TORONTO — Albert Latner, a man who made his fortune as a real estate developer, who left his mark on the Jewish community in both Canada and Israel, died last month at the age of 88, after battling Parkinson’s disease.
In Toronto, Latner may be best known for his role with Greenwin Properties, having helped develop Don Mills, one of the city’s first suburbs. Latner is also credited with developments such as midtown’s Davisville Village and the Yonge-Eglinton Centre.
But Lynda Latner, Albert’s daughter-in-law who knew him for 45 years, said that despite his countless professional and entrepreneurial achievements, there were few things more important to him than supporting the Jewish community in Toronto, Canada and Israel.
In fact, Latner was a big part of The CJN’s revival in the early 1970s when the paper’s founder, Meyer Nurenberger, decided to sell it.
Under the leadership of philanthropist and businessman Ray Wolfe, Latner was part of a group of community leaders who bought the paper in 1971.
“He was truly committed to having information out there for the community and making sure that The CJN was there so that people knew what was going on… The CJN was a really important link for him, and he was unwilling to see it drift off into just another newspaper that used to be part of Toronto’s older Jewish community,” Lynda Latner said.
Latner, who became more observant following the death of his father in 1976 and was described by family as a “life-long student of religious thought,” donated money and sat on the executive of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, restored and financially supported Toronto’s Jewish Public Library before it moved into the Lipa Green Centre in the 1980s, established centres at various Canadian and Israeli universities and hospitals, and most recently, helped develop the Albert and Temmy Latner Forest Hill Jewish Centre, a new synagogue on Spadina Avenue modelled on a Polish shul that was destroyed during the Holocaust.
“He also had a love of the arts – that is a well-known fact,” Lynda Latner said.
His collection included pieces from Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Calder and Moore.
“It enriched everyone’s lives because, in the public spaces of the buildings he built throughout his career, he made sure that there were Canadian artists who had work fully exhibited and he supported the Canadian arts.”
But before he amassed his estimated $1-billion fortune, the Hamilton-born Latner was living just outside of Toronto’s Kensington Market, under the care of his mother, Elise, and his father, Jack, who made a living cutting cloth at a Tip Top Tailors factory on Bathurst Street.
Zil Rumack, Latner’s baby sister, said his entrepreneurial drive was evident early on in life.
“He was always looking to make a living even when he was very young. He had a paper route as so many kids do, but that one route turned into several routes, and soon he had boys, children, working for him,” Rumack said.
“Through that, and through his interest, with another friend of his, in an art shop where they framed diplomas, he put himself through university.”
At 22, Latner married his wife, Temmy, and they had four children: Steven, Michael, Elise and Joshua.
Latner’s career began to take shape shortly after his wife became pregnant with their first child. He decided to drop out of law school to work for his father-in-law’s construction company, originally called Greenview Construction, and later renamed Greenwin.
