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Podcast: North Star with Ellin Bessner
Episode: How Jews brought the movies to Val-d'Or, Que.—and how the city is celebrating them today
Description: There's one movie theatre in the city of Val-d'Or, Quebec—a city of about 32,000, about a five-hour drive north of Ottawa. The Capitol Theatre opened in 1937 with more than 600 seats, an orchestra pit and a snack bar. Its founder, Abe Kaplan, was one of the pioneering Jewish residents who set up businesses in the region to capitalize on the burgeoning gold rush of the time.
Kaplan and his wife raised two daughters and a son in an apartment right above the Capitol, and—despite being one of a handful of Jewish families in the mining town—managed to lea...