Toronto philanthropist Leo Goldhar was ‘a force of nature’


He was born above his parents’ delicatessen and cigar shop near St. Clair and Dufferin in Toronto, a tough kid with a short fuse who would never graduate high school.

When he died Saturday at 91, Leo Goldhar was an “icon” in Toronto’s philanthropic community, a man who spent the last three decades of his life driving such a vast portfolio of community-building and health-promoting causes that, those who knew him say, his full impact on the city can never truly be tabulated.

“He was a force of nature,” said Lionel Schipper, of his lifelong friend who was also a father and grandfather. “Once Leo took something on, he was relentless.”

Goldhar’s no-nonsense personality and sharp sense of humour masked an enormous heart, according to his friends and family. But his greatest asset was the same street smarts that got him into trouble early in life, a toolkit he used to build first a successful business career and then advance an enormous array of charitable ventures — causes he drove by rolling up his sleeves, not just by cutting cheques.

His crowning achievement was the Joseph & Wolf Lebovic Jewish Community Campus in Vaughan, a hub for the GTA’s growing Jewish community that Goldhar realized by tackling land acquisition, zoning and fundraising challenges.

“He did tons of stuff that nobody will ever know about, because his name isn’t on it and he didn’t ask for that,” said Tennys Hanson, CEO of the University Health Network Foundation, where Goldhar was a longtime board member.

Goldhar was born to Rose and Sam Goldhar, Eastern European-Jewish immigrants who ran an attached deli and cigar shop at St. Clair Avenue West and Northcliffe Boulevard. He and his sister Dorothy lived in the small rooms above the shops, his son, Mitchell Goldhar, said at his father’s funeral service on Sunday.

Goldhar was smart but had a short attention span and a robust dislike of rules and authority, his son said; he got into trouble a lot while his parents were busy working seven days a week at their shop. Eventually, “he either left or was asked to leave” his high school, according to his childhood friend Schipper.

Goldhar was also exceptionally lucky, Mitchell said, and his biggest stroke of luck by far was meeting and marrying Sala. Together, the couple would have three children — Stephen, Mitchell and Karen — and five grandchildren. Sala was a joyful woman with a searing story of surviving the Holocaust as a small child. She was sheltered by two generations of a Polish family and was shuttled between different homes and orphanages after the war until she was adopted by distant relatives in Canada, according to an account the family gave to ynetnews.com.

“His marriage to our mother Sala was the foundation for most of the joy and fulfilment he experienced in his life,” Mitchell said on Sunday. “He had total trust in Sala and the utmost respect for her. He was fascinated by her history and unable to reconcile her propensity to be happy, trusting and cheerful given the terrible early circumstances of her life,” and recognized that he was blessed to have a partner who understood and supported him.

Leo dabbled in a series of business ventures, some more successful than others, including shower doors and a tile and carpet company.

The Toronto of the 1950s and ’60s looked different than today, says Schipper. Some of the young families in what was then a much smaller Jewish community would get together on Friday nights for five-pin bowling. But when they became interested in taking up the newly popular sport of tennis, they found the city’s established clubs would not accept Jews.

So the friends got together to create the York Racquets Club, a tennis facility originally near the Summerhill LCBO and now on Marlborough Ave. (The Island Yacht Club was among other recreational facilities of the time created by Jews who were shut out of existing Toronto institutions.)

Goldhar, a natural athlete, was initially stymied by the frustrating sport — his son Mitchell recounted spotting a racquet of his father’s lodged in the club’s rafters. He persevered, becoming a good player.

After many business stops and starts, Goldhar found success in the world of land development and construction.

“My father was blessed to achieve a great deal of success in business, probably more than he ever imagined. It was due in large part to his hunger to succeed, to prove everyone wrong, and his fearlessness to challenge convention in getting there,” said Mitchell, who is himself a successful businessman and CEO of the real estate investment company SmartCentres.

In the 1990s, Goldhar was a volunteer with the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto when the organization began developing a plan to better support the rapidly expanding Jewish population in Toronto. That plan led to the vision of a community hub north of the city.

Goldhar made it his personal job to find the land, says Ted Sokolsky, former UJA Federation president. He insisted on finding a parcel on Bathurst Street, even though it was more expensive, that would be a connection to the Jewish communities further downtown. Once he found the property, he raised $6 million from some of Toronto’s most successful businesspeople in a matter of weeks and closed the deal.

The Joseph & Wolf Lebovic Jewish Community Campus, which includes myriad social and cultural programs and facilities, opened in 2012.

Goldhar fell in love with philanthropy, Sokolsky said, and soon joined the board of the UHN Foundation. His contributions there, from brain science to the creation of an endowed chair for renowned hematologist Dr. Michael Baker, are too many too list, but Tennys Hanson says one stands out for her.

After the death of Hanson’s husband, who had diabetes, Goldhar spurred the creation of a foot and wound clinic at Toronto General Hospital named in the couple’s honour— a donation that has led to a web of further research and support to help tackle a problem that leads to many unnecessary lower limb amputations for diabetes patients.

In the last 18 months, Goldhar received both the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada. Hanson said that when Goldhar got the call he was receiving one of the country’s highest honours, he thought it was a prank and hung up.

“That meant a lot to him,” said Hanson. “I don’t think he ever expected it.”

Goldhar’s memory will continue to inspire Toronto’s philanthropic community, his friends say.

“He was just someone who got things done,” said Henry Wolfond.

“He was generous with his money, but really generous with his time and his energy and, you know, rolled up his sleeves. And if he said he was going to do something, he got fully engaged and did it.”

Kate Allen is a Toronto-based reporter covering climate change for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @katecallen

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