Trachter's Dairy

An updated redo of the original Kensington Market: Hidden Histories Project, undertaken with student research for the course CDN355 Digital Media, Digital Makers in Fall 2016. Findings from this initial research contributed to an early ArcGIS geolocative map and an augmented reality iOS app, Kensington Market: Hidden Histories, no longer available (built by No Campfire Required).

Student researchers were the recipients of the Lieutenant Governor's Ontario Heritage Award for Youth Achievement, Group, 2018. The project launched July 2017 with features in the CBC  here  and UToronto news,  here . A 2018 Heritage Matters article on the award  here. 

Shout outs and thanks to the research assistants who built and edited the new story maps, Diego Rupolo and Bruce Li. This story map is marked as deprecated as links & sources may need updating.

71 Kensington is a small 2 story brick building that has had many businesses over the decades. The most famous dates back to the 1920s when this was the site of Trachter’s "Milk Store," a Jewish grocery selling milk, butter, and eggs. The 1925 address for Trachter's Milk Store, 71 Kensington Avenue, is listed twice in the Ontario Jewish Archive  record s.

The 1924 Fire Insurance Plan lists the address as 57 Kensington Ave.

The original buildings on the site of Trachter's Dairy were wooden as maps between 1884 to 1924 indicate wood (yellow) instead of brick (red). City records list a Maxwell Pugan as the tenant through the 1910s and by 1917, Pugan is listed as a ‘confr,’ likely confectioner, suggesting Pugan ran a sweet shop.

Also of note in the 1917 directory is the business listed at 78 Kensington, a Chinese Laundry.

In this extraordinary photo from 1925, you see Becky (Cooper) Trachter, wife of Harry Trachter, and her brother, Art Cooper, smiling proudly, in front of the shop. The lettering on the light over the entrance way likely spells "Creamery" and the shop signage details the products in English and Yiddish. With Harry Trachter not in the photo, was he the photographer?

Description from the Ontario Jewish Archive: "Identified in this photograph from left to right are: Becky (Cooper) Trachter and her brother Art Cooper. Becky Cooper married Harry Trachter and they had three children: Booky (Kwart), Sylvia (Consky) and Norman Trachter. Date: May 1925."  Source .

This beautiful photo is the only visual trace of their thriving business, situated in the heart of Kensington Market, in what was then a thriving Jewish community with families and businesses moved west from The Ward. The Ward was levelled later for the building of Nathan Philips Square and the modern Toronto City Hall.

By the 1920s, the Toronto City Directories and the Toronto Jewish City Directories list many Jewish residents and businesses on Kensington Avenue and adjacent streets in the market.

Henry Dworkin, co-founder of the Labor Lyceum, ran the Dworkin Travel agency and the OJA  family profile  describes how "the Dworkins helped Jews from all over Europe immigrate to Canada, with specific focus on countries like Poland, Rumania, and Latvia. They would travel to different countries in order to help the family members of their clients settle in Toronto."

There are many many sites in Kensington Market of great historical significance, most of which have no sign in place to mark the history of the lives lived here. 

This Story Map is an updated redo of the original Kensington Market: Hidden Histories Project, undertaken with student research for the course CDN355 Digital Media, Digital Makers in Fall 2016. Findings from this initial research contributed to an early ArcGIS geolocative map and an augmented reality iOS app, Kensington Market: Hidden Histories, no longer available (built by No Campfire Required).

Student researchers were the recipients of the Lieutenant Governor's Ontario Heritage Award for Youth Achievement, Group, 2018. The project launched July 2017 with features in the CBC  here  and UToronto news,  here .