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Dorothy Dworkin, née Goldstick, nurse, midwife, travel agent, publisher, fundraiser, hospital director (born 1890 in Windau, Russian Empire; died 22 July 1976 in Toronto, ON). Dorothy Dworkin was one of the founders of Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital during the early 1920s and promoted efforts to provide better health care to the city’s Jewish community. She was an active fundraiser for charitable and humanitarian causes and helped arrange the passage of many immigrants from Eastern Europe to Canada (see Immigration to Canada).
Early Life and Career
Dorothy Goldstick was born in Windau (now Ventspils, Latvia), the seventh of 11 children of Sarah and Wolfe Goldstick, a merchant. Her family emigrated to Canada in 1904, settling in Toronto (see Immigration to Canada). She contemplated a career in health care, but, as she reflected decades later, “because of my race, my sex and the fact that I was, relatively, a newcomer to this country, it seemed that I could only expect to do some mediocre kind of work.” Around 1907, she began working for Dr. S.J. Kaufman’s private dispensary. He recommended that she study midwifery and nursing at Mount Sinai Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, where she was certified by the state board in 1909. Upon returning to Toronto, Goldstick managed the Jewish Dispensary, which was operated by Ida Siegel and Abe Lewis. Under their direction, the dispensary offered free medical services to new immigrants. During its off hours, Goldstick made house calls to deliver babies. (See also Childbirth in Canada.) She also helped with the dispensary’s women’s auxiliary, which provided services ranging from the distribution of pasteurized milk to organizing an orphanage for Jewish children.
In 1911, she married Henry “Harry” Dworkin, an advertising agent and tobacco wholesaler. Between 1917 and 1919, Harry and his brother Edward opened a variety store at 525 Dundas Street West, which evolved into Dworkin Travel. The travel agency arranged the passage of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, bringing hundreds of people to Canada. Harry was also a co-founder of the Labour Lyceum, which housed the city’s Jewish unions, and was involved in numerous labour and Jewish organizations. (See also Jewish Canadians.)
The Birth of Mount Sinai Hospital
The Jewish population of Toronto increased from around 3,000 in 1901 to 34,619 in 1921 (see Jewish Canadians). Many of the city’s Jewish residents had emigrated from Eastern Europe and settled in the Ward neighbourhood. This growth was accompanied by the need for health care catering to this new community, which often faced issues surrounding poverty and anti-Semitism.
“Rich people could go to private hospitals,” Dorothy Dworkin recalled in a 1968 interview with the Toronto Daily Star. “Poor people couldn’t get help from the city for hospitalization if they owned a single stick of anything, even a tar paper shack.”
Dworkin collaborated with the women who formed the Ezras Noshem (“Ladies’ Aid”) to fundraise for a new hospital. Among the motives for this effort was Toronto General Hospital’s refusal to provide kosher food and Yiddish-speaking staff to patients. The group secured a down payment on the former site of the private Lynhurst Hospital at 100 Yorkville Avenue. Initially known as the Toronto Jewish Maternity and Convalescent Hospital when it opened in September 1922, it would change its name to Mount Sinai Hospital the following year.
According to Dworkin’s personal accounts, “in those days, women were terrified of hospitals.” Dworkin devised numerous schemes to attract patients to the new hospital. A baby carriage was awarded to the first woman who gave birth in the facility. When only three beds were occupied by patients before a guided tour, she arranged to have nurses dress as patients to fill the space.
Though she was not a member of the hospital’s initially all-male board of directors, Dworkin took a leading role in the hospital’s daily management. During its early years, she drove bandages and medical instruments to Women’s College Hospital for sterilization. Members of Ezras Noshem also assisted by performing kitchen duties or mending linens. As the building for Mount Sinai Hospital lacked an elevator, patients also had to be carried up and down the stairs.
In 1925, she founded and served as president of the hospital’s Ladies’ Auxiliary, which organized fundraising efforts ranging from baby contests to bazaars. Dworkin and other volunteers frequently waited outside synagogues to solicit funding for the hospital as people departed services.
Growth of Mount Sinai
When a planned hospital expansion was put on hold due to the onset of the Great Depression, Dorothy Dworkin, who by now was the secretary of Mount Sinai’s board of directors, worked hard to placate the hospital’s creditors. During the mid-1930s, she was among those who raised $1,000 each to purchase life insurance policies, which provided a guarantee for the mortgage needed to fund an addition to the hospital building.
Continuing to lead the hospital’s fundraising and community outreach efforts, she also promoted greater involvement of women in medical leadership. “One reason men do not like women on hospital boards is that they think they go after only the ‘small’ money,” she said during a of Women’s Hospital Aids’ Association meeting in 1947. “We must show them that we can do big things.”
The hospital moved from 100 Yorkville Avenue to University Avenue in 1953. Dworkin was named a lifetime director of Mount Sinai in February 1955 and was also named a lifetime member of the Ontario Hospital Association. In 1968, to mark the demolition of old buildings and the construction of a new 650-bed hospital at Mount Sinai’s University Avenue site, a parade of antique vehicles travelled from 100 Yorkville to University Avenue. Dworkin rode in the lead car.
Other Activities
Besides her involvement with Mount Sinai, Dorothy Dworkin also held executive or board positions with many organizations, including the Continental Steamship Ticket Agents Association, the Federation of the Jewish Philanthropies of Toronto, and the Labour Lyceum.
Between 1935 and 1954-55, with her brother Morris Goldstick, Dworkin was editor and publisher of Keneder Naies (“Canadian News”) a Yiddish-language publication that was inserted into the weekend editions of Yiddish newspapers from New York that she handled local distribution for (see Newspapers in Canada).
Following her husband’s death in 1928, Dworkin ran Dworkin Travel. The travel agency continued to secure passage for immigrants, leading to frequent conversations with federal MPs and officials whenever problems arose (see Immigration to Canada; Immigration Policy in Canada). During the Holocaust in Europe, she led fundraising campaigns that provided international relief for Jews (see Canada and the Holocaust). She sold the business in the early 1970s.
Legacy
For being “deeply involved in health, labour, and charitable organizations,” Dorothy Dworkin was named a Person of National Historic Significance by Parks Canada in 2009.
Her grandson, Harry Arthurs, later served as dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, president of York University, and president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Summing up Dworkin’s achievements in 2009, he observed that “she and her generation of immigrant women worked hard to make life better not just for themselves but for everyone. They broke down barriers, built institutions and changed lives.”
