Raconteur. Leader. Hat maker. Father.

Born July 30, 1948, in Ulm, Germany; died July 2, 2021, in Toronto, of complications from diabetes; aged 72.

Life for Isaac (then Yitzchak) began in a displaced persons camp in Germany. His parents had met and married there; both having lost their first spouses in the events of the Second World War. From these difficult beginnings, things arguably got worse. In May, 1949, the family moved to the edge of a war zone in West Jerusalem. The living conditions were harsh and dangerous, with Isaac playing in minefields and surviving Jordanian bullets shot into his bedroom regularly.

But this life bred a resilience in Isaac that matured into full-blown scrappiness on the streets of Montreal, where the family moved in 1959. As his parents scrambled to make a go of it in their shoe store, Isaac was left to fend for himself – leading to some great stories, which, with a booming voice and a twinkle in his eye, he was happy to tell. There was the time, at the age of 15, he asked the sheriff of a small town in upstate New York if he could sleep in a jail cell because he had nowhere else to go. The time he faked his identity so he could attend camp in the U.S. The time he paid a taxi driver $20 to borrow his car for the driving test. And the time he drank someone under the table just to show him that Jews could drink beer with the best of them.

In 1973, Isaac met and married (all within three months) Naomi Zaidener, and by 1977 they had two children, Adam and Aviva. Isaac worked night jobs and finished a university degree in education. He began teaching high school in Montreal but the political difficulties in Quebec stirred up bad memories from Europe. In 1977 the family moved to Calgary. Their third child, Daniela, was born a few years later.

While he loved working with highschool students (and they loved him), Alberta was just the place for a gregarious, go-getter to carve a new life. Isaac worked at a steel plant in Medicine Hat and a toy company (owned by a bookie), then applied for the job of general manager at Smithbilt Hats, maker of Calgary’s iconic white headgear. He may have been the only applicant to show up in jeans and a shirt, as opposed to a shirt and tie, but Isaac was good at making friends quickly, and he got the job.

Hat manufacturing attracted unique customers and Isaac found a way to relate to everyone. In Hutterite colonies, everyone knew him as Ike and dropped by the factory with produce to trade; he bonded with French Canadian cowboys by speaking French that he learned on the streets of Montreal; he kibbitzed in Yiddish with New York Chassidim; Alberta ranchers introduced him as their Jewish friend and a local First Nation named him an Honourary Chief. He even went back and spoke at a hat manufacturer in Ulm, Germany, and the employees gave him a standing ovation when they heard his story.

Isaac was proud to work at Smithbilt, especially during the 1988 Winter Olympics when the white hats became a symbol of the Games. He donated hats to any charity that requested it and his friendship to any that needed it.

His love of people was only matched by his great enjoyment in retelling a story (often with new facts). He would assume control over the dinner conversation and not let up until he was well into jokes for which he forgot the punchline.

He ferried old ladies home from the synagogue. He loved children and was considerate of the blind, the poor, the deaf and the inebriated. To each he treated them to a joke and a story to let them know he was a friend. He will be remembered not just for the good times, but for the good he did.