This appeared in the Toronto Star as my column on Father’s Day, 2007.
Bittersweet. Read more…
When asked by me some years ago why our nutty nuclear family always celebrated Christmas, my mother gave the usual explanation for her and my late dad’s often bizarre parenting decisions: “Well dear, we did it for you,” meaning me and my two younger brothers Eric and Jonny.
The reason I call this bizarre is that both my parents are Jewish. My mother Ruth Schachter is a holocaust refugee whose oil tycoon father Aaron Nisse led the family’s escape from Riga, Latvia, when she was 16 years old in the fall of 1939. A year later, she, her sister Dita and my grandparents finally settled in Montreal after taking the trans-Siberian railway through Russia, crossing the Pacific on a Japanese liner, being sprung from jail in Seattle for not having the right papers and then living in New York for six months. Quite a story and more of it when I eventually write my memoir. Read more…
Marion Kane has been a leader in the world of food journalism for a few decades. She is an intrepid populist whose work combines social commentary with a consuming passion for all things culinary. For 18 years, she was food editor/columnist for Canada's largest newspaper: the Toronto Star. She lives in Toronto's colourful Kensington Market and is currently a free-wheeling freelance food sleuth®, podcaster, writer and cook.