Features
St. John’s used to produce so many of Winnipeg’s “best & brightest”
By BERNIE BELLAN Readers may wonder why I’ve devoted so much space to writing about Aron Katz, who died tragically 49 years ago.
The reason, as I explain in my story about Aron, is that memories of a member of our community whose life was suddenly cut short – especially someone who was on the cusp of greatness, evoke strong feelings in so many of us.
As I also note in my story, a year and a half ago I wrote a very similar story about someone named Rebbie Victor. Here is what I wrote in December 2020: “It was 50 years ago this month that the life of a young woman who was loved by all who knew her was cut tragically short as the result of a totally unforeseeable incident.
“I didn’t know Rebecca Victor (who was commonly known as Rebbie), although it turns out we weren’t far apart in age.”
In that article I quoted extensively from a piece the late Abe Arnold had written about Rebbie, in which he described how immensely talented she was – and what great promise she held. Abe wrote: “Rebbie Victor was a talented young woman with mature interests in the world around her. A student of music and of dance, she showed accomplishment at the piano and had a lovely voice, but music was not all and she had a great zest for the varied experiences of life.
“Rebbie had an earnest concern for other people demonstrated by her active interest in the cause of world peace and in political activities which, to her, were truly devoted to the achievement of a just society.”
So, when I was contacted again – this time by a former classmate of Aron Katz’s by the name of Reid Linney – who asked me whether I’d be interested in writing about yet another product of St. John’s, and who was only 21 when his life came to a sudden end, I immediately responded that I would because I knew Aron’s story would also evoke a similar reaction among readers as had the story about Rebbie Victor.
Never having attended St. John’s myself, although many of my friends did, when I pored through the same online 1968-69 yearbook that I had looked at in December 2020 when I was researching Rebbie Victor’s life, I was astounded at how many names I recognized – and who have since gone on to successful careers.
There are doctors, dentists, lawyers, and businesspeople, many of whom are well known, not only in our Jewish community, but the larger community as well. And, when I looked at the names of the individuals who have contributed to the scholarship that has been established in Aron Katz’s name for a student at St. Johns’s, I was impressed with the mix of Jewish and non-Jewish names.
That was another aspect of Aron’s story that impressed me. Among the many individuals who have contributed to the scholarship established in his memory are many non-Jewish names.
Here is the wording that explains the purpose of the Aron Katz scholarship: “Aron excelled at academics, made friends easily, and exhibited uncommon courage in his life. His classmates wish to recognize a graduating student who similarly shows academic promise and exhibits empathy for others; in particular, one who has demonstrated courage when faced with a significant challenge in their life.”
To think that someone who died almost 50 years ago can serve as an inspiration for others is something that we should all keep in mind when we think of the types of role models that young people have in abundance these days.
Nowadays someone has to have a huge Instagram presence and be a social influencer of immense fame in order to attract the admiration of most young people.
But, back in the day when Aron Katz was growing up – along with his friends, the criteria for success included academic achievement and being a well-rounded person. I’m not so sure those criteria still hold when the single most important criterion for success these days seems to be how many followers you have on Instagram.
At the same time I wonder how the current generation of Jewish kids compares with kids from years past when it comes to goals and opportunities. Back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, it was taken for granted that if you did well at school and continued on the same path at university, then doors would be open to you in almost any field you might choose. The era of facing discrimination on gaining admittance to medical school, for instance – something that was a bitter obstacle for Jewish students for years, was over. All that you needed were good marks and a willingness to work hard .
Yet, in looking at that St. John’s yearbook, as I realized that so many of the names I recognized no longer live in Winnipeg, I couldn’t help but think that so many of the best and brightest have left Winnipeg over the years. That comes as a surprise to no one, I’m sure.
Back in 2016 I was curious to find out whether the trend of leaving Winnipeg once someone had acquired an undergraduate degree had continued among more recent graduates of our school system. I decided to focus on everyone who had received a scholarship from the Jewish Foundation in 2004. It was an arbitrary choice and it could well have been any other year.
Of the 45 scholarship recipients I was able to track down 41 of them. What I found surprised me to a certain extent. Of the 45, 22 were in Winnipeg. (I noted that I wasn’t sure whether some of them had left Winnipeg for a while and returned.)
I also wrote that “Of the others who are living elsewhere, eight are in Toronto, one is in Calgary, one is in Montreal, six are in the U.S., and two are in Israel.”
I also noted that many of the scholarship winners were Russian Israelis – and that the majority of the Russian Israelis had remained in Winnipeg.
In addition, I wrote that “Many of the scholarship winners have gone on to careers in the health field. Three are doctors (one is a psychiatrist), one is a naturopath, and one is an acupuncturist.
“Three others are dentists; four are nurses.
Three are lawyers, three are engineers, one is an actuary, one is an economist, one is a Russian language school operator; three are university lecturers (although someone who I thought is a university lecturer might be a learning specialist – there were two individuals from Winnipeg with the same name who could have fit the bill); while the rest are involved in business to one degree or another – including software developer, food entrepreneur, swimming school owner, goldsmith, employee of a religious store, and a senior executive with Target in the U.S.”
It was an interesting exercise and one I ought to consider doing again. (I wonder whether anyone at the Jewish Foundation itself has ever thought to track down previous scholarship recipients to see where they ended up.)
My point in writing this is simply to try to know more about our Jewish community, especially recent immigrants to Winnipeg. If it was a given back in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s that the children of individuals who had immigrated to Winnipeg back in the first half of the 20th century or, as was the case with so many others, following World War II, would be motivated to succeed academically – not because their parents had been well educated (because most of them weren’t), but as was almost always the case – as a result not only of pressure put upon them by their parents to succeed academically, but also due to peer pressure, then what of the current generation of children whose parents also came here – from Argentina, Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and several other countries?
In the past I’ve written about educator Dina Raihman and her “Integral School,” which places on emphasis on teaching math and physics. Although not all of Dina’s students are the children of immigrants, a good majority of them are. I’d be looking for those kids to be the next generation of academic achievers.
In reading about Aron Katz I was especially moved by something David Manusow remarked upon in a 2019 speech in which he paid tribute to Aron: “Aron was the second youngest of 7 children, all academic stars, who grew up under very modest circumstances in an old, white 2-1/2 storey wooden clapboard house on Alfred Ave. (Many years later, I still recall Aron complaining that the sound of mice scurrying about in its walls interfered with his studying!)”
Many of Aron’s peer group at St. John’s came from similar circumstances. Fifty years from now, I’m thinking that if we’re going to be able to look back upon a similar group of shining academic stars who are currently in school, they too will have been the children of immigrants.
Features
River Heights home close to school & synagogue
Blending timeless character with thoughtful modern updates, this beautifully maintained River Heights home offers comfort, style, and everyday functionality. Bright living spaces, a finished basement, a private backyard, and a double detached garage make it ideal for families, professionals, or anyone looking to enjoy one of Winnipeg’s most sought-after neighbourhoods. Conveniently located close to schools, parks, cafés, shopping, and everyday amenities, this move-in-ready home is ready for its next chapter.
•
Features
Will the Democratic Socialists of America control the Democratic Party?
By HENRY SREBRNIK On June 23, radical Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates backed by New York mayor Zohran Mamdani won multiple Democratic Party primaries in New York City and elsewhere in the state. They also were victorious in other parts of the country.
The socialist victories in New York far surpassed anyone’s predictions. Who, three years ago, could have predicted that a Muslim anti-Zionist would be elected mayor of a city with 900,000 Jews and would lead insurgents to victories in that party’s primaries in 2026? Yet here we are.
Marxist Third Worldist ideology has moved out of the universities into the polling booths, after campus activism, divestment campaigns, and social media have reinforced an anti-Israeli framework for years. The DSA’s platform states it plainly: It pledges “support for Palestinian self-determination against Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.”
The mayor, a long-standing DSA member, worked overtime to appear at countless campaign events for a trio of candidates he dubbed “the Team”: Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Brad Lander. The last two unseated incumbent Democratic congressmen. Mamdani has assembled a coalition in New York City that is capable of elevating like-minded candidates to office.
In the Seventh Congressional District, which straddles northern Brooklyn and southwestern Queens, an open primary to replace retiring progressive Rep. Nydia Velázquez saw State Assembly Member Claire Valdez’s’s defeat Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. She was even further left than Mamdani himself. In the end, it was not even close: Valdez prevailed with 56.1 per cent of the vote to Reynoso’s 35.8 per cent.
In 2019, Valdez joined the DSA after seeing the rise of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and state senator Julia Salazar, both of whom were elected with the DSA’s help. Valdez emphasized her anti-Israel activism as a key part of her campaign. At events, her staff handed out signs that said “Free Palestine.” She launched her campaign alongside Mahmoud Khalil, a key anti-Israel leader at Columbia University that the Donald Trump administration has tried to deport.
Valdez referred to Israel’s war against Hamas as a “genocide” as early as October 13, 2023. She lambasted police for restraining anti-Israel mobs chanting “Globalize the Intifada” and waving Hezbollah flags outside a Brooklyn synagogue last June. “New Yorkers don’t just have the right to protest the sale of stolen Palestinian land — they have a responsibility to,” she declare. She has repeatedly criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She also boasted on social media of having “wiped my hand on the American flag.”
In the Thirteenth Congressional District, covering the upper Manhattan neighborhoods of Harlem, Washington Heights, and Morningside Heights and parts of the West Bronx, Darializa Avila Chevalier won a much more startling victory over Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a five-term incumbent Democratic Party power broker and chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Espaillat’s campaign was heavily backed by AIPAC. Chevalier defied expectations and won by gaining 49 per cent to Espaillat’s 46 per cent. She told the crowd at her watch party that she had fought against the “Democratic machine.” Espaillat lost despite the backing of Democratic leaders in Congress and the state, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and Julie Menin, speaker of the New York City Council.
When Chevalier, draped in a keffiyeh, first announced her candidacy in November of last year, few outside her immediate circle knew her name. But her message was clear: she presented herself as an organiser working to unite families torn apart by the immigration system and against “what we all know is a genocide in Palestine.”
Chevalier has publicly proclaimed her hatred for Israel, the United States, and “Western civilization” as a whole. She has called for the abolition of prisons, open borders and an end to deportations — even for people convicted of violent crimes. As a student at Columbia University, she was involved in Students for Justice in Palestine. In 2024, she returned to her alma mater to help organize an anti-Israel encampment that was ultimately disbanded by the police.
She co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest: “We are Westerners fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our intifada is an Internationalist one,” it states.
The day after the October 7 attack, Chevalier attended an anti-Israel demonstration in Times Square. “I can only say I have been advocating for the human rights of Palestinians for my adult life,” when asked about her attendance at the rally. Chevalier has said that her conversion to Islam was inspired by the Israel-Hamas war. Mamdani celebrated her win, describing Chevalier as a person “of clarity, of conscience and of conviction.”
The war was also on the minds of voters in former Comptroller Brad Lander’s race against another AIPAC-funded incumbent, Rep. Dan Goldman, in New York’s Tenth District, covering lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn. Both are Jewish, but Goldman has been a steadfast friend of Israel while Lander is the quintessential anti-Zionist and a key faction of his coalition was anti-Israel. It was a contest that laid bare the party’s divisions over the Israel-Gaza war.
At his son Marek’s bris, Lander gave a speech lambasting Israel. “We pray fervently that by the time you read this, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the settlements, the house demolitions, the violence will be history,” which was later reprinted in a 2003 book titled Wrestling with Zion. Lander enjoyed the night’s biggest victory, winning 65.8 per cent of the vote to Goldman’s 34 per cent. Many Democrats have suggested that Lander has proved useful to Mamdani and other leftists who have been accused of antisemitism for singling out the Jewish state for opprobrium.
In the run-up to Election Day, a chain of Brooklyn coffee shops called Poetica posted that it would have barred Goldman entry had they recognized him during a recent visit to their storefront. “We don’t serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers,” Poetica declared. “Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away.”
At the state level, seven of the eight candidates endorsed by the DSA for the New York State legislature also won their primary elections. One of them is Aber Kawas, a Queens-based community organizer. If she, as expected, wins in November, she will be the first Palestinian woman elected to state office in New York history.
“Were defeated congressmen Dan Goldman and Adriano Espaillat insufficiently anti-Trump?” asked Will Rahn, a senior editor and writer for The Free Press, rhetorically, in a June 26 column. “Of course not. They lost because they aren’t anti-Israel enough. ‘Free Palestine’ is now the binding issue on the left, the only thing that actually matters.” No matter who you are, how you identify, or what causes you’ve championed, if you refuse to fall in line on Israel, you risk being ostracized from communities you’ve long called home.
For most of the postwar era, support for Israel was one of the least controversial positions in Democratic Party politics. That consensus has not merely weakened; it has collapsed. Once viewed as a righteous anti-colonial cause, Zionism has been reframed by radical thinkers as the ideology of a colonial oppressor of stateless Palestinians. Opposition to Israel is now the litmus test in Democratic Party politics. “There’s a cliff, and we’re heading towards it,” warned Daniel C. Kurtzer, a Princeton University professor who was ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush.
The DSA has now built an entire ecosystem that runs parallel to the official Democratic apparatus, equipped with their own consultant network, endorsing organizations, donors and even billionaires who back them.
A generation after Pat Buchanan was denounced as an antisemite by all proper liberals for saying things like “Capitol Hill is Israeli-occupied territory,” will the left now embrace him as a “premature antizionist”? Even satire can’t match this.
Think about it: Since October 7, Israel has done what every other country viciously attacked by implacable enemies throughout history has done: It has lashed back in a defensive war. This is a policy that any state that cared for the life of its citizens would have to adopt.
Yet Israel has become the “omnicause.” That’s why antisemitism and antizionism are two sides of the same coin: hatred of Jews. Jews around the world aren’t being attacked because of Israel. Israel is itself being condemned because it’s Jewish.
American Jews have been blindsided by this, as the French writer Simone Rodan-Benzaquen, senior envoy for Europe at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells us in a brilliant article, “Stand Up,” Tablet, July 6, 2026. “When anti-Jewish hostility arrives wrapped in the language of liberation, antiracism, decolonization, and human rights –when it emerges among allies, colleagues, students, professional peers, or other minority communities — the disorientation is deeper. It is inside the world in which one has built a life. It speaks in familiar accents. It borrows cherished values.”
In “A Profound Question Haunting Jews Today,” New York Times, July 6, 2026, Nicholas Lemann, the former dean of the Columbia University Journalism School, agrees. He writes that for half a century or more, American Jews could achieve, “through being successful, culturally Jewish, Zionist, liberal and not especially observant,” a status that elsewhere has persistently eluded them.
“This set of certainties has evaporated. Today, Israel is the pariah nation of the world, and ‘Zionist’ has become an epithet, something it’s unacceptable to be, at least in progressive circles,” where most Jews have usually found themselves.
So, are the Democrats going to become America’s anti-Israel party? And then what?
Henry Srebrnik is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
Discover Your Ultimate Smooth at Sets on Corydon: Nanoplasty vs. Keratin vs. Japanese Straightening
Are you ready to wake up with flawless, effortless hair every single day? While standard straightening methods try to fit everyone into the same box, your hair has its own unique structure, strength, and history.
We offer three distinct, state-of-the-art smoothing and straightening systems. Finding the perfect match depends entirely on your hair type, your lifestyle, and your ultimate hair goals.
Here is exactly how they compare so you can choose the path to your most beautiful, resilient hair.
The Treatment Breakdown
1. The Elite Standard: Nanoplasty (Our Premier Selection)
Nanoplasty is a revolutionary, high-technical smoothing treatment that works at a deep cellular level. Using nanotechnology, nutrients and amino acids are deeply integrated right into the hair cortex (the inner core of the hair strand). It heals, seals, and straightens from the inside out without harsh chemicals.
- How it works: It uses an acidic formula triggered by specialized infrared heat to realign the hair bonds. It does not just coat the cuticle; it restructures it while infusing massive hydration.
- The Finish: Ultra-glossy, high-shine, sleek, and straight, while retaining natural movement and zero frizz.
- The Big Benefit: Formulated without formaldehyde or harsh chemicals. There are no fumes, no burning eyes, and you can wash your hair or tie it up the very same day.
- Longevity: Lasts up to 4 to 6 months.
2. The Classic De-Frizzer: Keratin Treatment
The traditional choice for managing unruly texture. Keratin acts like a protective shield, filling in the cracks along a compromised or distressed hair cuticle (the protective outer layer).
- How it works: A liquid keratin formula is sealed into the outer layer of the hair with a flat iron.
- The Finish: Soft, smooth, and incredibly manageable. It reduces curl volume by roughly 50 to 70% and completely deletes frizz, but leaves some of your natural body and bounce.
- The Big Benefit: Ideal for hair that has undergone chemical stress or bleaching. It acts like a temporary protein bandage to restore softness and cut your blow-dry time in half.
- Longevity: Lasts 3 to 4 months, gradually washing out over time.
3. The Permanent Sleek: Japanese Straightening (Thermal Reconditioning)
For those who want absolute, pin-straight hair that defies high humidity and never reverts.
- How it works: This is a permanent chemical process that physically breaks down the internal bonds of the hair, which are then precision-ironed perfectly flat and neutralized to lock in the new shape forever.
- The Finish: Mirror-smooth, pin-straight, glassy hair with zero wave or curl.
- The Big Benefit: It is completely permanent on the hair that is treated. Rain, humidity, and workouts will not change it. Only your new root growth will need touching up.
- Longevity: Permanent (requires root touch-ups every 6 to 9 months).
Which One Is Right For You?
| Feature | Nanoplasty | Keratin Treatment | Japanese Straightening |
| Primary Goal | Deep cellular repair, sleek straightening, intense gloss. | Frizz elimination, volume reduction, softer texture. | Permanent, absolute pin-straight results. |
| Hair Condition | Healthy to moderately sensitized or colored hair. | Highly compromised, bleached, or heat-distressed hair. | Healthy, resistant, coarse, or virgin hair only. |
| Chemical Type | Amino acids & organic acids (No formaldehyde fumes). | Cuticle-coating formulas (May contain standard preservatives). | Traditional alkaline straightening solution. |
| Post-Care Window | Wash or style immediately. No waiting period. | Must wait 48 to 72 hours before washing or tying up. | Must keep completely dry and straight for 48 to 72 hours. |
An Important Note on Hair Integrity: Beautiful hair is healthy hair. Because Japanese Straightening permanently alters the internal architecture of the hair strand, it is completely unsuitable for heavily highlighted, bleached, or fragile hair. If your hair has a history of heavy chemical processing, a customized Nanoplasty or Keratin Treatment will give you the breathtaking, smooth results you want while respecting and preserving the strength of your hair structure.
Let’s curate your perfect look. Book a structural hair analysis with us today, and let’s design a smoothing protocol tailored exactly to your hair’s unique signature.
