Cyril Levitt

Alan Borovoy grew up on Toronto’s Grace Street in the late 1930s and ’40s. He was, in his own opinion, an excellent Al Jolson imitator and, later, a translator of Elvis Presley’s songs—into Yiddish (well, one song—Love Me Tender). Not poverty stricken, he saw the poverty and material hardship nearby. He lived with his parents and extended…

Habent fata sua libelli. Books have their own fate. When I set out to write about the riot at Christie Pits with my friend and colleague William Shaffir, we did not know that it would appear as a book. We certainly never expected that it would become the subject of a nationally televised documentary and provide inspiration for two novels…