Jenny Belzberg receives Canada’s highest honour for a lifetime of volunteer work

by Irena Karshenbaum

(AJNews) – In reflecting on the 2024 Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards ceremonies, where Jenny Belzberg received the Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism, the community leader and philanthropist admits that if her 20-year-old self could have looked 75 years into the future and caught a glimpse of herself receiving what is widely considered Canada’s equivalent to the Kennedy Center Honours, she would have thought it “crazy.”

The awards were bestowed on seven laureates, Jenny Belzberg being one, at festivities spanning three days, from June 6 to 8, in Ottawa and which included being introduced in Parliament, a visit to the Governor General’s residence at Rideau Hall and being fêted at a gala, held at the National Arts Centre.

Jenny’s honour, as the Governor General’s Awards website states, was for being “an enthusiastic advocate for the arts and education, and an outstanding volunteer” and for showing, “exemplary leadership in her involvement in a range of cultural and social action organizations, particularly Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.”

Jenny, who at 96 remains independent and active, is quick to give credit for her leadership training to the Jewish community; training that helped her become more confident because as a young woman, she admits she had “no confidence,” stemming from not receiving a university education.

After graduating from high school, she asked her father, Abraham Lavin, if she could attend university; he said, “You don’t need to go to university to wash diapers.” He also discouraged her from volunteering, “They’re going to use you up. You don’t need it. You should be home looking after your children and your husband.” This type of advice persisted into her early years of marriage from her in-laws, the Belzbergs, who “for sure didn’t like the idea” of her volunteering, and the young wife and mother heeded their wishes initially not joining the organizations that many of her friends were joining. Jenny admits that it took ten years to feel that she “could do something.”

As Jenny recounted her life stories over two mornings in June at her home, what became clear is that she had a very strong sense of worth, which gave her the strength to stand up for herself in her first years of marriage and this same quality allowed her to sail through stormy situations in her work as a volunteer.

Jenny’s parents met when her father, Abraham Lavin, who had arrived in Canada in 1911 and had become a widower after his first wife passed away during the Great Influenza, went to the CPR station one day in 1921. He heard that a train load of Jewish women was arriving from Russia and he was hoping to find a bride who would take him and his 6-year-old daughter, Ann. A young woman, an orphan, named Sonya Rodnunsky, travelling with her sister, got off the train. In her new home, Sonya — being around 20 years old — was greeted with a pile of laundry. Out of the mouths of babes Ann questioned her father’s welcome, “Are you sick? Why did you leave all of that for her?” This comment cemented the relationship between the young bride and her step-daughter; the families remain very close to this day.

Jenny was born in January of 1928 and was followed by sisters, Frances and Dorothy. Abraham who was initially farming in Cochrane to be near his widowed sister, Henya Hanson, who herself was running a farm and raising six children on her own, then moved his new family to Calgary. His first venture was a hay and feed store and Jenny remembers riding in the truck with her father as he delivered hay to Max Bell, the publisher of the Albertan, living in Mount Royal. Jenny recalls the family’s first home being in “a hooker area” and seeing “one of the ladies on the street, in slippers, rouge on her cheeks and wearing a kimono.”

The Lavin family being active in I.L. Peretz School, welcomed a parade of Yiddish performers from Broadway as many artists who were “starving” during the Great Depression of the 1930s were travelling across Canada to try to eke out a living. She remembers her mother would buy classical concert series tickets and since her father did not want to go, she would take Jenny. It was at this time that she saw some of the 20th century’s greatest talents perform such as violinist, Jascha Heifetz, and pianist, Arthur Rubinstein. Jenny learned about the arts through “osmosis.”

Jenny describes her home growing up filled with opera recordings playing on Saturday afternoons, piano lessons, mushroom picking in Banff and her mother reading the great Russian authors, in Russian. Sonya would tell stories of when she was a young girl and having to wear white on May Day and hearing the great Russian opera singer, [Feodor] Chaliapin, perform.

On a family trip to Banff, as a little girl, Jenny thinks she may have seen members of the Group of Seven painting the mountain scenery, a prescient encounter considering Jenny’s involvement with the Banff Centre half a century later, “They were painting. It was beautiful. We’d look over their shoulders and they’d dab our faces with paint.”

Jenny’s life might have turned out very differently as the Lavins were relatively poor — Jenny describes her father being “socialistic” and “never made a great living” — had she not married Hy Belzberg who was “considered wealthy.”

After their first date, Jenny thought Hy was “arrogant,” but let him take her out again because she loved going dancing to bands playing at the Palliser Hotel where the scion could afford to take her.

It was a match that both sets of parents wanted and which they orchestrated in sealing. Jenny remembers walking downtown one day, “Hy’s father runs across and puts a ring on my finger and I say, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘You’re engaged to my son.’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ And he’s, ‘Yes, you are.’ And I said, ‘Why are you putting a ring on my finger?’ He said, ‘I need to make sure it’s the right size.’ I am floored and I don’t like any of this. I get on the bus and I am going home to my mother and what am I going to tell her about this? I walk in the door and she says, ‘I am so excited that you are engaged to Hy! Your mother-in-law called me.’”

Describing it as an “arranged” marriage — that lasted 68 years — Jenny confesses, “We grew to love each other. Those kind of marriages sometimes are better.”

Marrying at 20 and Hy being 23, the couple had three children: Brent, Leslie and Murray. Jenny first got involved as a volunteer when the family became members of the Beth Israel Synagogue; Rabbi Wiesenberg asked for her help with the synagogue bulletin because he needed a stenographer, work Jenny did prior to her marriage. Jenny agreed and this led her to become involved with the synagogue Sisterhood, as a member. But when the outgoing Sisterhood president asked her to step into the role of president, Jenny thought, “I could never do that.”

Other opportunities kept presenting themselves, as people kept “seeing things” in Jenny. She did take on the presidency of the Sisterhood and became involved with the National Council of Jewish Women, which offered leadership training, opportunities to travel to conventions and working with accomplished women across Canada and the United States. This leadership development lay the foundation for taking on leadership roles in the non-Jewish world.

Jenny and Hy would often travel to New York City where they would go to, “the philharmonic, the Lincoln Centre, opera, ballet.” After one trip, she said to Hy, “You know, we can have all this in Calgary. We don’t have to travel all the time. There are orchestras and I am going to get involved with them.” A friend brought Jenny onto the board of the Calgary Philharmonic, which opened the door to involvement in other organizations, volunteer work her husband was now fully supporting. She went on to serve as chair of the Banff Centre taking on the position after receiving a phone call from Peter Lougheed, the Premier of Alberta. She was a founding member of the Honens Festival and Piano Competition, which she helped save by working with billionaire businessman, Ron Mannix, who provided a much-needed infusion of $1 million in addition to the bequest of $5 million left by the late Esther Honens.

Irena Karshenbaum is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter who writes in Calgary. irenakarshenbaum.com