[URBAN NOTE] Torontoist on one senior Torontonian's experience of the TTC

[rfmcdonald]

Torontoist's Roxy Kirshenbaum has an engaging, photo-heavy feature examining an elderly Torontonian's experience of the TTC.

When Judith Goldfarb, 82, was liberated from Ravensbrück, a women’s concentration camp in northern Germany, in 1945, she made her way to Toronto to start a brand new life. After marrying Steven, 96, in 1950 when she was only 16 years old, she had two kids and began what was a simple, yet fulfilling existence in the Bayview Village area for more than 50 years. But when Steven had his first stroke in 2011 and could no longer care for himself or for her, Goldfarb’s children convinced her to sell the house and move closer to them, near St. Clair West Station.

In looking for a new place to call home, the couple wanted to be close to a subway station. It proved to be a good decision when Steven fell and broke his hip just a few years later. “He was right next to me and he just crumpled to the floor,” she recalls. “He just collapsed; it was in slow motion.” Goldfarb was forced to take the subway every day for six weeks to visit her ailing husband in rehab. “His hospitalization was a longer duration because of the rehab, so I used to take the subway to Toronto Rehabilitation Institute on University every day,” she says. “It was right on the subway line.”

Sometimes Goldfarb would board the subway at 6 p.m. when downtown office workers flooded the subway cars. Instead of feeling crammed and pushed with heavy commuter traffic, Goldfarb was quite surprised by the patience and respect that she consistently received. “I was really impressed. I felt so guilty because here people were coming from work and they’re tired and they still got up for me because they saw that I was old,” she says. “It was very touching.”