Pape Avenue Cemetery

Pape Avenue Cemetery
Pape Avenue Cemetery
Details
Established	1849
Closed	1930s
Location	317 Pape Avenue, Leslieville, Toronto
Country	Canada
Type	Jewish cemetery
Owned by	Holy Blossom Temple

Pape Avenue Cemetery, officially known as Holy Blossom Cemetery, is the first Jewish cemetery in the city of Toronto, Canada. The small cemetery is now closed to new burials, and is mostly hidden within the residential neighbourhood of Leslieville.^[1]

It was established in 1849 by two prominent local businessmen Judah G. Joseph and Abraham Nordheimer (it is uncertain if Joseph is buried here, while Nordheimer died during his trip to Germany in 1862 and is buried at Bamberg Jewish Cemetery^[2]). At the time the nearest Jewish cemeteries were in Montreal or Buffalo, and Joseph was concerned for his fatally ill son Samuel, who eventually became the first burial in the new cemetery. The location near the corner of Pape (then called Centre Road) and Gerrard was then in still rural areas to the east of the city. It was not close to much of the Jewish community, but was a convenient location to purchase.

It was one of the first Jewish institutions established in Toronto, being opened some years before the city's first synagogue. When Toronto Hebrew Congregation, the predecessor to Holy Blossom Temple, was established in 1856, it took over management of the cemetery, and continues to run it today. Over the next decades almost all the early founders of Toronto's Jewish community would be buried there.

The small Pape Avenue Cemetery quickly ran out of room, and it was closed to new burials in the 1930s.