Features
Corporate and community leader James Cohen also passionate musician and composer

By MYRON LOVE (This story first appeared in the Oct. 31, 2018 issue of The Jewish Post & News. It’s been updated to include a link to a new video for the critically acclaimed single, “Dreaming My Life Away”, by Winnipeg’s James Cohen and the Prairie Roots Rockers. You can watch that video here: “Dreaming My Life Away” – YouTube)
James Cohen was 11 years old when his parents first signed him up for guitar lessons.
“After a few years, I really started to enjoy the guitar,” the President and CEO of Gendis Inc. recalls. “I played in garage bands in high school and then, after finishing university, I was accepted into the Guitar Institute of Technology in Hollywood.
“Over the more than two years that I was at the school, I learned a lot about music and song-writing. I really wanted to pursue it.”
Cohen however had a higher call to answer. Although he was not pressured to do so, he moved back to Winnipeg to follow in the footsteps of his late father, Albert Cohen, who, with his father, Alexander, and his five brothers, founded General Distributors (later to become Gendis Inc), the company that brought Sony products to Canada and at one time operated SAAN Stores and other retail chains across the country.
Thus, in 1990, the younger Cohen returned to Winnipeg to take up the family heritage. He started at the bottom – in retail sales in one of the Winnipeg SAAN stores – and, over 20 years, worked his way up to the top of the Gendis corporate ladder.
While the corporation was forced to sell its retail stores nearly 15 years ago due to the changing nature of retail, Gendis is still active, Cohen reports, in the real estate, energy and agri-business fields.
And, although his “day job” is as a corporate leader, Cohen has at the same time, been able to pursue a second career as a rock musician and song writer these last many years.
“I never stopped performing and writing music,” he says.
Cohen is the lead guitar player and singer in the eponymous band James Cohen and the Prairie Roots Rockers (which also includes Lloyd Peterson – also on guitar, bass player Bruce Jacobs, drummer Steve Martens and Gerry Atwell on keyboard).
“They are among the best musicians in this region,” Cohen says of his bandmates.
“We don’t play hard rock,” he points out, noting that among his musical influences are the late Tom Petty and John Mellencamp. “We play straight ahead classic rock.”
Now the measure of success in the music business is not what it used to be, Cohen observes. It used to be that aspiring musicians and bands would try to get a record deal with a major label and get air play on radio.
But no one’s buying records anymore.
These days, it’s about live performances, downloading and placement in movies and television.
“We have had some successes,” he says. “We put out an album in 2011 on a Warner Music Canada affiliate called Soccermom Records. One of our songs, So Long Sweet Deception spent a total of 16 weeks in the Top 50 nationally on the Mediabase Canadian Active Rock Top 100 Chart, peaking at #32 in 2012. We also have had four singles chart including our newest single 10,000 Lifetimes which was released in the fall of 2015.”
The Rockers also had These Long Nights, from the 2011 debut album, picked up for use in the movie soundtrack of Gone Tomorrow, a film that went almost straight to DVD.
James Cohen recently signed a contract with Americana Music Publishing Inc. whereby he extended rights for 34 of his original songs for commercial use.
“We are looking forward to getting back into the studio soon to do some more recording,” he reports.
James Cohen’s love of music extends beyond just rock and roll. He notes that he and his wife, Linda, are involved in many community organizations. James is the current Chair of the Manitoba Museum Board of Governors, a past board chair of the RWB and is also on the board of the WSO among other community endeavours.
“We support many worthy causes,” he says.
And, in addition to carrying on the family business and his passion for music, Cohen is an avid hockey player.
“I played hockey for many years in the Maccabia League winning a few championships along the way,” he says.
At 52, he continues to play hockey weekly at the Highlander.
“I like to think that I have a well-rounded life,” he says.
Added October 6, 2020: With reference to the song, “Dreaming my Life Away”, Cohen says the song is part of a group of songs on a 2011 album titled “James Cohen and the Prairie Roots Rockers”.
“The origins of these songs go back several years,” Cohen says. “The general themes are one of loneliness and isolation which, unfortunately, are sentiments many of us can relate to during these difficult times currently.”
An alumnus of Hollywood, California’s prestigious Guitar Institute of Technology, Cohen and co have performed at Canadian Music Week, the Grey Cup Festival, and more. A forthcoming album in the works, James Cohen and the Prairie Roots Rockers are also set to perform with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in 2021.
Features
How DIY Auto Repairs Can Help You Cut Costs—Safely

Regular maintenance and minor repairs are the greatest approach for many car drivers to save money without sacrificing dependability. DIY repairs can save you a lot of money over the life of your car since most of the expense is in the labour. DIY helps you learn how things work and notice tiny issues before they become costly ones. Every work requires planning, patience, and safety.
Test Your Talents with Safe Limits
DIY solutions succeed when one is honest about their talents. Wiper blades, air filters, and occupant filters are beginner-friendly. With the correct equipment, intermediate owners can replace brake pads, spark plugs, coolant, and brake fluid. Pressurized fuel, high-voltage hybrids, airbags, and timing components are risky. Only professionals should manage them. Limitations protect you and your car. Drivers trust sources like Parts Avenue to find, install, and schedule manufacturer-approved work.
Set Up a Reliable Workspace and Tools
Good tools pay for themselves quickly. Ratchets, torque wrenches, combination wrenches, heavy jack stands, and wheel chocks are essential. It is advisable to engage specialists for specific tasks. A clean, flat, well-lit, and open space is essential. Please take your time. While working, keep a charged phone nearby to read repair instructions or write torque patterns.
Find the Problem before Replacing the Parts
It may cost more to replace something without diagnosing it. Instead of ideas, start with symptoms. OBD-II readers detect leaks, sounds, and DTCs. Simple tests like voltage, smoke indicating vacuum leaks, pad thickness, and rotor runout might reveal failure. A good analysis saves components, protects surrounding parts, and fosters future trust.
Maintenance That Pays off is Most Crucial
Jobs compensate for time and tools differently. Prioritize returns and maintenance. Change the oil and filter, rotate the tires, evaluate the air pressure, replace low brake fluid, clean the coolant with the right chemicals, and replace belts and filters before they fail. These items extend automotive life, stabilize fuel efficiency, and reduce roadside towing issues that can take months to resolve.
Do as Instructed, Utilize Quality Parts, and Follow Torque Requirements
Understand the service. Set the jacking points, tighten the screws in the appropriate order, and use threadlocker or anti-seize as suggested by the maker. Rotor wear can cause leaks, distortions, or broken threads. Choose components that meet or exceed OEM requirements and fit your car’s VIN, engine code, and manufacturing date. Cheap parts that break easily cost extra.
Test, Record, and Discard Carefully
Safely test the system before patching. Check under the car for drops, bleed the brakes again, and check fluid levels after a short drive. Note torques, parts, miles, and repair date. Photo and document storage for car sales. Properly dispose of oil, filters, coolant, and brake fluid. Controlling hazards protects your community and workplace.
Know When to Seek Professional Help
Self-employed individuals recognize their constraints. If a task is challenging, requires special instruments, or involves safety, consult an expert. Collaboration makes cars safer, cheaper, and more efficient. Selecting, planning, and implementing processes properly improves performance, lowers costs, and ensures safety.
Features
What It Means for Ontario to Be the Most Open iGaming Market in Canada

Ontario is the most open commercial iGaming market in Canada, having been the first province to open up to commercial actors in the online casino and betting space since 2022.
Since gambling laws in Canada are managed on a provincial level, each province has its own legislation.
Before April 4th, 2022, Ontario was similar to any other Canadian province in the iGaming space. The only gaming site regulated in the province was run by government-owned Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, also known as OLG. However, when the market opened up, numerous high-quality gambling companies established themselves in the province, quickly generating substantial revenue. As the largest online gambling market in Canada, it’s now, three years later, also one of the biggest in North America.
The fully regulated commercial market is run under iGaming Ontario and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario. These licensed casinos and online sportsbooks are thus fully legal and safe for players to play at, while at the same time, the open market allows companies to compete and offer different products and platforms as long as they all fit within the requirements set up by the state of Ontario.
This means that Ontarians have a wide choice of licensed sites, whether they’re interested in sports betting, live dealer games, or slots – all with strict consumer-protection rules that keep them safe while exploring the many options. (Source: https://esportsinsider.com/ca/gambling/online-casinos-canada)
There are many benefits to online gaming, especially in a country that’s as sparsely populated as Canada, leaving physical venues often few and far between for those living outside the biggest cities.
Even before Ontario launched its own gambling sites, online gambling had been common among Ontarians. Regulating the market and offering alternatives regulated by the province has often added safer and more controlled options.
Since 85% of Ontarians now play at regulated sites, the initiative of opening up the market seems a clear win in more than one way.
Despite the huge success of the Ontario market, most provinces in Canada haven’t changed much in the iGaming sector in the past few years. Some provinces keep Crown-run monopolies, while others limit activity to a single government-run platform. This often leads Canadians to seek offshore alternatives instead, since the options are so few in their own province.
But 2025 marks an important change. The provinces seem to have noticed that Ontario picked a winning strategy, and Alberta has clearly been taking notes.
While the province of Alberta has previously opted for controlled gambling through one government website, the province is now opening up the commercial online gambling market. The Alberta iGaming Corporation will be in charge of licensing and inspecting actors that operate in the province. This will mean many more options for players, coupled with consumer protection and a high level of safety.
Meanwhile, the Ontario iGaming market continues to prosper, grow, and develop. Now that a second province is following in its footsteps, it seems more likely that other provinces will also start following the trend.
Features
I know exactly why leftists aren’t celebrating this ceasefire

Relief that the fighting may be at an end is one thing. Joy — after all this suffering — is another
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
“We can’t hear you, Zohran,” read one New York Post headline this week: “Pro-Hamas crowd goes quiet on Trump’s Gaza peace deal.”
“It seems awfully curious that the people who have made Gazans a central political cause do not seem at all relieved that there’s at least a temporary cessation of violence … Why aren’t there widespread celebrations across Western cities and college campuses today?” the article asked.
The Post wasn’t alone in voicing that question. A spokesperson for the Republican Jewish Coalition posted on X that “The silence from the ‘ceasefire now’ crowd is shameful and deafening.” Others went so far as to imply that the protesters had been lying and never actually wanted a ceasefire — because what they really wanted wasn’t freedom and security for Palestinians, but the ability to blame Israel. If pro-Palestinian voices had really wanted a ceasefire, the thinking went, they would be celebrating.
I read these various posts and articles and thought of Rania Abu Anza.
I have thought of her every day since I first read her story in early March 2024. Anza spent a decade trying to have a child through in vitro fertilization. When her twins, a boy and a girl, were five months old, an Israeli strike killed them. It also killed her husband and 11 other members of her family.
A year and a half later, a ceasefire cannot bring her children, her husband, or her 11 family members back. They were killed. They will stay dead. What is there to celebrate?
This does not mean that the ceasefire is not welcome, or that it is not a relief. On the contrary: It is both. Of course it’s a relief that the families of hostages don’t need to live one more day in torment and anguish. Of course it’s a relief that more bombs will not fall on Gaza.
But celebration implies, to me anyway, that this is a positive without caveats. And in this situation, there are so many caveats.
The families of the surviving hostages will still have spent years apart from their loved ones, in no small part because their own government did not treat the hostages’ return as the single highest priority. The families of those hostages who were killed in the war will never again sit down to dinner with their loved ones, who could have been saved. And it is difficult to fathom what’s been taken from the hostages themselves: time spent out exploring the world, or with family and friends, or at home doing nothing much at all but sitting safely in quiet contemplation.
And a ceasefire alone will not heal Israeli society, or return trust to the people in their government. It will not fix some of the deep societal problems this war uncovered. A Chatham House report this August found that: “Israeli television ignores the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, while the rhetoric is often aggressive. Critical voices, from inside Israel or abroad, are attacked or silenced.” If the country is ever going to find its way back from Oct. 7 and this war, a ceasefire is a necessary precondition, but not a route in and of itself.
In Gaza, Palestinian health authorities have said that about 67,000 people — not distinguishing between combatants and civilians — have been killed by Israel’s campaign in response to Oct. 7. A full third of those killed were under the age of 18. The ceasefire cannot bring those children back to life.
It cannot turn back time and make it such that Israel admitted more than minimal aid to the embattled strip. It will not undo the damage that has been done to the people of Gaza who were denied enough to eat and drink and proper medical care. It will not give children back their parents, or parents back their children. It will not heal the disabled, or make it so that they were never wounded.
It will not change that all of this happened with the backing of the United States government. (This is to say nothing of the West Bank, which has seen a dramatic expansion of Israeli settlements and escalation of settler violence over the course of the war). And as American Jewish groups put out statements cheering the ceasefire, we should also remember that it does not reverse the reality that too many American Jews were cheerleaders for all this death.
Protesters calling for a ceasefire have regularly been denounced as hateful toward Jews or callous toward the plight of Israelis; American Jews who called for one were called somehow un-Jewish. (Yes, some pro-Palestinian protesters also shared hate toward Jews; the much greater majority did not.) The charge of antisemitism — toward those calling for a ceasefire, those calling for a free Palestine, and those who called attention to Israel’s abuses during this war — was used to silence criticism of Israel and of U.S. foreign policy. Some American Jews went so far as to call for the deportation of students protesting the war.
A ceasefire doesn’t change any of that. It can’t.
I have hopes for this ceasefire. At best, it will allow people — Israelis and Palestinians and, yes, diaspora Jews — to chart a new, better course going forward. But it almost certainly will not do that if we delude ourselves into thinking of this as a victory or a kind of tabula rasa, as though the lives lost and hate spewed are all behind us, forgotten, atoned for. The last two years will never not have happened. What happens next depends on all of us fully appreciating that.
This story was originally published on the Forward.