Toronto mayor threatens to withhold gay pride parade funding

Published on March 8, 2011

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford says he will withhold more than $100,000 in city funding to the annual gay pride parade if an anti-Israel group again is allowed to participate. Ford, who was elected on a right-wing, waste-slashing agenda last November, told the Canadian Jewish News last week that he will cut funding to the annual Pride Toronto event if Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is allowed to participate in this summer's parade.

Book Unpacks Shoah Memories

By Beverly Gray
Published on December 11, 2003

Karen Levine never had plans to write a book.

Then in 2001, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. radio producer came across an article in the Canadian Jewish News about a young Japanese woman, urged on by Tokyo schoolchildren studying the Holocaust, who traveled halfway round the world to find the owner of a child's battered suitcase. That child, Hana Brady, had died in Auschwitz at age 13, but the determined young woman tracked down Hana's brother George, who had survived Auschwitz and found a new life in Toronto.

Levine made a radio documentary chronicling the meeting between Fumiko Ishioka and George Brady, and that led her to write a children's book, "Hana's Suitcase," a gripping detective story and an inspirational saga.