Collection

SELIGSON, Lou.

Description Level

Fonds

Physical Description

Env. 1.75 metres of textual records.

Scope and Content

Canadian Jewish News press clippings of interviews and caricatures of a cross-section of Montreal Jewry. Addition 2011: Newspaper clippings of the finished articles from the Montreal Gazette (1970-1972), and the Montreal Star (1972-1973) associated with caricature drawings donated earlier. Addition 2012: 3 regular (8" x 10") and 6 small black and while photos, and a small notebook with sketches and notes, pertaining to a mission to Israel attended by Lou Seligson, 1973. One 8" x 10" b and w photo with Prime Minister Trudeau and others, at the time of the publication of Enclyclopedia Judaica in 1973. Numerous newsclippings dating from the 1960s, mounted on black paper, from the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, with profiles and sketches of mostly Israeli notables (texts in Hebrew) as well as some printed caricatures of famous figures published in The Nation in the late 1940s, and a few profiles published in other international publications. Among the newspaper materials those that were damaged by damp have been photocopied, with the originals discarded.

Date

1948-2002.

Fonds No.

P0138

History / Biographical

Lou Seligson was born in Argentina in 1914, to parents who were Latvian immigrant ranchers. To escape antisemitic violence, the family moved to Milwaukee in the United States in 1920. Seligson studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin, and served in the US merchant marine during WWII. He married his first wife Dorothy Wilson in 1945, with whom he had two sons, Eric and Mark. Affected by the hardships of the Depression era, he sympathized and became involved in leftist activities, leading to his blacklisting during the McCarthy era, during which he wrote and drew under pseudonyms such as 'Luis', the name he used for his caricatures of famous people in the socialist Militant Newspaper. Seligson emigrated to Israel in 1962, where he wrote a daily column for Ma'ariv. It was in Israel that he met his second wife, Eunice Chankowsky, then director of the Canadian Hadassah WIZO office in Tel Aviv. The couple married in 1966 and moved for a few years to Geneva, where Seligson edited the country's only English newspaper, the Weekly Tribune, before immigrating to Montreal, Canada in 1970. Seligson's Montreal career included a job writing business profiles for the Montreal Gazette, followed by a column called 'Line Byline' at the Montreal Star. He also wrote for the sports-oriented Sunday Express before taking up employment at the Canadian Jewish News in 1977, where he became well known for his twenty years of articles and accompanying caricature drawings. Over the course of his career, Seligson produced approximately 800 illustrated articles. He died at age 88 in 2002. (Primary source: the Canadian Jewish News, article by Janice Arnold, August 1, 2002.)

Custodial History

The collection was first donated by Lou Seligson on March 23, 1985. Addition were made by Eunice Seligson (his widow) in 2011 and 2012.

Notes

Alpha-numeric designations :P85/03, P11/15, and P12/12.General note :Seligson was a well-known Montreal artist who profiled a great many prominent members of the Jewish and non-Jewish community over an extended period. The art portion of the collection contains mostly original pencil works. Related material: P85/03: newspaper columns donated in 1985, also a book of his selected Canadian Jewish News columns, titled Mr. Profile, donated circa 1993.

Archival / Genealogical

Archival Descriptions

Repository

Canadian Jewish Archives

Less detail