Flyer for a mass meeting supporting A. M. Klein's federal election campaign, at the Workmen's Circle Centre, June 15, 1949
Photo Credit : Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives
A. M. Klein (right) presenting Monroe Abbey (left) a copy of his book, The Second Scroll, ca. 1951.
Photo Credit : Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives
A meeting of many Jewish literary figures from Montreal who wrote in Yiddish or English (or both) including Israel Rabinovitch (Keneder Adler editor), A. M. Klein (poet), Mordechai Ginzburg (Yiddish journalist) and Jacob Isaac Segal (journalist and Yiddish poet), ca. 1950s.
Photo Credit : Jewish Public Library - Archives
Group portrait, including Maurice Hartt (at that time a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Quebec, later a federal MP), Pierre Van Paasen, Michael Becker, and A. M. Klein, upon the occasion of the visit of Pierre Van Paasen (a Dutch-Canadian journalist who supported Zionism) to the Jewish Public Library, November 25, 1945. Standing centre is A. M. Klein
Photo Credit : Jewish Public Library - Archives
1909 - 1972
A. M. Klein
A. M. Klein was a leading Canadian poet (as well as journalist, novelist, short story writer and lawyer), in whose memory the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry was created by the Quebec Writers' Federation.
Born in Ratno, Ukraine in 1909, Klein immigrated to Montreal with his family in 1910. His Orthodox father wanted his son to become a rabbi and greatly influenced Klein’s early formation in rabbinic literature. Klein attended Baron Byng High School, and then McGill, where he studied political science, classics and economics, befriending a circle of poets and critics. There, he co-founded the McGilliad literary journal in 1930.
After completing his law degree at l’Université de Montréal, he joined a firm, even as his interest in literature grew. He wrote many poems in the 1920s and 30s on Jewish themes. Fluent in French, Klein understood the challenges and nuances of French Canadian politics, which made him a unique figure in the English-speaking Jewish community, as well as in most of English Canada. In 1948, Klein published The Rocking Chair, a series of poems about Quebec’s Francophone culture, using Montreal locations as sources of inspiration and establishing parallels between French Canadian and Jewish culture. He respected the Quebecois concern over culture, and opened up French Canada to many Anglophones through his poetry and writings. This collection won him a Governor General’s Award.
In 1949, Klein travelled to the newly established nation of Israel, as well as to Europe and Morocco. Articles about his experiences, entitled Notebook of a Journey, were published in the Canadian Jewish Chronicle, and went on to influence his only novel, The Second Scroll. Published in 1951, the book challenged the accepted boundaries of the Canadian novel, dealing with autobiographical themes as well as the Holocaust and the founding of Israel.
Klein was also an active member of the Montreal Jewish community. He served as editor of the Canadian Jewish Chronicle from 1932 until 1955 and was a consultant and speechwriter to Samuel Bronfman. In 1949, Klein ran unsuccessfully for the Canadian Parliament as a representative of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (the forerunner of the NDP). In 1956, he was awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal by the Royal Society of Canada. Despite the success of his writing, Klein suffered a nervous breakdown, ceased writing, and withdrew from public life by 1955.
