I Have a Story to Tell You

Rose Gordon

8 Rose Gordon is the mother of Dave Barrett, NDP premier of British Columbia between 1972 and 1975. She was born in Koznitze, a shtetl, or Jewish village, near Odessa in the Ukraine. Rose was living in Vancouver at the time of our interview, and was a member of some of the same organizations that I belonged to. I WAS BORN IN 1906 in a small village with very few Jewish people, maybe half a dozen families, right there by the water. My father’s father and mother lived there. My father was born there but my mother was born in a big city. There was a cousin of my father’s and my father’s family and sisters. My father had about four, five, or six sisters. I remember every family in the village . My father worked in a mill. The name of the village was Koznitze, near Odessa somewhere in the Ukraine—it was on the border of Bessarabia.5 We had a Jewish butcher—I don’t know how in the heck he made a living—a small shop that sold things like kasha and such stuff—they used to bring it in from Odessa to our village; and the few families used to buy that. We didn’t have a synagogue and therefore not much activities because it was a small village and a small Jewish population. One of my first memories is when I used to visit my mother’s mother.She lived in a big city and when I went there I used to live in the water. I loved the water.We were right on the Dneister [River],where I used to swim.As a matter of fact I played hooky one time to go swimming.I got a licking for that and never did it again. But, anyway, I used to go visit my grandmother, my baba, and once when I was swimming in a small water hole there I got an infection. I still have the mark.What cured it was a leaf my baba used to dissolve the poison —that is what they claimed in those days.Who had a doctor?Who had even seen a doctor? My mother never had a doctor for her children. The lady next door—if she made it in time, all right; and if not, my mother did it herself! Rose Gordon  She had a miscarriage once. You know that Jewish people are not supposed to drive on Saturdays and Jewish holidays, but the rabbi told us that if you are sick, very sick, then you are allowed to because it’s for your health. So we took a wagon (it was a sleigh because it was winter) and we put mother on it and my oldest brother and my dad took her down to a felse—there is no doctor. Felse here would mean like an intern, somebody who is learning .He hangs around a drugstore,apothecary is a drugstore,and the odd person who comes down to him—that’s how he is learning. But I think he knew quite a bit because he sure did an awful lot for my mother. But my mother would have a baby in the morning and at night time she cooked and she baked and she did everything. When my brother was born, he was the first son in the family. In Jewish families a son is very important. And when she had my brother (he is now in Los Angeles), a week before he was born she had the house spotless clean. She baked bread and buns and then the day after she was back cooking our meals. My mother never stayed in bed for nothing. It was a different world. The air was better, healthier. There was no pollution. If you didn’t have something, you managed. We had a garden, apples, pears, plums, strawberries, and also lettuce and great big tomatoes—you call them here beefsteak. The streets were not finished , not paved. We had neighbours all around us, Gentile people. We had big properties, lots of room. We could build yet some homes but it was the style then to live the way we did. Don’t forget that I come from a very small village. Now my grandmother in the city had more rooms, but they didn’t have lots of property with fruits and vegetables. My grandfather was a carpenter and he had beautiful hardwood floors. I had never...