It was on a Friday, a few days before my fourth birthday mid-May, as my mother was fond of telling it. The night before I had had a bad bout of coughing. Although we had been enjoying spring I was still nursing the chronic winter bronchitis that brought me to Dr. Goldberg's office on Cote Ste Catherine Road. All through the winter I was subjected to constant injections. Dr. Goldberg was not going to allow any young patient of his to surrender to such an obnoxious bug.
It was still a year to the time I would be going to kindergarten. Growing up in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal, I could attend any number of Jewish schools, each representing yet another ideological …