Temple Israel of London, Ontario, CD

"My recollections of our early years as a fledgling Temple here in London has one recurring theme: looking for a building to call our own. Our first board threw around many ideas. Sharing facilities with other associations, physically moving a building to a better location, purchasing land to build, looking at out of town locations, but in the end we decided to take advantage of the new London Jewish Community Centre to hold our services and rented classrooms at the Hebrew day school on Epworth Avenue to run our religious school. We eventually moved our school to the community centre. Our search for a building was non ending with many high and low moments. Once, we actually celebrated the purchase of a building with a cake in the Phillips' back yard only to find a zoning problem and eventual disappointment. I recall many, many visits to sites and buildings, never mind the many more that the committees investigated. Our move to our first Windermere home was very exciting and of course now that we are settled in an amazing building and property, we look forward to the prospect of expanding to facilitate most of our functions"

-- Rael Wienburg. First President of Temple Israel