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Shirley Faessler (nee Rotstein) was born, the second of three children, to immigrant Romanian-Jewish parents who had come to Toronto, and settled in the Kensington Market district, in the early part of the twentieth century. She and a brother and sister were raised by their father, who had taught himself to read and write English, and, after their mother's early death, by a loving stepmother who was illiterate and spoke practically no English. The extent of Shirley's formal education, at King Edward Public School, was Grade Eight - failed, as she herself put it. She was self-educated, ... [to be continued later - rc] |