kurtis kristianson/spl F A L L 2 0 1 5 | W E S T W O R L D A L B E R T A 9
Alberta
Around
Little Synagogue on the Prairie
A
t Calgary's Heritage Park Historical Village, the
Montefiore Institute teaches visitors about a little-
known chapter in the settlement of the West. Fifty
families, near present-day Sibbald in eastern Alberta,
founded the Montefiore colony, named for Sir Moses
Montefiore, a 19th-century British philanthropist who brought
pogrom-weary Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe to
the prairies in 1910. The colony built a two-room, 74-square-
metre structure that served as synagogue, school and
community centre in 1916. But when the Dust Bowl came
through in the 1920s, they were forced to leave, and the
government sold it to a local school board for grain storage.
In the '40s, it became a private home in Hanna, then vanished
from the records for more than five decades. In 2006,
Calgary's Jewish community discovered it covered in layers
of stucco and paint. They bought it, restored it and gave it a
permanent home at Heritage Park in 2008. The result, as they
say, is a mitzvah. heritagepark.ca –Kevin Brooker
