The following article was originally published in volume XIX, number 1 of ZichronNote the Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society in February 1999.

I've tried to give you a bare-bones history of my family since its arrival in Canada. Hyman and Sarah GOLDWIG and two children, Becky, an infant, and Abraham, three years old, arrived in Quebec City, Canada, nine days out of Liverpool, England, on July 31, 1899 aboard the S.S. Lake Ontario, in steerage class. I have been unable to locate any information about when the other brothers arrived, although some later moved on to the United States: Nathan to Los Angeles, Sam to Minneapolis and Harry to San Francisco.

Isaac and Morris stayed permanently in Winnipeg to become successful merchants. Their children and grandchildren are recognized there today in the fields of law and medicine. Most eminent was Joe LUDWIG, my contemporary, who came to California before World War II to complete his studies in medicine. His untimely death not long ago saddened the Jewish community and robbed the nation of a distinctive talent.

Hyman, my father, was a tailor in Winnipeg for the Eaton Company and the Hudson Bay Company. In 1907, he became a Canadian citizen and a daughter Etta was born in Winnipeg. About then, Hyman joined a group of immigrants gathered by a Jacob Bender to colonize the Canadian shtetl of Bender Hamlet, 65 miles north of Winnipeg, near Narcisse. The prairie proved rocky and unproductive. Many settlers, including my father, spent months of each year in Winnipeg, earning cash to support their families on the homesteads, where Albert was born in 1909. I (Morris) was born in 1911, followed by my brother Charles in 1913.

Gradually, the pioneers abandoned the homesteads because earning a living there became precarious. The Ludwigs finally left Bender Hamlet in 1917 for Winnipeg, where Hyman tailored at 320 St. Mary's Avenue, Westminster Avenue and Portage Avenue. In 1923, encouraged by his brother Harry and wife Sarah PINSKY, Hyman, his wife and four children moved permanently to San Francisco. Two years later, Rebecca Ludwig, her husband Max SHATSKY and children Alice and Allen joined them.

Decades after leaving Winnipeg for San Francisco as a boy of 12, I became serious about my origin and roots. Before that, having been thrust into the real world during the Great Depression, scrambling for a buck was uppermost. By the time I had earned a bit of security, those who could have enlightened me were gone. Searching for my roots, I returned to Winnipeg in 1960 at the age of 50. Manitoba officials had previously informed me by mail that no such place as Bender Hamlet had ever existed. Fortunately, at Narcisse, a farmer named Forlanski told me of a narrow dirt road that led to the site of a vanished "Jew colony." The remalns of rock foundations were the only signs of former dwellings. A further walk through the surrounding woods revealed a small, walled-in cemetery containing several gravestones. So ended the search for my birthplace, which I had envisioned as a sort of incarnation of "Fiddler on the Roof" only to find an empty, deserted prairie.

Most of what I've discovered about Bender Hamlet was learned during the 1960s when my two sisters and I retraced our steps to Winnipeg. What I can only refer to as a "world class coincidence" opened the first door for us. My late sister Edna remembered that as a small girl at Strathcona School in Winnipeg, a teacher named Mr. Sisler had shown lantern slides of the Jewish colony, Bender Hamlet, at an assembly meeting. Being shy, she didn't own up to having once lived there, but never forgot the incident. I was already aware of this same Sisler on my first day at that school. Bewildered, frightened, knowing only Yiddish, I watched in terror as Sisler grabbed a boy by the ear and dragged him up the steps to the front door. I reacted as any red-blooded kid would; I peed my pants. So was my induction to the world of higher learning.

In 1960, I traced Mr. Sisler in a Winnipeg city directory. He had passed away several years earlier, but his widow, a most charming lady, gave my sisters and me access to his field records, among them much on Bender Hamlet. After more than a dozen visits to Winnipeg, research at local archives and meetings with Joseph Lavitt, grandson of an original settler and a founder of the Jewish Historical Society of Winnipeg. Bender Hamlet became meaningful again. I bought the parcel of land from the Jewish Colonization Association where our small home once stood. I periodically return for my prairie "fix," usually in early June, when the perfume of tiny wildflowers and native strawberries fills the air - a blissful experience unlike the days when the pioneers survived winter blizzards and windchill temperatures of minus 40 degrees.

To honor the settlers' memory, Joe Lavitt petitioned government officials to declare Bender Hamlet a Provincial Historical Site. Several hundred descendants gathered in the summer of 1987 for the dedication and unveiling of a Provincial monument along with a stone cairn and brass plaques engraved with the settlers' names. In all, some fifty families are inscribed, many of whom took up residence after most of the first group departed. I list here only those whose names appear on an official survey map of Bender Hamlet dated May 1910, adding only the wives' names as they appeared on the monument (but rearranged in alphabetical order):

• Max & Rifka Arber
• Nathan & Fannie Arber
• Moses & Fanny Brodsky
• Isaac & Sarah Dixon
• P. Fethers
• Jacob & Jennie Gerber
• Benjamin & Millie Gordon
• Joseph & Ida Gordon
• Morris & Julie Green
• Joseph & Hanna Lavitt
• Sholom Friedel & Kayla Lavitt
• Hyman & Sonia Ludwig
• Jacob & Mierna Melanchuk
• Chaim & Esther Posen
• Hyman & Sophia Warshawsky
• Max & Esther Weinstock

Bender Hamlet is reached from Winnipeg by driving north on Highway 17 to Narcisse, where a highway sign alerts one to turn right to the site. I favor visiting during the month of June, before the summer humidity sets in, and before the famous, harmless garter snakes of Narcisse (a tourist attraction once featured in "Ripley's Believe It or Not") leave the prairie for their winter dens.

One year, on our way to the Gaspe Peninsula, I stopped to show my birthplace to my wife. It was a lovely, shining day in September, but the snakes were migrating to their underground dens, the highway was littered with them, and we skedaddled quickly, never even getting out of the car. Hardly more than a year ago, I was introduced to the computer and the mass of genealogical information available online. While browsing the Internet, I entered "Narcisse, Manitoba" into a search engine and found that Oregon University holds field trips to the area each year, recording data on the habits and life cycle of these reptiles (hardly a job for a Jewish boy!).

As I hope in June to be "double snowman" (88 in golf lingo), it's high time to circle the wagons and get serious before curfew done ring. I know enough about Winnipeg and Bender as I need - it's the Ukraine I want to tap into, where it was reputed my paternal grandfather lived to 104, had 27 children by two wives, and could toss off three fingers of whiskey with any man. Now, there's a gent worthy of commemoration!