Have you ever found yourself sitting next to someone during Shabbat services and wondered about their story? Recently, Kate McGregor, the Chair of the Communications & Marketing Committee, introduced herself to Saul Davidson, who will celebrate his 90th birthday on June 19. A few weeks later, she visited him at his condo. Their conversation follows.
1. What brought you to our congregation?
I started going to Agudath Israel because it was the closest synagogue to my home. I’ve been a member there since 1969, so 57 years. To me, it didn’t matter that it was Conservative. I would have gone to any congregation, including Machzikei Hadas.
2. What do you love most about being part of this community?
I just love the people here. I’m always making new friends. I started going to Creative Connections in 2018, where my two sisters went. That’s where I met my lovely friend, Claire Miller. No one else hugs like her!
3. Where did you grow up?
I was born in Brazil in 1936 in a small shtetl called Baron Hirsch. My parents immigrated there from Lithuania in 1927. My mother was a chalutz [a Jewish pioneer who wanted to immigrate to Palestine to work the land]. To immigrate to Brazil, you needed to have a degree in agriculture, which my mother had. So, she moved with her parents. They grew wheat, corn and peanuts.
4. When did you come to Canada?
My family and I left Brazil for Canada in 1948. Ten of us took a ship from Rio de Janeiro and sailed for 11 days and landed in New York. My uncle, Harry Fines (my mother’s brother) and his daughter, Sarah, picked us up in two cars and brought us to Cedarview Road, to a dairy farm my parents had bought.
I went to a one-room schoolhouse on Greenbank Road for four years, up to grade eight, but quit at age 16 because my parents needed me on the farm.
5. What was life as a dairy farmer like?
Farming was a seven-day-a-week job. I got up at five o’clock in the morning to milk the cows. Summertime, I didn’t quit working until 9 o’clock at night. I plowed the fields, cleaned the barns, took in 10,000 bales of hay for the winter, and milked the cows. We had over fifty head of cattle. I even helped deliver the calves. I was a pretty strong guy.
At the end of the day, I loved walking down the lane and looking at the crops I had planted.
We were the only Jewish farmers in the area. The farmers one over from us were Irish. They had four daughters. I used to give their five-year-old daughter a lift to school on my bike.
When I was 33, I got a job working in my uncle Harry’s greenhouses in Bells Corners. I worked there for 27 years, then retired.
I never married, but I dated a lot of ladies.
My father passed away in 1956. In 1969, my mother and I moved to a condo, the year I also made my first trip to Israel.
Now, I’m known as the “Tomato Man.” Last year, I grew 100 tomato plants and gave them all away.
6. What is something people might not know about you?
I had a good friend called Ann Hatch. I met her while we were both working in the greenhouses. After her husband passed away, we began travelling to England, where she was born, and to Florida. I’m still in touch with her two children.
7. What kind of books do you like to read?
I really enjoy Daniel Silva’s novels.
8. If you could have dinner with any Jewish figure (past or present), who would it be and why?
My mother. That way, I could tell her that I loved her.