His was a life worth living, a story worth telling.

So Jim Spatz describes the story of his father, Simon Spatz, in the introduction to this fascinating biography of the high-profile Jewish Nova Scotian businessman (1913-2007). In Simon Spatz, former journalism professor Michael Cobdon tells the remarkable story of a man who not only survived but thrived against all odds.

After bringing his family out of poverty in Poland, surviving the Holocaust in an area where 97 per cent of Jews were murdered, and immigrating to Canada at nearly forty with little money and no knowledge of English, Spatz would open a successful Halifax grocery business before entering into real estate in the 1950s. Known today as the magnate behind the international, multi-million-dollar real estate development firm Southwest Properties, Spatz remains an inspiration to Nova Scotia's business and Jewish communities.

What his family calls a "larger-than-family-pride human narrative," Simon Spatz is the story of a man shaped, but not destroyed, by one of the cruelest events in human history; a no-holds-barred exploration of a man who did more than build a life for himself and his family: he left behind a legacy.

Michael Cobden was born and raised in South Africa and worked in newspaper journalism in Johannesburg; London, England; Toronto and Kingston, Ontario, and Halifax, where he was professor of journalism at the University of King’s College. After retiring from King’s, he taught academic writing and English as a Second Language at Dalhousie.

Michael Cobden's profile page