TORONTO — If you’re looking for Isaac Stricker, who turns 100 years old on Sept. 11, chances are he’ll be in the workshop of his Bathurst Manor home working on his stained glass pieces.
Alternatively, he could be in the spare bedroom painting landscapes with oil paints, or bottling the wine he produced from grapes that grow in his garden.
Or he might be at Beth Radom Congregation, where each morning he attends services and has breakfast.
“I need to keep busy. I get up in the morning and do what I have to do. I didn’t think about my age until my family started planning my birthday party,” he said.
Born in Poland, Stricker left for Argentina, where he lived for 20 years, in 1937. “I wanted to go to Israel, but I missed my turn, because they were only taking married couples. Some people got married, and then got divorced when they got to Israel, but I didn’t want to do that.”
When he met his future wife Pepi – she died when Stricker was 78 – the only country that would take them was Argentina, because Pepi had a sister there. “We had to leave Poland. We felt like strangers.”
He worked as a watchmaker in Argentina, and the couple raised their two daughters, Lola and Dora, and son, Saul, there – he now has six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren – until they immigrated to Canada.
“I opened my watchmaking shop at St. Clair Avenue and Oakwood Avenue, and retired when I was 73 because my lease expired.”
He moved all his equipment to his home, where it now sits next to his stained glass workshop, in his basement.
His youngest daughter, Dora, said that her father was known for his talent for fixing watches and other pieces of jewelry. “People would approach him at weddings and parties with watches in their hands, asking him to fix them.”
He took up oil painting when his wife died. “I took a few classes, and then I did my own thing.”
Showing the dozens of landscapes that line the rooms of his home, Stricker said he painted many of them from postcards he picked up in California when he visited his daughter Lola, who lives there.
“When I needed something to do while my paintings were drying, though, I took up stained glass. I get my glass at a special store. I didn’t know I was artistic until I started all this. I just wanted to be busy.”
Dora said that he takes his work seriously. “He has to be reminded to come upstairs and eat. He donated some pieces to Beth Radom for a fundraiser.”
She said that it was only within the last year that her father started taking Wheel-Trans to synagogue and hired a gardener to cut his grass. “I am the mean daughter who insisted upon it, although he does sometimes walk home from shul.”
Stricker said the only reason he’s celebrating his birthday is because his family is coming from California for the party. “I never think about how old I am.”
