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Samuel Nathan Cohen known as Nathan Cohen (16 April 1923 – 26 March 1971) was a Canadian theatre critic and broadcaster. Cohen was considered the country's only serious drama critic during the first two decades following World War II, the period when Canadian theatre became established. He was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, to an Eastern European Jewish immigrant family. He got his start in media when he was the editor of Mount Allison University's student newspaper. After graduating from Mount Allison, he was the editor of the Glace Bay Gazette. He permanently moved to Toronto in 1945 and wrote for various Communist Party supported newspapers. In 1948, he became the Theatre critic for CBC Radio. When CBC began television broadcasts in the 1950s, Cohen became one of their first talk show hosts. He joined The Toronto Daily Star in 1959, and worked as its theatre critic until his death in 1971.

Early life

Cohen was born and raised in the Whitney Pier section of Sydney, Nova Scotia. His family were Jewish immigrants from Poland (Pale of Settlement) that settled near the Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation's steel mill, Atlantic Canada's major steel mill. His parents changed their name to Cohen from Kaplansky when they arrived in Halifax. Cohen had three siblings: two older sisters born in Poland, and a younger brother. Cohen was the first boy and member of his family to be born in Canada. As a child, he read persistently in the backroom of his parents' grocery store, where he developed a love for science fiction, comics, and novels. He graduated from Sydney Academy High School, where he was heavily influenced by one of his English teachers, William Mould, who encouraged him to read Shakespeare. He entered Mount Allison University at age 16, and edited the university's student newspaper and yearbook.

Professional career

Glace Bay Gazette

After he graduated from Mount Allison, he studied law at Osgoode Hall Law School for a semester, but returned to Nova Scotia without graduating. He found employment as a journalist, in effect becoming a one-man show, by editing, reporting, typesetting and publishing the Glace Bay Gazette, a union-owned mass-published daily newspaper from 1942 to 1945.

Labor-Progressive Party

He joined the Labor-Progressive Party—as the Communist Party was then known—and moved to Toronto in 1945. He worked for the party paper, Canadian Tribune. He was also engaged as an editor of the Yiddish communist weekly newspaper, the Vochenblatt. He worked on its English-language section writing political articles, book reviews and then theatre reviews.

Joe Gershman, the editor of the Vochenblatt, later remarked about Cohen's Communist affiliation: "During the years he was a member, he was a rebel against certain postulates held by the party. He was not in favor of democratic centralism, particularly in the matter of art. He felt a writer should be given a chance to explore and write freely what he thinks and sees, rather than follow the party line. Nathan was, in nature, a rebel, even. when he was in the Communist Party." Cohen likely quit the party around 1947.

CBC Radio and Television

He came to the attention of Mavor Moore who recommended Cohen to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation where, as a theatre critic, he hosted Across the Footlights, The Theatre Week and CJBC Views the Shows. Cohen received national prominence as host of Fighting Words, an intellectual, but popular panel show on CBC Television from 1953 to 1962. Cohen also worked for CBC Television in the 1950s as a script editor for the anthology series General Motors Theatre and continued with CBC Radio conducting interviews on the show Audio.

Toronto Telegram and Toronto Daily Star

In the 1950s, he also published his own magazine, The Critic. Cohen began writing a theatre column for the Toronto Telegram in 1957 and was hired away by the Toronto Daily Star two years later, becoming the paper's entertainment editor and remaining there until his death. Cohen was known for his integrity as a critic and did not hesitate to give negative reviews, breaking with the common critical practices of the time which consisted mostly of uncritical praise. He was asked by the Canadian University Press to come up with tips for aspiring arts critics and he turned that into a Toronto Star column "Rules for budding critics" in 1964.

Late career and death

In his later years, he suffered from heart disease caused by diabetic complications, and died at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, a few hours after having open heart surgery in the early hours of 26 March 1971.

External links

• Nathan Cohen fonds (R790) at Library and Archives Canada

References

Notes

1. ^ Toronto Star 1971c, p. 59.
2. ^ Globe and Mail 1971, p. 5.
3. ^ Toronto Star 1971a, pp. 1, 3.
4. ^ Gould 2012.
5. Cape Breton Jewish Community 2012.
6. ^ Gould 1981.
7. ^ Toronto Star 1971b, p. 24.
8. CBC Digital Archives 2012.
9. Cohen 1964, p. 43.

Bibliography

News media

• Cohen, Nathan (26 February 1964). "Rules for budding critics (Revised Version)". The Toronto Daily Star. p. 43.
• "Nathan Cohen: Toronto drama critic aided theatre growth". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. 26 March 1971. p. 5.
• "Star drama critic Nathan Cohen dies at 47 after heart surgery". The Toronto Daily Star. Toronto. 26 March 1971. pp. 1, 3.
• "Nathan Cohen: 'Canada's only real drama critic'". The Toronto Daily Star. Toronto. 26 March 1971. p. 24.
• "'Society treated me very well,' said Nathan Cohen". The Toronto Daily Star. Toronto. 27 March 1971. p. 59.

Other online media

• "Nathan Cohen fonds". archivescanada.ca. Ottawa: Canadian Archival Information Network. Archived from the original on 26 May 2024. Retrieved 4 September 2012.
• "Fighting Words". CBC Digital Archives. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 25 June 2014. Retrieved 27 May 2024.
• "Historical Communities: Whitney Pier". Cape Breton Jewish Community. Halifax: Atlantic Jewish Council. 2012. Archived from the original on 16 June 2013. Retrieved 19 August 2012.
• Gould, Allan (1981). "Homage to Cohen: Nathan Cohen Remembered". allangould.com (originally published in Toronto Life magazine in 1981). Toronto. Archived from the original on 2 July 2012. Retrieved 4 September 2011.
• Gould, Allan M. (2012). "Samuel Nathan Cohen". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Foundation. Archived from the original on 20 October 2012. Retrieved 19 August 2012.

• CBC Radio hosts
• Canadian art critics
• Canadian columnists
• Jewish socialists
• Toronto Star people
• Canadian theatre critics
• 1971 deaths
• 1923 births
• Jewish Canadian journalists