Mitchell Sidney Bernstein
Mitchell Sidney Bernstein was born in New York City and moved with his family to Montreal, Quebec when he was ten years old. His career started in New York in 1914 with a film exchange for Warner Brothers, before he moved on to Metro Pictures.
He arrived in Saint John from Montreal in 1916 and was working with the booking and staging of vaudeville shows at the Queen Square Theatre and films for Warner Brothers. In 1917, he was working with Famous Players theatres out of New York City traveling from theatre to theatre with the first talking moving pictures (talkies).
Clara and Mitchell Bernstein
Mitchell Bernstein and Joshua Lieberman
Mitchell Bernstein partnered with Joshua Lieberman to form B & L Theatres in 1928. In the early days, they travelled by car to small towns in the Maritimes, rented the local hall, and hired a pianist to play for the silent movies. One of them collected the 10-cent admission fee and the other operated the film. They eventually owned, operated and provided the films for 20 theatres in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Maine.
Mitchell was a born “showman” who learned all the latest dance steps on his trips to New York in the 1920s and shared them with his friends in Saint John. The Y.M.H.A. (Young Mens’ Hebrew Association) shows he produced in the community featured a large cast of Jewish community members performing a variety of song, dance and comedy numbers. He was never seen without a cigar – even while floating on his back the river in Pamdenec near his summer cottage. He was also a regular at the local horse racing track where he enjoyed the races.
Bernstein Community Frolics 1943
Cast – Community Frolics, 1943
In the 1950s and 1960s, Bernstein and Lieberman and their sons became land developers. Their projects included Mitchell Apartments, LaTour Terrace at 61 Union Street which had four floors of offices with a bowling alley and coffee shop on the ground floor, and the first homes on the grounds of the former Saint John airport in Millidgeville.
The Saint John Jewish community benefited from Mitchell Bernstein’s involvement: as president of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, a Board Member of the Congregation Shaarei Zedek, as President of the Congregation from 1941 to 1943, as an active member and honourary vice-president of the Zionist Organization of Canada and as a charter member of the B’nai B’rith chapter organized in Saint John in 1954.
On May 22, 1954, the local Jewish community recognized his contributions with the first of a series of annual Negev Testimonial Dinners at the Admiral Beatty Hotel. As the primary goal of these annual dinners was to raise funds for Israel, “The Mitchell Sydney Bernstein Grove” with two thousand trees was dedicated in his honour.
His wife, Clara Goldfeather was born in Camden, New Jersey in 1902 and moved to Saint John with her family where she spent the remainder of her life. Clara married Mitchell Bernstein several years after meeting him at a Y.M.H.A. dance. Mitchell was so smitten with the 17-year-old sweetheart that he took “room and board” in her parents’ home so he could visit with her when he was in Saint John. Mitchell waited for Clara to come of age, and they married in June 1922. Clara enjoyed her life as a wife, mother and homemaker. She was an active member of the Women’s Hospital Aid, representing the Jewish community of Saint John, and played a volunteer role in the Saint John Music Festival for many years. Within the Jewish community, she was a member of the Daughters of Israel, Hadassah–WIZO and the Sisterhood of the Synagogue. She was only 62 in when she died in 1964.
The Bernsteins had two children:
Erminie Bernstein Cohen (1926-2019) and Mortimer Bernstein (1927-2013)
Erminie and Mortimer Bernstein as children
Mortimer and Erminie Bernstein, 1930s
Erminie Bernstein Cohen
Erminie Bernstein Cohen was a graduate of Saint John High School and Mount Allison University. In 1948 she married her childhood sweetheart Edgar R. Cohen and had three children – two daughters, Cathy and Shelley, and a son, Lee. She joined her husband in business when her children were older, as a buyer for their women’s retail fashion shop, Hoffman’s.
Eddie Cohen
Mortimer and Erminie Bernstein, 1930s
She was an ardent volunteer from an early age and worked tirelessly as an advocate for social justice and to improve the social and economic well-being of New Brunswick’s most vulnerable citizens. In 1978, she was appointed to the first New Brunswick Advisory Council on the Status of Women and as a result founded the non-profit organization, Saint John Women for Action, which worked with others to create a shelter for abused women and their children, of which she was a member of their founding board. She later served on the National Advisory Board on the Status of Women.
She was Atlantic Vice-President of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. She was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 1993, where she became known for her compassion, activism and work on poverty reduction, publishing a report in 1997 entitled Sounding the Alarm and fighting to prohibit discrimination based on social conditions under the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Swearing-in Ceremony
After serving as a Senator for eight years, she went on to become the first chair of the New Brunswick Adoption Foundation. Under her leadership, the Foundation was able to help more than 1,000 children find their “forever families”. In her honour, the Adoption Foundation created “The Erminie Cohen Compassion Award”, given annually to the person who has made an outstanding contribution to the well-being of children and inspires others.
Hon. Erminie Cohen with family - Bill Thompson, Cathy Tait, Micah Tait, M. Lee Cohen, Shelley Cohen-Thorley and Edgar R. Cohen
The Erminie Cohen Compassion Award
Among her many awards are the Order of Canada, the Order of New Brunswick, the Red Cross Humanitarian Award, and the Salvation Army Humanitarian Award. She was the recipient of the Queen’s Silver, Gold and Diamond Jubilee Medals, the YMCA Red Triangle Award and was a Paul Harris Fellow from Rotary. She holds an honourary Doctorate of Laws from the University of New Brunswick, Saint John Campus.
Hon. Erminie Cohen
Hon. Erminie Cohen
Hon. Erminie Cohen, Israel, 2000
Erminie served on numerous boards and committees including the National Capital Commission, Saint Joseph’s Hospital Board of Trustees, Hestia House, The Human Development Council, and was President of Opera New Brunswick. She remained active on several committees and was chair of the Residents’ Council at Parkland Saint John at the time of her death.
Within the local Jewish community, she served as the first woman President of Congregation Shaarei Zedek, as Vice-President of Sisterhood Shaarei Zedek and the Vice-President Atlantic for Hadassah-Wizo. She was honoured with a State of Israel Bonds dinner in 1975 and with a Jewish National Fund Negev Dinner in 1998 which funded the New Brunswick Forest in Yatir, Israel. In 1999, she led a group of friends and supporters to Israel for the official dedication.
Joshua and Stanley Lieberman and Mitchell and Mortimer Bernstein
Mortimer Bernstein
Mortimer Bernstein worked alongside his father and business partners on real estate developments in Saint John. The projects included Mitchell Apartments, LaTour Terrace at 61 Union Street which had four floors of offices with a bowling alley and coffee shop on the ground floor and the first homes on the grounds of the former Saint John airport in Millidgeville.
He married Ronna Taub of Westmount, Quebec on September 2, 1958. Ronna was an active member of Sisterhood and Hadassah after her move to Saint John. They made their home in Saint John for many years with their three children – Janie, Eric and Stacey.
The family moved to Toronto in 1979 to be closer to Mortimer’s business interests with Eton Construction. Mortimer made regular trips back to the Martimes to keep up with his connections in the theatre business.
Three years, after the move to Toronto, the Bernsteins divorced. Ronna developed a thriving real estate business and later became a successful interior decorator, a career she loved and in which she thrived. Both remained in Toronto where their children established careers. Mortimer Bernstein died in 2013, Ronna Bernstein in 2017.
Celia Aranoff and Ronna Bernstein – Hadassah Thrift Shop
See also: Cohen Family, Goldfeather Family and Lieberman Family
References:
Louis I. Michelson Archives and Research and Exhibition Files, Saint John Jewish Historical Museum
Marcia Koven – Weaving the Past Into the Present (Saint John: 1989 and 2008)
The Evening Times Globe / The Telegraph Journal (Saint John newspapers)
With thanks to Hon. Erminie Cohen and other family members for personal recollections
This project is made possible with funding from the Archaeology and Heritage Branch, Province of New Brunswick through their Exhibit Renewal Digital Component program and the unwavering support of the Jewish families who made Saint John their home.
