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LAWRENCE FRANCIS TAPPER
Born: Apr 09, 1952
Date of Passing: Aug 07, 2026
Send Flowers to the Family Offer Condolences or MemoryLAWRENCE FRANCIS TAPPER
With great sadness, we announce the passing of husband, father, and zaidy Lawrence Tapper, who died peacefully at home on August 7, 2026. May his memory be a blessing.
Born in Winnipeg, Lawrence moved to Ottawa as a young man, earning an undergraduate degree in Canadian history from Carleton University. Intending to go to law school, a fateful trip to the Public Archives of Canada (PAC) to research turn-of-the-century Jewish migration to Western Canada set him on an alternate career path devoted to the study and preservation of Canada's Jewish history. As an archivist at PAC (now Library and Archives Canada) for more than three decades, Lawrence pioneered the institution's collections of Jewish individuals and organizations, work that led in just a few short years on the job to the groundbreaking 1978 resource, A Guide to Sources for the Study of Canadian Jewry, and its revised version nine years later. His similarly important Biographical Dictionary of Canadian Jewry, 1909-1914: From the Canadian Jewish Times was published in 1992.
An inveterate recordkeeper in his personal life and endlessly curious family historian, Lawrence was the founding president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Ottawa and a longtime writer for the Jewish genealogy journal Avotaynu, where he served as a contributing editor. After retiring from Library and Archives Canada, he devoted himself until the very end to a successful real estate business based in Winnipeg - not to mention a life of golf, curling, cottaging, and travel.
Above all, he will be remembered for his dedication to family, his generosity of mind and spirit, his humble erudition and quirky sense of humour, his interest in current events and fondness for classic movies, and the loving attention he showered on his three children and four grandchildren. He will be deeply missed by his wife of forty years, Lisa; his children, Joshua (Katherine), Simon (Samantha), and Glenna (Kyle); and his grandchildren, Fox, Fen, Isadora, and Imogen.
Donations in Lawrence's memory can be made to the Ottawa Humane Society or the Children's Hospital Foundation of Manitoba.
As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Aug 22, 2026