It’s hard to know where to start with this article- there are a number of remarkable things about Sophie. Firstly at age 99 she lives independently with no help in the house!
Secondly, she has an amazing memory– in short, she is a walking encyclopedia of Winnipeg Jewish history.
I don’t know what I was expecting to learn when I called her, but I certainly didn’t expect to learn something about my own family history that I knew nothing about.
As soon as we began the conversation, Sophie asked me -do you know a David Spivak?
"Yes, I replied. He’s my brother, who now lives in Toronto."
No! she said. "Go back a few generations."
It was as if I had to press the "rewind" button in my brain.
O.K. I got it. David Spivak was my great grandfather, my father’s grandfather whom I never met, but after whom my brother is named.
"That’s right", she said. "And David Spivak bought my parent’s farm in Stonewall."
“I had no idea," I said, rather stunned. I had known that Davis Spivak was a farmer for eight years, settling first in Birds Hill, before moving to Winnipeg but I didn’t really know that he was buying other farms-which I now understand was the case since he was a cattle dealer.]
"My Dad [Shmul Aron] built the farm house, my mother [Ritza Aron] didn’t want to go live out there. But in the end she did," Sophie recalls. "My Dad died fifty years ago. My uncle Zalman Slutsky started the farm. I used to go to the farm for summer holidays. I was 18 [Sophie was living with a relative in Winnipeg during the rest of the year]
Then Sophie says with a flash "and David Spivak sold the farm and did well on the deal." [My father is not so sure how well he did on the deal]
Born in Winnipeg in 1913, the middle of three children, Sophie lived on 943 Selkirk Avenue and attended King Edward, Issac Newton and St. John’s High School prior to attending Normal School to obtain her teacher’s certificate.
Sophie’s work as a dressmaker brought her a great deal of satisfaction.
Sophie goes on to ask me if I know Mariam Maltz and explains that Al Cohen is Miriam Maltz’s father in law and that Al Cohen was married to Sylvia Sarbit." [and I think you get the drift that Sophie probably would have been able to trace the entire list of Al Cohen’s descendants, and possible future descendants]
And then Sophie, whose sense of humour and sharp wit is easily seen says, "I worked for 7 dollars a week. Do you think I was overpaid? [With that line she has me laughing].
She has me smiling when she reminds me that in her day, "Street car tickets were 8 for a quarter, but who had a quarter?"
She also has me laughing when I ask her what her daily hours are. "I get up at 6 a.m.," she says.
"And when is bedtime?," I ask.
"Bedtime is anytime I sit down. Anytime I sit down I fall asleep."
Somewhere in the conversation, I am jotting down a note to make sure that I tell the Shinewald Family that they should make sure they get her on video telling her life story. Her mind is a treasure-and she is a living history book].
Sophie gets married to Hymie Shinewald, who is literally the boy next door living on Selkirk Avenue. The couple moves to 40 Lansdowne Avenue near Scotia Street, which becomes home for over fifty years
Sophie works for the Al Cohen Fur Company until she has her two Jackie and Ed.
Then in 1952 Sophie, with the encouragement of her husband and children, goes back to school to qualify for a teaching position within the Seven Oaks School Division. But she decides to substitute teach, since by then her husband Hy wasn’t well. But she was so popular as a substitute that in the end "I substituted every single day."
As Sheldon Glow says, “Sophie was my favourite substitute teacher!”
"Sophie was my substitute teacher at West Kildonan Collegiate", and she ould come "with a bag of stuff," says Judith Putter,who is the sister of Sharon Shinewald z’l, and knew Sophie before she ever met Ed.
"With Sophie as the substitute teacher, the class "wasn’t a spare," whereas some of the "other [substitute teachers it was definately a spare," Putter ads.
Sophie recognized her own personality as needing to be involved with people, which prompted her to become active in the Home and School Association, first at Luxton School and then to the position of Secretary for the National Home and School Association.
Ed Shinewald recalls that his father, who worked seventeen years in a factory, before selling advertisement for the Israelite Press, the only Yiddish paper in Western Canada ("It was a hard way to make a living"), got tuberculosis due as a result of his factory work.
Sophie will turn a hundred this spring. "My kids are cooking up something for it," she says.
Congratulations Sophie!–until 120!
