Collection search - Laya Rotenberg Kurtz fonds [textual record, graphic material]

Record information – Brief
1
Laya Rotenberg Kurtz fonds [textual record, graphic material]

Hierarchical level:

Fonds

Date:

1935-1996 (mainly 1935-1936).

Reference:

R15473-0-7-E

Type of material:

Textual material, Photographs

Found in:

Archives / Collections and Fonds

Item ID number:

4734660

Context of this record:

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Laya Rotenberg Kurtz fonds
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Record information – Details

Fonds includes:

5 lower level description(s)
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Date(s):

1935-1996 (mainly 1935-1936).

Place of creation:

No place, unknown, or undetermined

Extent:

9.2 cm of textual records.
15 photographs : 14 b&w and 1 col.

Language of material:

English

Scope and content:

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The fonds mainly includes correspondence Laya had with members of her family and her future husband. Documents provide information on business surrounding the tour of Grey Owl (wages, jobs and the details of his employment, etc.) and its various experiences during the trip to England and Scotland. Details of her employment are found in her letters, as are travel experiences on the tour, close association with the Dicksons, Mrs. Somervell and Grey Owl.

Given their intimate nature, the documents provide a more personal perspective on Grey Owl the individual and those around him during his first tour of England, which differs from public nature of documents also cover the European tours Grey Owl (advertising, posters, etc.). Indeed, the correspondence mentioned the close ties between Kurtz and Mrs. Lovat Dickson (the instigator of the tour) and his wife, but also his relationship with Grey Owl, who wished she agrees to accompany him to Beaver Lodge following the lecture series. The intimate nature of the letters exchanged necessarily highlight another aspect, very personal, personality and life of Grey Owl.

The fonds also includes a straight reportage of their travels through England and Scotland, written on letterheads of the Polytechnic and other hotels during the winter of 1936, and some black and white photographs of their meeting on the Empress of Britain, as well as some photographs of Laya dating from the 1980s and 1990s.

Provenance:

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Rotenberg Kurtz, Laya, 1915-2009

Biography/Administrative history:

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Rotenberg Kurtz, Laya, 1915-2009 : Laya Rotenberg Kurtz was born July 25, 1915 in Toronto, the eldest of 4 children, to Louis and Minnie Rotenberg. After completing high school, she persuaded her parents to let her travel to Paris, France to study dressmaking. She set sail on October 12, 1935 on The Empress of Britain. It was there she met Grey Owl and struck up a friendship with him. When they docked at Southampton, England, she met Lovat Dickson and his wife who had come to greet Grey Owl. She stayed in touch with the Dicksons who invited her to London prior to the first lecture tour and proposed to her that she hire on as Grey Owl's assistant/secretary/minder for the duration of the tour. Following the tour, Grey Owl stayed for some weeks with her parents in Toronto, and she returned home in the spring/summer. She then embarked on a 70 year marriage with her husband Maurice. They settled in Paris where Maurice studied theatre and playwriting and Laya studied art. Following the disruption of the war, he was discharged from the US Army, completed his studies at Columbia University in New York and they returned to Paris where Maurice served as the first Director of UNESCO in 1948-49 and Laya began to study color and painting with a French painter, Pierre Jerome. Laya Rotenberg Kurtz was 94 when she died in 2009 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (USA).

Additional information:

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Custodial history:

The documents were produced during the first tour of Grey Owl in England and were accumulated and retained by Laya Rotenberg Kurtz (1915-2009) who was the assistant / secretary of Grey Owl. Ms. Kurtz met Grey Owl on the ship Empress of Britain in October 1935 as she headed to Paris in France to continue his studies. She later became his assistant / secretary for the duration of the first tour of Grey Owl in England.

The letters were stacked in date order, pages numbered and wrapped in brown paper tied with twine, in two packages, one labeled "Laya's letters to Maurice, corresp. '35-36" (with the Grey Owl references), and one labelled "Correspondence, Laya to home, Toronto, October 1935 - May 1936".

Associated material note:

Other Canadian institutions hold documentation on Grey Owl. An extensive collection of Grey Owl correspondence is in the Macmillan Company of Canada fonds at the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario). The fonds Harold John Fraser, at Saskatchewan Arts Board in Saskatoon, is another important source of information, and a collection of handwritten letters appear in The Green Leaf: a Tribute to Grey Owl [H. H.] (ed. Lovat Dickson, London, 1938).

Related material:

BAC already has a Grey Owl fonds (MG30-D147, R2224) made up of 10 series of documents and photographs on the life of the naturalist and author. Mount Riding National Park in Manitoba, where Grey Owl worked as a naturalist in 1931, has already transferred its archives at LAC in 1995 so they could be added to the Grey Owl fonds.

The Laya Rotenberg Kurtz fonds also complements two other fonds that contain an abundant and diverse documentation on Grey Owl: The Lovat Dickson fonds (R3608) and the National Prince Park-Albert Fonds (R5747).

Source:

Private

Related control no.:

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2014-01948-7
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Date modified:: 2024-07-04