Following is the personal viewpoint of the writer, the grandson of Fred Mendel.
This year marks the 70th anniversary that my grandfather, Fred Mendel, a Jewish refugee barely escaping the Nazi Holocaust, first set foot in Saskatoon and purchased what was a derelict building on 11th Street originally built as The Derby Motor Company during the 1920s. The long-abandoned building was a victim of the worst depression the city, province and world have known.
He pioneered a business seven decades ago marked the beginning of Intercontinental Packers, Mitchell's Gourmet Foods and the origins of Saskatoon's first true art gallery above that abattoir.
No other private citizen in Saskatoon's 100-year-plus history has influenced the city's economic well-being and cultural growth as much.
His contribution was duly recognized by Mendel being the only Saskatchewan resident to receive the Canadian Industrial Development Award, "given to the citizen who made the most significant contribution to Canada's Industrial development."
Of more than 500 packing plants existing in Canada at the time, Intercontinental became the largest family owned meat business in Canada, the largest private employer in Saskatchewan as well as the city, employing 1,500 Saskatonians.
He saw the potential of Saskatoon in the midst of its worst economic crisis. He was the visionary who saw and made certain that Saskatoon finally had a permanent home for an art gallery.
What would have happened if he hadn't survived the Holocaust, perishing with the six million others in one of Adolf Hitler's death camps?
Certainly, the Mendel Art Gallery would not have come into existence, with it's magnificent site that combines both forest and waterfront, the finest example of mid-century architecture in the province and its enormous national success as being one of the highest visited galleries per capita in Canada.
Many of Saskatchewan's greatest artists would have had to struggle a lot harder to gain recognition, whether that was Bill Perehudoff, whom my grandfather mentored and encouraged by employing him in the 11th Street plant more for painting murals and paintings than slicing bacon, or it was Eli Bornstein, who received the honour of being the first Saskatchewan artist to have a show at the Mendel gallery, or indeed it was Joni Mitchell, who has publicly attributed much of her early painting inspiration to her early association with Fred Mendel.
Mendel and his ensuing generations have donated artwork (Mendel's Group of Seven Collection being the galleries' Crown jewels) and millions of dollars to hospitals, to the creation and ongoing activities at the gallery, to charities and to the Canada Games. The family has left a huge mark in the evolution and well-being of Saskatoon.
On Nov. 30, city council met for the first time in public to "air" the move of the Mendel gallery and to ceremoniously "hand over the shovel" for the new Destination Centre/Art Gallery of Saskatchewan, without much room for public debate or scrutiny.
My sister, Camille, and I were not given any advance notice. City administration's report to council was made public only a couple of days before the meeting. We both sent e-mails requesting that council delay the meeting so we could attend and present councillors with the case for not closing the gallery and moving our family's collection. This request was ignored.
As the walls of Intercontinental come tumbling down to extend Circle Drive and with the civic government's current plan to destroy my grandfather's one remaining dream and monument, the Mendel Art Gallery, it is fair to ask: "What would Saskatoon have been like without Fred S. Mendel?"
If the city goes ahead with its plan, there will be nothing left of Fred Mendel. It would be ironic if Saskatoon, the city he loved so much, and Canada, the country whose citizenship he was proud to claim, erased his memory, just like the Holocaust almost succeeded in doing just before his arrival in Saskatoon 70 years ago?
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Added to Library on February 4, 2010. (1644)
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