Page lO-The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday. August 15, 1985
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Biography of AUan Grossmari
SHELDON KIRSHNER
On Nov. 21' i960, Allan Grossman:carved his niche into history by being sworn into Leslie Frost's Ontario government as minister-without-portfolio. It was a momentous occasion, for on that day Grossman became the ^im Jewish , meriiber of a Conservative cabinet in Canada. Grossman, the son of a poor Polish Jew, Was to serve under three provincial premiers in a succession.of posts, and his son, Larry, was 25 years later to fight Frank MiUer for the leadership of the Gonseryative Party,
A grade 9 dropxjut, Grossman was not a typical Tory. A reformer with a bent forprogrm/v^ conservatism, he repre'sented a working-cla.ss district in Toronto which he had wrested away from a popular and able Communist. Joe Salsberg. , A consummate machine politician who never took his largely ethnic constituents for granted and who worked on the assumption that he could easily lose the next clectipn, Grossman advocated new and more interventionist .sociaf programs, including a minimumwage for'men. for which some c)f his fellow; Conservatives were not ready. . As Peter Oliver writes in Unlikely Tory (Lester & Orpen Dennys, $24.95), Grossman was "the strong voice"." T"^hind legislation thm-effectively protected such basic human rights as the right to accommodation and employment without fear of discrimination. ■
Oliver, a professor of history at Vbrk University, claims in this relatively partisan biography that Grossman laboi-ed to alert the Conservatives to "interests and concerns" which lay outside their traditional experience. By not ignoring the needs of minority groups and the neglected elements in society, he told his colleagues, the Tories could be compassionate and win votes.
Although his vieWs were not always syni-pathctically received by the Conservatives, Grossman persevered.. By the mid-1960s, they were increasingly accepUlble to the Tories, a party which prided itself on its ability to please a wide range of voters.
Grossman, his biographer notes, "did his part" to enstire that Toryi.sm would be in step with changes in the. province.
One might reasonably ask why Grossman was not attracted to the CGF-NDP — a party whi(:h was, airid still is, way ahead of the Conservatives in social activism. According to Oliver, Grossman was a true believer in free enterprise, which, he felt, could best preserve-individualism and individual rights. However, he argued that capitalism could not survive unless it was enlightened and not subverted by short-sighted business interests. Grossman, therefore, was a fighter for improved labor laws, increased welfare benefits, a minimum wage law, and human rights legislation.
A link between the shairply contrasting worlds of Tory politics and the struggling iiii-migrant cultures of his St. Andrew-St. Paitnck riding, he was a|so "the Voice of the Jews" in the cabinets of Leslie Frost, John Robarts and William Davis. Grossman advanced the party's interest in the Jewish community, and, in return, the Tories "took seriously the community's wishes."
Grossman, Oliver.nptes^ intervened when Orthodox Jews in the civil service asked to leave early on Friday afternoons. He helped work out a plan which enabled five Jewish bakeries to open . on Sijnday and thus contravene'the outmoded and . Calvinistic Lord's Day Act. He headed a delegation to Ottawa which, persuaded the federal government riot to bari shechita, the kosher method of slaughtering domestic animals. He drafted a new regulation which pertiiitted liquor to be served at Jewish weddings held on Sundays.
Through means such as these, Oliver.explains. Grossman facilitated the gradual, if still incomplete, rapprochement between the Tory dynasty and the Jewish community.
Grossman's role as Jewish emissary to the Conservative Party was not without its awkward, moments. In the days precedinig the outbreak of the 1967 Six Day War, Grossman hesitated to attend an emergency meeting of Canadian Jewish leaders called in Montreal by Sam Bronfman. Grossman wondered whether it was proper for an Ontario cabinet minister to attend a.fundrai.s-ing conference designed to serve the interests of a foreign power, Israel.
Consulting Premier John Robarts, Grossman got his answer. "Allan, if I were a Jew, I'd be there," Robarts .said. V
Although Grossman was a rather well-known' figure in Jewish communal circles-by 1967, he was on the periphery of Jewish affairs until his election as aToronto alderman in 1952. Having been brought up jn lower Cabbagetown, a working-class neighborhood with.few Jews, he did not always feel at ease in the company, of Jews who had been raised in more moneyed circumstances. . .
Allan Grossman (right) Seen with Leslie Frost, premier of Ontario, and Rabbi LM. Lewin, Israeli minister of social welfare^ in early 1950s.
"I didn't speak the same language as. the Jewish Establishment," Oliver quotes him as saying, "and I'm sure sorhe of them found it difficult to deal with me. Most of them... had been extremely successful in professional and busiriess careers; .some of them were very wealthy. My family
Larry Gros.sman
' background was just the reverse of that."
Grossmain's father, Mo-ses, immigrated to Toronto in 1907j and was jbined.there two years , later by his wife, Sarah. Both were from the Poli.sh town of Ostrowiec. Allan, whose given names were Abraham Isaac, was the first member of his family to be born in Canada.
Mo.ses Grossman was a pedlar, a trade not held in high repute by the citizenry of the day. The Canadian Jewish Times, in 1913, described peddling as "an unfortunate occupation." Allan Grossrnan recalls that his father, who seems to have acclimatized himself to anti-semitic jibes and attacks, would sometimes come home .with a "bloody face.'' .
In 1922. when he was 12, his faniily moved from Cabbagetown to the predominantly Jewish Kensington market area. At the age of 15. Allan was thrown put of Harbord Collegiate for unru-. ly behavior. Uneducated and lacking in special. skills, he led an unsettled existence, working at a succession of menial, dead-end jobs in Canada and the U.S.
When he was 25, Gros.sman was hired by the Metropolitan Life. Irisurance Company, as an agent, and he did well at it. Before long, Oliver notes, he was one of its be.st agents. :
Grossman's life-long involvement in politics began in the late 1920s, when he joined what was then the Ontario Boys Council. The OBC encouraged young men to participate in politics and to gain practical experience in citizenship and democracy.
In 1927, he won a seat as a boy alderman, only to lose it in 1928. Reelected in 1929, Grossman never turned back. Hooked on politics,he learned how to think on his feet, a quality which would keep hinfi in good stead in the years ahead.
George Drew, who would later become the Tory leader, recognized Grossman's abilities after he organized Young Progressive Conservative groups dround Ontario.
In 1950, Nathan Phillips asked Grossman to; contest, his Ward Four seat on city council., Phillips, who had decided to run for mayor (he would be Toronto's first Jewish mayor), was anxious that his aldermanic seat not fall to Norman Freed, a Communist. Grossman, after deliberating the mattefr'agreed.
In Oliver's estimation, Grossman was a cons- T cientious alderrrian, serving his constituents "ag- . gressively and with dedication."
The turning point in Grossman's political career occurred in 1955, when he ran against Joe Salsberg in the battle for a seat in .the pro-
vincial legiislature (The Canadian Jewish News, jiily 4). It was a rough and tumble campaign, with Grossman squeaking through by the skin of his teeth, the victory would lead him to 20 years in the legislature, 15 in cabinet, and a top position iri the Conservative hierarchy. This chapter in Grossman's career is described at length, and with a pronounced pro-Grossman bias, in Unlikely Tory. Oliver, this reviewer has discovered, did not even bother to solicit Salsberg's. views on that bitter campaign.
An ambitious, hard-driving man, Grossman performed corhpetently in cabinet. When John Robarts announced he was resigning, Grossman., pondered the possibility of running for the Conservative leadership. In the end, having been convinced he could not win, Grossman stepped aside. : Two factors, his religion and his age, were his undoing. .
Grossman himself resigned in 1975, anointing his son, Larry, as his successor in St. Andrew-St. Patrick. The powers that-be in the Conservative Party were not too keen about that, being of the opinion that Larry could not hold the old man's se^.Allaii prevailed, and Larry defeated the NOP candidate by less than 500 votes.        . ■■
Father and son prospered, Aljan, in 1976, wa.s. appointed chairman of the Criminal Injuries Com-pensation Board, from which he retired thisyear. Larry served in various cabinet portfolios after establishing himself in the eyes of his boss, Bill Davis. Now there is talk that; Larry (jrossmari .. will eventually succeed Frank-Miller as the first Jewish leader of the Ontario Conservatives.
That, however, is another story. The topic at hand, the life and times of Allan Grossman, is. handled deftly by Peter Oliver. The aathor, in the preface, acknowledges that Unlikely Tory is an "authorized" biography, based on the "closest collaboration" betweien himself and his subject. He claims that this association did not force him to leave out anything of substance, nor did it alter his interpretation of any important event.
How many readers will believe this? Quite a few will likely not. Unlikely Tory is not a pnv-pagandistic tract, but it does, to an extent, glorify Allan Grossman as a man and as a politician. The question that lingers on after one has rinished Unlikely Tory is whether it would have been a better, more objective book had it been written on a completely independent Ji^sis.