Woodbine and Main. The children considered themselves to be Jewish and had to cope with the culture shock of arriving in a typical Anglo-Canadian suburb. At the time, some 80 percent of Torontonians identified their origins as British. The open anti-Semitism among local children, even teachers, aggravated the family’s sense of isolation. (Very few Jewish teachers during the 1930s and ’40s were able to find work in Toronto schools.2) Nor did the neighbours bother hiding their prejudice. Some were particularly obnoxious, and one day the family came home to find the word “Jew” scrawled on the garage.3
Elaine, the younger daughter, had just turned seven. The family called her “Lainey”— spelled out as “Laine.” She was surrounded by two older siblings and a younger brother, all of them born three years apart between 1928 and 1937. Her practical-minded older sister, Margaret, had arrived while the family still lived in the original old Mission building at 165 Elizabeth St. Margaret had inherited her mother’s considerable musical skills in voice and piano. Alex, the older brother, was destined to carry himself with the bearing of a distinguished clergyman. He was a serious boy who enjoyed tinkering with mechanical projects, including a large crystal radio set, in the basement. The youngest, David, who would also play a leading role with the Mission, was a robust, happy child with great affection for his parents and siblings.
Laine was born in 1934 at the height of the Depression, a strikingly beautiful baby according to Margaret, but frequently ill. She was too young to remember her parents bringing her to Sick Children’s Hospital with peritonitis, which in those days was fatal. The revered family physician Dr. Markowitz was able to secure penicillin, which had just become available. Her fate was uncertain until she rallied, taking months to recover. Laine would always have a sensitive stomach and remained prone to infections, never so vigorous as her siblings.
One of Laine’s earliest memories was of her mother, thermometer in hand, deciding she was sick and hurrying them over to the family physician. Dr. Markowitz paid scant attention to the little girl, insisting that Annie immediately sit down and take a glass of wine.
At Christmas 1941, with the new Mission barely underway, Laine came down with scarlet fever. Public health officials treated the disease with extreme caution. Her parents couldn’t afford the $12 a week required to put her into a special hospital isolation ward and paid off the bill in instalments. (This was decades before publicly funded health care.) Morris, using his clerical privileges, came to visit, and the little girl didn’t recognize him under the full protective gown until she heard him say, “Laine, it’s me.”
By the time Laine returned home, her mother had the family schedule in order. Early each morning, Morris drove to the office, while she prepared the children for school. After they left, Annie took the streetcar and joined him downtown. It wasn’t an era of working mothers. Annie discreetly employed a homemaker so that she could put in a full day at the Mission, usually coming home exhausted.
For the Zeidman children, the Mission schedule was closely linked to family life. They helped out as best they could through the year, joining in regular family programs through fall, winter and spring and then residing at the summer camp with the other kids. When needed, they were extra hands and feet for innumerable daily tasks. As they grew older, each one in turn would find a place in the work.
It was a lively house, full of music and its share of laughter. Occasional evenings were spent singing around the piano—Morris loved to sing, and Annie had trained in voice as well as piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music. Everyone kept up a sharp sense of humour. When Alex was a theology student at Knox, Laine knit him a tie in the purple and grey colours of the college. She’d made it a bit long, so one morning he showed up at breakfast wearing his usual college tie and Laine’s knitted handiwork wrapped around his leg for decoration.
Despite their busy schedules, family members were expected to be home and gathered at the table for dinner, followed by a Bible reading with devotions. There were no more amusements once the Scriptures were opened. Morris and Annie were serious life-long Bible students. Only in time did Laine fully understand how much of the Word of God she’d absorbed from them, a lifetime’s treasury of wisdom and comfort that came to mind when it was most needed out of the lessons from her earliest years.
The hours after supper were equally occupied. Annie used the time to teach her daughters how to play the piano, and later that was time for practice. To help make ends meet, she sewed a lot of the children’s clothing. Morris, too, spent his evenings focused on studying and writing at the kitchen table. He relied on Annie to be his editor while he composed tracts and articles, plus his international correspondence. Always studying, Morris earned a PhD and was a Bible college teacher of Greek and Hebrew. Later, the children would recall vividly how Morris’s bedroom was filled with books, newspapers and clippings from newspaper subscriptions that kept him abreast of international news—in English and Yiddish—from across Europe and America.
Afterwards, Annie would read to the younger children. Those moments became some of Laine’s most precious memories. As a young child, she was encouraged to say prayers before bedtime. There was one she could easily recall and had taught to her own daughters:
Jesus, tender shepherd, hear me,
Bless thy little lamb tonight;
Through the darkness be thou near me,
Keep me safe ’til morning light.
During one of those prayer times, Annie wanted to know why her 11 year-old daughter was in an irritable mood. It eventually occurred to Laine that it was Miss Stacey’s fault. During the Sunday school lesson, Miss Stacey had asked the children in her class, “Has anyone here given their heart to Jesus?” Laine was troubled because she couldn’t say yes. So Annie began explaining how she could say yes, right then and there beside her bed. That was the moment when Laine prayed for Jesus to enter her heart.
As the family struggled to cope through numerous trials with the Mission over the next few years, Laine started to show a rebellious streak. During the first year of high school at Malvern Collegiate, her behaviour became a problem. She was seeing far too much of the detention room. Morris was embarrassed. He expected his children to the know the importance of education, but Laine didn’t act interested anymore. She was falling in with the wrong crowd.
Annie had taken each child aside when they were eight or nine years old and taught them, “Remember who you are.” They were responsible for being “a Zeidman.” There were standards to maintain—the conduct suitable for children of clergy. Young as they were, the message was clear: “We’re not like other families.” By high school, Laine seemed to have had enough of that. Some of her attitudes might have come from her teachers. Neither of her older siblings had excelled at that school, and Margaret described the teachers as openly anti-Semitic.
Morris was determined that his daughter was not going to give up on her education. Despite the cost, he placed her at Moulton College, a Baptist all-girls high school associated with McMaster University, where families in ministry received financial considerations.
Soon Laine would find a supportive circle of friends, although that didn’t seem so likely when she first arrived. The girls were fixing their place in the social order as each one answered the question, “Who’s your father?” Of course, she knew that many of the girls had heard of her father or The Scott Mission, but Laine wasn’t quite sure how to answer that question. Who was Rev. Morris Zeidman, and why was it so difficult being his daughter?
Lunch
By Elaine Z. Markovic
As I make a lunch this morning
I wonder about the lad
Who offered his
