Background
Harry Cohen came from a poor immigrant family of eight, the son of Alexander and Rose (Diamond) Cohen. He quit school at age 15 to help support them. Working as a doorman at a theater in Winnipeg, he obtained a job at Warner Bros. as a film inspector during the Great Depression. In 1932, he was transferred by Warner to Calgary, Alberta. Taking a liking to the city, he persuaded his entire family to move West in 1934. They arrived broke, and their arrival marked the beginning of an amazing success story.
Harry's five brothers, John, Albert D. Cohen, Morley Cohen, Samuel N. Cohen, and Joseph H. Cohen, set up a small retail store and, by 1939, the family had scraped together enough monies to create General Distributors Ltd., a wholesale import firm. While his brothers went off to war, Harry (disqualified from service because of stomach ulcers), attended to the family business while still working for Warner Bros.. It is during this time that he met and married Martha Cohen, who would eventually become one of Calgary's leading female community-builders and receive national recognition for her many accomplishments.
Read more about this topic: Harry B. Cohen
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