was that in Cleveland, we were not taking the same courses so we didn’t have to compare solutions to homework. We did talk about our respective courses, and interestingly a parallel appeared. By around mid-term of that first year in graduate school, we both were less than enthusiastic about what we were learning and, accordingly, were both thinking of not carrying on in our respective subjects.
For me it was Quantum Mechanics and the impossibility for us to know reality in itself. Everything was statistical, uncertain and almost esoteric. I found the uncritical attitude toward this world-view to be almost religious in nature. (I only learned later that Einstein felt the same way!)
For Rita, it was the same, despite the different fields. The math now was far beyond basic geometry, algebra and calculus. Topology, Group Theory, Galois’ Theory, and more – all culminating in Gödel’s Theorem, which asserts that all mathematical knowledge is inherently incomplete. It all was too esoteric for her. She knew that she was not going to get a PhD in mathematics.
We commiserated together, with another parallel in our unusual relationship, but with a difference. I still wanted to get my Master’s Degree and somehow still go on to get a job as a professor – that had been my goal in life ever since my first semester at Duquesne. Rita, however, was thinking of dropping out immediately and leaving university life altogether.
For me, this problem was resolved in my second year of Physics at Case, when I took a course taught by Martin Klein. Although he was a physicist in the Department, for many years he no longer was doing research in it. Instead, he was writing papers on the history of the subject – mainly involving Einstein, Boltzmann, Gibbs, Ehrenfest and others. Today those papers are paragons in the field. It was my extremely good luck that the department permitted him to teach such material for the first time.
I loved the course. I was enthralled by the topics – this was the way I wanted to learn physics, through its history. After getting my Master’s in Physics at the end of that year, I moved across campus to the History of Science Department. In another four years I had a PhD in the subject.
Back to early 1965: I tried to talk Rita out of dropping out, but she was adamant. The kicker was this: she really preferred numbers with $$$$ in front of them. Yes, she wanted to be an accountant. She didn’t want to waste any more time here, when she could be home getting her accounting credentials. As I recall, sometime before the spring of that year she went back to Pittsburgh. I’m sure she had an easy time getting her accounting licence and all that went with it. As she was very smart. My guess is that she was an excellent accountant and was very successful in that career.
I have no way of knowing. We didn’t keep in touch (honestly, I don’t know why not) and I can’t even remember her last name. All that I can recall is what I’ve written here. Nonetheless, I find these two interactions between Rita and me an interesting and pleasing tidbit about life and relationships – so much so that I deem it worthy of repeating here.
David R. Topper writes in Winnipeg, Canada. His work has appeared in Mono, Poetic Sun, Discretionary Love, Poetry Pacific, Academy of the Heart & Mind, Altered Reality Mag. and elsewhere.
His poem Seascape with Gulls: My Father’s Last Painting won first prize in the annual poetry contest of CommuterLit Mag – May 12, 2025.
Features
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