MELVIN FENSON

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MELVIN FENSON New York, December 30, 1923 - Jerusalem September 11, 1999. Son of Daniel Fenson and Anna Riefs. Educated at Townsend Harris School, City College, and Columbia University, he married Ruth Moser in 1946 and soon after moved to her home town of Winnipeg. He was for some years proprietor and editor of the Jewish Post, where his last column appeared earlier this year, 53 years after his first. Melvin Fenson was a distinguished member of the Winnipeg Bar practising family law, and active in Jewish and community affairs. He ran unsuccessfully in a provincial election, and served on federal commissions. He had wide-ranging interests and energetically exposed his children to them, reading Ulysses to his puzzled but pleased small daughters and enlisting his son as a dragoman on trips to Ukraine and Japan. He was an enthusiastic Lake Winnipeg sailor and kayaker, and enjoyed snowshoeing on the Red River, and riding. He became an adventurous cyclist, travelling through Ireland, Holland , Austria and Israel, where he moved in 1976. At the beginning of the string of blood diseases which were to burden his later years, he engaged sherpas and went trekking in Nepal. He had a powerful and irreverent wit and was bracing and much-loved company to his family and many friends. He recently wrote a memoir of his childhood summers on a farm in Connecticut, and at his death was working on a book on Canadian immigrants to Israel. He is mourned by his wife of 53 years, by his sister Marjorie, and by his four children, Avrum, Shani, Naomi and Deborah.

As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Sep 13, 1999