The United Bakers Dairy Restaurant, a Toronto staple, serves as a perfect example of the movement of Jews within Toronto at this time, and the type of life and lifestyles characterized by the creation of the Jewish Market in the 1910s and 1920s.
Aaron Ladovsky arrived in Toronto in 1906 from Kielce Poland, joining a booming Jewish Eastern European community in Toronto. Aaron settled in The Ward, marrying a Sarah Eichler in 1911, a fellow Kielcer émigré.[1] In the following year, the Ladovsky’s opened the modest United Bakers Dairy Restaurant at 156 Agnes Street, providing The Ward’s Jewish community with Old World bagels and hot coffee.[2] New hospital developments, poor living conditions, and relocations of employers pressured The Ward’s Jewish community to move west in the coming years, and so too did the Ladovsky family business. In 1920, the bakery reopened at the edge of The Market, 338 Spadina Avenue, just North of Dundas Street.[3]
The United Bakers Dairy Restaurant boomed with business, and soon expanded its presence into the heart of The Market. By 1924, Luzer Ladovsky, Aaron’s brother, began selling bagels in the classic horse-drawn cart fashion just west of the store on the bustling streets of the Jewish Market.[4] Not only was the Bakery a great place to get authentic baked goods before Shabbat, the small store front, only containing six tables, was always packed with interesting characters and community members.[5] Patrons were often came from next door, the Jewish Labour Lyceum, to discuss hot button social and political topics of the day over coffee, exemplifying the sort of community ties which bonded Jewish immigrant families to their community and The Market itself at this time.[6] In fact, Aaron Ladovsky was a key player in the Labour movement in Toronto at this time, helping to form the local 181 of the Bakery and Confectionary Workers’ International Union of America in 1927.[7] Evidently, the United Bakers Dairy Restaurant was a valued baker of Old World goods and a key gathering place for the Jewish community, and it would continue to be for years to come.
