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Perhaps the most enduring and notable event in the book business these last two decades has been the Giller Prize, given to the best English-Canadian fiction work published in the previous year. It was established by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994. We became friends that year. Jack had a unique talent for friendship. I loved his ability to size up people and situations, his enthusiasms, his silly jokes, his delight in new discoveries - and, most of all, I loved his stories.
Jack's father had been a ballroom dancing instructor in Bucharest. He was a dapper man with dark hair, charm, fast feet, and a determination to do better. Jack's mother and aunt had escaped across the Ukrainian border to Romania when another wave of Cossack pogroms promised to put an end to their youthful ambition to stay alive. The two sisters were barefoot in the snow, but they had the family's wealth in jewels sewn into the linings of their threadbare coats.
Had Jack's parents not married and had two children so soon after they both arrived in Canada, Jack's father might have had a bright future as a businessman. As it was, he worked as a newspaper vendor on a Montreal street corner to support his family.
Jack hawked newspapers at his father's stand. Later, when his father opened a fast-food restaurant, Jack and his brother served meals, and they ate well. Otherwise, it was his mother's cooking. She had an unerring talent for serving burnt, soggy, greasy, colourless food. When Jack's father bought a toy store, his mother was the guard, patrolling the premises, making sure no one would steal. Unfortunately, she continued to cook.
Jack and his brother Sam went to school with the kids of other immigrants. All except two families in Jack's neighbourhood were Jewish. The Catholic kids ran with their own crowd and provided lively exercise for Jack and his friends, who would run the gauntlet of their battle-scarred fists and metal-heeled boots...