Token Issued by Jewish Old Folks Home in Toronto, Ontario, Canada #1
caption:
From The Shekel, Vol XV, No 1, Jan-Feb 1982.
Jewish Old Folks Home
The original site of a home to care for aging members of Toronto’s Jewish community was at 21 Cecil Street, in downtown Toronto. This 35mm copper token, Fig. 11, would seem to have been a receipt for a contribution of 25 cents to the home. The inscription: Jewish Old Folks Home – Toronto: Contribution 25 cents (house façade) 25 cents / The Only Jewish Home / For the Aged / In / Ontario.
The reverse, Fig. 12, shows a profile of an elderly man on the left, facing the profile of another elderly man on the right, and the words, Keep Me Up And You Will Have Good Luck.
There is a similar token, Fig. 13, in aluminum. Instead of the amount of 25 cents, the donation is $1.00. This meant that the donor gave a “brick” toward the construction of the home.
Identifer: CJF-RFC2015073
Medium
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Description
This Home was opened in 1918 in response to the dire need of the Jewish elderly in downtown Toronto to have a place to live where they could eat Kosher food and talk to the staff in their own language of Yiddish. A Jewish Women’s charitable group, known as The Ezras Noshem Society, took the lead in responding to this need and collected money door-to-door to purchase a semi-detached house on Cecil Street in Toronto. In this house, they opened the Toronto Old Folks Home. Cultural and religious services were an important part of care in the Home. In the years that followed, the Home quickly expanded to care for more than 100 elderly Jews from Ontario.
By 1954, the Home had become exceedingly crowded and its building was beyond repair. In response to this new need, the Home purchased a 25-acre site on Bathurst Street, in North York, Ontario, and built the Jewish Home for the Aged, which also housed the Baycrest Hospital. Baycrest became the first facility in Canada to combine both types of services on one site. The facility continued to expand and serve a greater variety of needs for the elderly and continues to exist today as the Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.
The token was issued in Bronze and is 34mm in diameter.
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