Sports
The Thunder Bay region provides its citizens with ample opportunities for outdoor sports and recreation, such as skiing, swimming, fishing and hiking. Typical of the recollections of the interviewees in the oral histories collected by the Ontario Jewish Archives, is the active participation in sporting activities. Shmuel Shaffer is remembered for having a popular swimming hole on his cottage property where swimming parties would be held during the summer months in the 1930s. Nearby Loon Lake was also a popular spot for summer cottagers. Winter sports included hockey, curling and skating. Syd Halter recalled playing badminton at the B’nai Brith Hall.
Among the most prominent athletes to emerge from Fort William was the boxer Oren Safir, who won the National Dominion title for amateur boxing in 1946, held in Montreal, after previously winning the Thunder Bay district. He was a member of the Fort William Collegiate Boxing Club. He left the sport in the late 1940s, preferring to pursue his professional studies as a chiropractor, rather than competing at his own expense to make the national Olympic team. He also disliked the rampant corruption of the professional boxing world.
A number of other members of the Jewish community were also active sportsmen. Irving Ornstein was only 19 when he won the Featherweight Champion of Thunder Bay District boxing title. Bora Laskin was reportedly an excellent baseball player in his school days. Mandy Helper played football prior to his military service. Harry Hurtig played lacrosse and founded Little League Baseball in Port Arthur in the 1950s. Harvey Cogan recalled in an interview that there was an all Jewish baseball team called The Wolves that played in a city municipal league in the 1950s. The team was named after Rabbi Wolfson and was not known for winning many games. Jerry Stitt was a member of the Thunder Bay rowing team that competed at the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta in 1952. Three members of the bantam hockey team that won the citywide championship title in the 1990s were also Jewish.
