Showing 15 results

Oral history interview with Jack Farber who was born 1901 in Lithuania.

Oral history interview with Charles Davis.

Oral history interview with Izzy Fraeme, who was born 1918 in Oradea, Romania, a predominantly Jewish population city. Izzy was drafted by the Romanian military in 1938. He was demobilized when Hungary and Romania negotiated territory and Oradea was transferred to Hungary. Later he was mobilized into the Hungarian army. Izzy and his wife emigrated to Vancouver, Canada in 1948.

Oral history interview with Maxwell ("Max") Garaway who was born 1914 in Toronto.

Oral history interview with George and Arthur Weinstein in preparation for the 2014 Scribe with a focus on Jewish scrap metal dealers.

George came to Vancouver from Romania as a child in 1928. His father Isador made a living as a peddler with his horse and buggy. George remembers helping his father process scrap throughout his childhood. In 1952, they founded Allied Salvage & Metals at 315 Powell Street. George's son Arthur also remembers helping his father as a youth and officially started working with the business in 1965. In the 2000's Arthur purchased the current location on Mitchell Island and continues to expand their services. Arthur's son Ian became an employee in 2003, carrying on the traditions of this true family business.

George and Arthur Weinstein are owners of Allied Salvage whose mission is to ensure top scrap metal recycling productivity, while maintaining a positive work environment and demonstrating loyalty to their employees and all of their customers. They aim to ensure that their family values as an organization are kept in line with their environmentally sustaining business practices. Their vision is to be the lower mainland's leading scrap metal recycling yard.

Allied Salvage is, and has always been, a family business. The company was initiated by Arthur Weinstein's grandfather, Isador Weinstein, in 1952. Isador's son, George Weinstein, joined the company shortly after its inception. Arthur Weinstein, the current director and grandson of Isador, first became involved with the company in 1965 during his teenage years. Arthur Weinstein's son, Ian, has now been employed by Allied Salvage since 2003. The company's history spans more than 50 years and four generations. In addition to being family owned and operated, Allied Salvage was founded upon, and has developed around, family-oriented values.

Isador Weinstein, deeply committed to conservation and recycling, was a visionary ahead of his time. The founding principles of his business were the reduction of needless waste and the preservation of natural resources. During a period in North American history not typically noted for its environmental consciousness, Isador took his anachronistic concerns for the natural world and implemented them practically through a corporation; Allied Salvage provided an early precedent for the profitability of ecological business models. In addition to applying his concern for the environment to his business, Isador Weinstein also instilled environmentally conscious values in his descendants. Just as the reins of Allied Salvage have been passed down from father to son across four generations, so too have the original values and principles that inspired the formation of the business - environmentalism, conservation, recycling and hard work -passed from father to son. To Arthur Weinstein, the scrap business is tantamount to "mining the surface of the world", decreasing reliance on conventional mining and prolonging human access to natural resources.

Oral history interview with Jack Micner about his father Chaim Micner in preparation for the 2014 Scribe with a focus on Jewish scrap metal dealers. Chaim Micner came to Canada in 1948 , to make a fresh start after surviving the Holocaust. He built a scrap metal business, Atlantic Metals, and found a loving family in his wife, Susy, his children, and grandchildren. His son Jack Micner is on the Board of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre; Jack works to educate people about the Holocaust, so its message of warning to humanity will not be forgotten.

Chaim Micner died early on June 25, 2013 three weeks after turning 90. Born May 31, 1923 in Bilgoraj, Poland, he was the third of eight children, and spent World War II working at the Stalinskaya coal mine in Siberia, where he learned to dance nimbly and befriended the canteen waitresses for leftovers. He arrived in Quebec City in October 1948, aboard the SS Cynthia, from the Bergen- Belsen DP camp. When he arrived in Vancouver, after passing a series of blizzards on a westward train, people were playing frisbee in shorts. He worked as a presser for Sweet Sixteen, and met his wife Susy, of 59 years, in 1953. They married a year later and had three children: Fay (Roy Weiss), Jack (Karen) and Sam. Chaim then built a scrap-metal business, buying the Atlantic Metals junkyard with his partner Joe Lewin. He played poker on Tuesdays, fished avidly for carp in the Sumas River and Deas Slough, watched hockey, football and boxing routinely, grew cherry tomatoes, green onions and cucumbers, spoke seven languages and made legendary matzoh brie at Passover. Canada offered Chaim peace, stability and calm after a traumatic early life, and he saw his grandchildren Tamara, Mia, Mimi, Baruch, Yecheskyl and Zalman as his greatest achievement.

Oral history interview with Melvin Davis in preparation for the 2014 Scribe with a focus on Jewish scrap metal dealers.

Oral history interview with Mark Babins in preparation for the 2014 Scribe with a focus on Jewish scrap metal dealers.

Oral history interview with Allan Nortman, interviewed by Jennifer Yuhasz, in preparation for the 2014 Scribe with a focus on Jewish scrap metal dealers. Allan speaks on his family’s history, explaining how he came to be born in Haifa, Israel, in 1951. Following their short time in Israel, his family moved to England for a few months before setting in Vancouver in 1953. He speaks on his own career as well as his father’s though his own memories from his childhood.

Oral history interview with Ronald Greene in preparation for the 2014 Scribe with a focus on Jewish scrap metal dealers.