Memorial lily Garden

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This lily garden is planted in memory of
SHIRLEY FAESSLER
by those who loved her.
In her life and her writing
she celebrated this area's Jewish past.


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]