Background
One of five children, he was born in New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrants. His father, Zusha Goled was a tailor and cantor. His name was changed to Jacob Gold when he entered the United States at Ellis Island. His mother, Henyagitel (Annie) walked across Europe from Russia to take a boat to join her husband in New York. Along with his parents and older brother Max, the family moved from the Lower East side to the cleaner air of Toronto. Gould was captain of the Osgoode Hall debating team at the University of Toronto. He practised criminal law and entered politics at a time when restrictive practices posed numerous challenges and he changed his name from Gold to the more Anglo-Saxon Gould.
Gould was married to Esther Freeman. They had three children Stephen, Marshall and Corrine. Stephen is a graduate of Berklee College of Music, an associate professor, and director of the Educational Leadership PhD program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Marshall is a businessman in Toronto. Corinne is the owner of Esther Gould's Finest, a Toronto business based on her mother's mandelbread recipe.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Gould (Ontario Politician)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)