For the week of April 15, 2024.
On April 20, 2009, the Government of Canada recognized Dorothy Dworkin as a national historic person. In Toronto, Ontario, she played an important role within the Jewish community, leading fundraising campaigns, facilitating the resettlement of newcomers from Eastern Europe, and providing essential health and social services in the early to mid-20th century.
She was born Dora (or Dvora) Goldstick in Latvia c. 1890 and moved to Canada with her family in 1904. They settled in Toronto, where she became an active member of the Jewish community. Dedicated to service, she trained as a general aid at a private dispensary, founded in part by Dr. S. J. Kaufman of Cleveland, Ohio. The dispensary provided low-cost health care and offered services in the Yiddish language. She eventually left Toronto to study nursing and midwifery at Mount Sinai Hospital in Cleveland. In October 1909, she received her licence from the Medical State Board of Ohio.
She returned as the first professional nurse and midwife within the Jewish community of Toronto. She was hired to run the free Jewish Dispensary, which Ida Siegel and her brother Abe Lewis established in 1909 on Elizabeth Street. There, she provided nursing and maternity care to large numbers of Jewish patients, both during the day and after hours. She also worked closely with Siegel on the establishment of an orphanage for Jewish children, the work of the Hebrew Ladies’ Maternity Aid and Child Welfare Society, and the organization of a women’s auxiliary at the dispensary, which distributed pasteurized milk and medical supplies at low cost. Dorothy left the dispensary shortly after her marriage to Henry (Harry) Dworkin in 1911, with whom she had one daughter, named Ellen (Honey).
Dorothy Dworkin remained actively involved in building health care infrastructure within the Jewish community in Toronto. In 1922, she led the women’s mutual benefit society, the Ezras Noshim Society, in raising funds to build a new Jewish hospital at 100 Yorkville Avenue. The 20-bed Maternity and Convalescent Hospital opened later that year under Dworkin’s direction. The hospital quickly expanded beyond maternity care and was renamed Mount Sinai in 1923. Dworkin served on its board of directors until 1954 and founded its Ladies’ Auxiliary, which supported the expansion and improvement patient care through volunteer programs and fundraising activities.
After her husband died in 1928, Dorothy Dworkin helped run her family’s steamship agency on Dundas Street West. Through this business, they brought hundreds of Jewish people from Poland, Romania, and Latvia to Canada during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1935, she established Dworkin’s News Agency on Elizabeth Street, which became the biggest Canadian distributor for the Yiddish press and the publisher of the Kanader Naies/Canadian News until 1955. Dorothy Dworkin remained actively involved in community life until her death in 1976.