Joey Jacobson's War

by Peter J. Usher

  The Jacobsons were very much a part of Montreal’s established uptown Jewish community, and they were active in its affairs. They were members of the city’s Reform congregation, but they wore their Judaism lightly, being minimally observant in practice, and skeptical in their faith. They did not keep a kosher house, they decorated a tree and exchanged gifts at Christmas, and they observed Friday nights as a stay-at-home family evening, but without prayer or ceremony. They were outward-looking Jews, and shunned any self-imposed mental or occupational ghetto. May’s father had managed to combine the presidency of a prominent Montreal synagogue with his Masonic lodge membership, his atheism, and his devotion to the writings of philosopher Thomas Carlyle. Her brother, who scorned religion and put his faith in science, had been a geologist, prospector, and mine manager in northern Ontario. Yet if the Jacobsons were not entirely typical of the uptown community, they shared many of its sensibilities, not least its unswerving loyalty to Britain and to the Liberal Party of Canada. In November 1938 they opened their house to a family of Jewish refugees from Austria.

  Percy and May were high-minded and public-spirited, and not without a touch of intellectual and social snobbery. Percy was a businessman by day, but he was a writer and playwright in the evenings. Several of his scripts were performed as radio dramas on the national broadcasting system. Percy was chair of the Montreal chapter of the Canadian Authors’ Association, which concerned itself as much with civil liberties as the development of a national literature. English Montreal’s literary notables were familiar visitors to the house. May, attracted to the ideals of progressive education, ran a children’s bookstore on fashionable Sherbrooke Street. It was as much a vocation for her as a business.

  Montreal’s established Jewish community had high expectations of its sons. They should do well in school, make something of themselves, raise a family, and be good citizens. They should succeed in the professions and prosper in business, they should not marry without prospect of doing so, and they should marry within the faith. By all accounts Joey, as he was called by family and friends, would fulfill these expectations. He was quick to assert his individuality but was not by inclination a nonconformist. Ambitious to get ahead, he was alert to the importance of self-improvement, getting to know the right people, and putting his best foot forward. He had had a good start, as he was engaging and gregarious, sturdy and handsome with brown eyes and hair, admired in his own social set and highly thought of in his parents’ circle.

  Joey’s chief passion as a youth was sports. After a childhood bout of pneumonia, he dedicated himself to developing his strength and fitness. The athletic staff at Westmount High characterized Joey as “a sure tackler in football and one of the few Jewish boys who stood out in hockey,” and he continued to excel at both at McGill.1 On any good winter weekend, Joe and his friends would board the ski train at Westmount Station for the Laurentians. At summer camp he played tennis and baseball. Whatever the sport, he loved to compete. The pinnacle of Joey’s athletic career came in his final year at McGill, when the Redmen won the intercollegiate football championship. One of the team’s smallest players, at five foot ten and 160 pounds, he was admired for his grit, agility, and determination as a tackler, and he was undeterred by pain and injury.

  All the players on the winning football team are heroes, I have been walking on air. Every Saturday after the game I get high wide and handsome, last night was no exception. Mom & Pop are pretty proud, take a lively interest in the game, and discuss football learnedly. As a result of football, I have done no studying, spent money freely, get tight and generally let matters important and otherwise slip. I will be glad to settle down after next week when we hope to win the championship.

  (JJD 6 November 1938)

  Joey began his first diary on New Year’s Day 1936, the year that Europe slipped irrevocably toward war. He kept it almost daily for three months, so that in future he would be able to see his “ideas, accomplishments, failures, [and] shortcomings in a clear light.” Character assessment of both himself and his schoolmates played no small part in his diary entries. He could be mercilessly critical and, in equal measure, lavish in praise.

  He began a second diary at the beginning of 1937, intended as a weekly review of events “with a little philosophizing and pondering and observations on the side.” His entries often described family or social events from which he drew lessons about character, family life, and self-improvement. His New Year’s resolutions for 1937 were to be more decisive, to stop making excuses for himself, and to keep his tendency to exaggerate things in check. In February his younger brother Peter fell ill of leukemia and died within weeks. Most of Joe’s diary entries that winter concerned the response of family and friends to this dreadful development. It was the first time Joe had been confronted with the death of someone close to him. Steeling himself for what was to come in Peter’s last days, Joe wrote:

  I don’t mind taking the inevitable and seeing a beloved brother who I was just beginning to consider as an equal go, and it’s bad enough watching my family heartbroken but I am going to hate to see friends and relatives weeping and moping around. But I guess that can’t be helped. That’s life. (JJD 12 March 1937)

  Again Joe let his diary slide in the spring, and his entries are sporadic thereafter. Joe’s early diaries were not only a record of his day-to-day activities. They illustrate the development of his thinking and attitudes, reveal much about his character, and in both style and theme presage his subsequent letters home. He used his diaries to focus his thoughts, and to develop his skills as a storyteller and in drawing character sketches, also evident in those later letters.

  Joey had elected to complete his senior matriculation at Westmount High, which enabled him to enter second year at McGill University in the fall of 1936. His scholastic efforts continued to take a back seat to his athletic and social life. If Joe was inspired by any of his professors, he made no record of it in his diaries. He observed self-critically at the end of his second year:

  I have been going to college all year presumably to learn to think. Most of my thinking has been done on the ice, football field, ski trails, or dance floor. But very little real thinking, reasoning and concrete original deductions. I have spent an extremely enjoyable year, but perhaps a little too stationary. I don’t feel I am going ahead. … I met a lot of people, but I doubt if I gave anything to any of them (except a few laughs) or got anything worthwhile in return (outside lipstick). … there are many things that worry me. Little things, habits, customs that I should correct and the all important one of using the old bean. (JJD 17 April 1938)

  Frivolous as his university years may have been by his own account, Joe had a serious and introspective side. It was during that second year at McGill that Joe encountered three young men with whom he would develop an intense and enduring fellowship. They were of modest circumstances, and had attended West Hill High in suburban Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. Joe had known Monty Berger from summer camp, now they were fraternity brothers at McGill. Monty, a rabbi’s son, was the intellectual of the group. It was through Monty that Joe met Herb Rosenstein and Gerald Smith, neither of whom could afford summer camp or fraternity membership. Herb went to work after leaving high school, and soon afterwards changed his surname to Ross. Gerald’s father, who had jumped ship from the Czar’s navy during the Russo-Japanese war, and started a small clothing business after coming to Montreal, had fallen into penury during the Depression. The family was reduced to moving from one apartment to another ahead of the rent collector. Gerald nonetheless managed to enter McGill, where he and Monty became editorial staffers on the McGill Daily. All three knew better than Joe, from their own experience, that being Jewish made finding work and a place to live more difficult than it otherwise was.

  Their friendship soon provided the intimate space for comparing their experiences and challenges. They were at the critical time of their lives when both bridges and barriers were beginning to crystalize – not least for young Jews in En
glish Montreal – around career opportunities, friendships, women, and social life. The foursome thrived on thoughtful debate, friendly rivalry over sports and women, and pranks. In September 1939, they were confronted with the first really serious decision of their lives.

  The question of when to enlist, and for what, would preoccupy the four young men for the first winter of the war. Like Joe, his friends wanted to establish themselves in the workforce so that they might have a job to come home to when the fighting was over. But unlike Joe, their futures were insecure, and job prospects were still scarce in that last year of the Great Depression. Monty, having been accepted in a one-year journalism program at Columbia University, spent that winter in New York City. Gerald Smith stayed in Montreal to look for work, and signed up for Officer Corps training. Herb Ross had gone to New York the previous year to find a job. Joe did not have to look for work, because Percy had already secured him a job for the coming winter in his supplier’s furniture factory in Preston, Ontario. Joey, Monty, Gerald, and Herb styled themselves that fall as “the Pony Club,” an anagram for Preston, Ontario, and New York. Once separated, they kept their conversation going by circulating their letters to each other in a chain. So began a vigorous discussion of the war situation in Canada, and the question of enlistment.

  Percy had high expectations for Joe. He believed that his son had the right stuff to take a leading place in the national life of the Dominion, by which he meant Canada’s business, governing, and opinion-leading circles, and so contribute to the public good. Percy would have been pleased enough for his son to take over his office furniture business, but he would have been even more pleased if Joe managed to succeed in public service or industry.

  Joe for his part was anxious to live up to his father’s high expectations. Many in Joe’s circle were content to become doctors, lawyers, and accountants – opportunities that had only recently opened up to better-educated young Jewish men. Joe, seeing himself as a man of action and a builder, had no desire to confine himself to this milieu. He had different ambitions and wider horizons, even if he did not as yet know much about the life of the Dominion beyond the confines of English Montreal. Joe seems to have shared his parents’ idealism and public-spirited values, which would find expression in his own writings two years later in wartime England.

  Yet both father and son knew that there was a barrier to those ambitions. It would be harder for a Jew to gain a place on that larger stage. Neither Joe’s university degree (which only a tiny fraction of Canadians then had), nor his sporting achievements were enough to provide him with the ready connections in higher places. Without them, the bastions of Canadian industry, government, and society were not easily prised open, and Joe was still figuring out how to address that problem.

  Joey with sister Edith and brother Peter, ca. 1922. (Janet Jacobson Kwass)

  Percy with Peter and Joey, ca. 1929. (Janet Jacobson Kwass)

  Joey at Twin Lakes summer camp, Vermont, 1933. The camp catered to Jewish youth from the northeastern states and Montreal. (Janet Jacobson Kwass)

  Joey and May, Twin Lakes summer camp, ca. 1935. (Canadian Jewish Archives)

  Joey at 635 Grosvenor Avenue, Montreal, ca. 1938. (Canadian Jewish Archives)

  Joey in McGill Redmen practice jersey, ca. 1938. (Janet Jacobson Kwass)

  Two

  Preston

  On the morning train from Toronto, Joe

  decided to get a better sampling of Ontario public opinion [regarding the war] so I started a chat with the trainman – a burly looking fellow. He got wound up in short order and told me that he was at a veterans’ meeting the other night where they numbered 1200. They decided that the Jews would not be allowed to be left behind to profiteer and that they would [be] rounded up by the soldiers themselves and be forced to fight. He went on in that vein in such strenuous fashion that I was extremely glad to break up his story of only 3 Jews out of 10,000 volunteers joining up in Ontario last week, by leaving the train as we arrived in Galt. (JJL 19 September 1939)

  Evidently the burly trainman was not alone in his views. Joe was an avid reader of Saturday Night, the national weekly current affairs magazine. So he was unlikely to have missed the full-page article entitled “Will the Jews Enlist?” that appeared a couple of weeks later, by the United Church’s Dr. Claris Silcox, a leading advocate of better understanding between Christians and Jews. Dr. Silcox acknowledged both the reputedly low rate of Jewish enlistment in the previous war and the resentment that had aroused among Gentiles, but he asserted that contrary to common expectation, Canada’s Jews would most certainly enlist in the current war.

  Joe knew that his fellow citizens were watching. Very likely it was then, within the first month of the war, that Joe saw clearly that he must before long enlist, and that he must do so not only as a Canadian, and not only to fight against Hitler, but to give a good account of himself as a Jew. The issue of enlistment was never far from his mind, but he took a cautious approach. Joe was not without income or employment as many young Canadian men then were, nor did he rush to army recruiting centres at the outset as many did. Within days of his arrival in Preston, he discovered that he could take a Canadian Officer Training Corps (COTC) course in nearby Guelph (where hundreds of men were already responding to an army recruiting drive), or apply for the navy, which he preferred. “If conscription comes and my application is in – I am not conscripted for the army,” but he thought that would be a matter of months. In October Joe learned of an officer training course in Galt, but commented:

  It’s only for infantry – run by the Royal Highlanders – and – you have to buy your own uniform which is like buying a commission since an outfit cost around $100. … Besides you have to be sponsored by somebody in the Highland Regiment – so that’s out. Other disadvantages for me – 7–10 o’clock two nights a week – until New Years – probably meaning no Christmas holidays for me. I will still wait which means doing nothing over the winter. (JJL 15 October 1939)

  So Joe let the issue ride during his winter in Preston.

  Preston was in 1939 a small manufacturing town in the agricultural heartland of southern Ontario. It was situated at a sulphur spring by the Grand River, where several hotels catered to those seeking the restorative powers of the waters. The Preston Furniture Company, owned by Percy Hilborn, was one of the town’s main industries, and Percy Jacobson’s office supply business was one of its leading customers.

  Joe’s year in Preston was his first extended time away from home, and his first regular job. He was twenty-one years old. He had until then lived a privileged life in Westmount, Canada’s most prosperous and influential community, and he knew little of the rest of the country. Like many such young men, he was only just beginning to understand that his good fortune was not shared by all. Preston was a world apart from Westmount, and a novelty for Joe. Eight months of living on his own in small-town Ontario, working in a factory, and mixing with people of ordinary circumstances broadened Joe’s social and political perspectives, and his awareness of Canada.

  Joe worked ten hours each weekday and nine on Saturdays. He took to learning about wood furniture manufacturing from the bottom up with alacrity. He worked in all parts of the factory, from lumber scaling to furniture finishing to production line management. He was doing men’s work, physical labour that left him satisfied that he had put in a day’s work, and he liked that. Percy Hilborn took Joe under his wing, inviting him for supper from time to time and, before long, sending him on business trips and finding opportunities for him to observe other southern Ontario factories.

  For self-improvement, Joe spent two evenings a week in the town library. Putting his new reading glasses to work, he devoured trade and business magazines, current affairs magazines (especially Saturday Night and The Atlantic Monthly), and books such as The Life of Edison, The Prince, and The Grapes of Wrath.1 He also began to write letters. He wrote to his family and to the Pony Club every week about life in Preston, with acuity and sometimes am
azement, and in considerable detail. He took writing as a craft, and his letters home that fall bore little resemblance to the one-pagers he used to write from summer camp. He asked his parents for a typewriter, and he was highly pleased to receive one at Christmas. Percy followed Joe’s progress with satisfaction:

  Letter from my son Joe today from Preston Ont. made me feel rather proud of the lad. He has adapted himself so quickly to hard manual labour and seems so eager not only to learn the desk business but to understand the various types of men he comes in contact with. He seems to like them all which I guess means that they like him. He is probably the only Jewish factory worker in the whole district. I think he will prove a good ambassador of our people. In his letter he talks about joining the navy. I have a friend, Commander of the district. I intend to discuss the matter with him. In the meanwhile Joe is getting excellent training for either peace or war duties. He says he is as fit as a fiddle and his muscles are like iron. Joe sure writes a good letter and his sense of humour should help him a whole lot in the trying times ahead.

  (PJD 3 October 1939)

  Joe is full of his job at Preston. He is not lazy and I am sure if he ever has to earn his living by hard manual labor he will make the grade. He is off to a football match between McGill and Varsity. This time last year he was playing and playing well for McGill. I remember one Saturday afternoon in particular, his mother and myself went to the game full of pride at having a boy on the senior team. I never enjoyed a game more. It was a lovely day and Joe did well, McGill won and there was much rejoicing. (PJD 7 October 1939)