North Star with Ellin Bessner

Newsmaker conversations from The Canadian Jewish News, hosted by Ellin Bessner, a veteran broadcaster, writer and journalist.

North Star with Ellin Bessner is a news podcast hosted by Ellin Bessner, with 853 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Ellin Bessner hosts North Star with Ellin Bessner, a news show with 853 episodes published.

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  North Star with Ellin Bessner

  Late Holocaust survivor Eva Olsson spoke to over 1.5 million students

  Aug 20, 202612 min

  The late Holocaust survivor and speaker Eva Olsson died Aug. 4 in Port Carling, Ont. She was 101. She once estimated that she had given 4,300 presentations over the years. Her family says she likely reached over 1.5 million people with her story of resilience and courage. Although she only started speaking about her life in her 70s, 15,000 people wrote her letters saying how moved they were. The Order of Canada winner and author spent over a quarter-century sharing her story of surviving the Holocaust in Hungary, then slave labour camps, and both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen before her liberation in 1945. Her message was always to fight hatred and not be a bystander. We here at The CJN’s North Star podcast wanted to pay tribute in our way, so today we’re rebroadcasting Ellin Bessner's last interview with Eva Olsson, which aired back in October 2021. She was just about to turn 97 and Yad Vashem was going to honour her with a birthday celebration—online, of course, via Zoom, because the world was in lockdown in the early part of the COVID pandemic. Related stories and links Read how the late Canadian Holocaust survivor Eva Olsson likely spoke to over 1 million people about her story, in The CJN . Yad Vashem marked Eva Olsson’s 97th birthday in 2021 with a special ceremony, in The CJN Watch the trailer for a documentary about the late Eva Olsson “Stronger Than Fire”, on YouTube. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzy Helenchilde (producer and video editor),l Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

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  North Star with Ellin Bessner

  Meet the man who has been chasing the world's best gelato since 2011

  Aug 19, 202623 min

  One of Peter Cohen’s favourite gelato shops in the world is San Crispino, in Rome, Italy. It’s among the nearly 2,000 pins on the Montrealer’s personal online World Gelato Map, which he’s been curating as part of his passion—some may call it an obsession—with the frozen treat. For the last 15 years, Cohen has been travelling the world , visiting hundreds of shops, tasting and looking for the best Italian artisanal ice cream. His gelato hobby began in 2011 on a family trip to Italy. Since then, he’s been developing a growing gelato-ratings system that covers shops beyond just Italy: Turkey, Cambodia and many more countries, including about two dozen gelato shops here in Canada. His children think he should monetize his map—but Cohen says he does all this out of a sense of community, and to explore unknown neighbourhoods and meet the gelato-making artisans behind the counters. On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner travels to Montreal to sit down with Peter Cohen over some award-winning gelato at Fiore, one of his current favourite shops. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer and video editing), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

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  North Star with Ellin Bessner

  B.C. wildfires: Jews open their homes, kitchens and rally to help evacuees

  Aug 17, 202628 min

  On Aug. 7, Todd Shapiro was just finishing dinner in Summerland, B.C., when a wildfire outside the town “exploded” and prompted an immediate provincial emergency evacuation order. The former Montrealer, who had just moved to the Okanagan area last summer, grabbed his passport, a jar of peanut butter and some toilet paper, rounded up his teenage son and family dog, and fled the region. Shapiro is one of 20,000 residents of Summerland ordered to leave their homes as the fire, the size of the city of Burlington, Ont., is still out of control more than a week later. After an anxious journey, he shared, “I was kind of freaking out”, facing closed highways and uncertain of where to go. Shapiro and his family made it to Kelowna, where they were invited to sleep at the home of Jewish community leader Abbey Westbury. She runs a winery, but also is a Jewish Federation of B.C. “community connector”, who also has close ties to the local synagogue and the Okanagan Jewish Community Centre. Westbury has been making food for evacuees and the first responders fighting the wildfire. The smoke and ash from Summerland has been blanketing Kelowna, too, and made it difficult to just be outside. Despite suffering an asthma attack this week, local Chabad Rabbi Shmuly Hecht, with his wife, Fraidy, turned their Chabad of Okanagan centre in Kelowna into a supplies depot for evacuees and hosts. They’ve kept their summer camp running but switched to indoor activities. In Penticton, just up the road from Summerland, local Jewish resident Tami Bray, who works for an environmental organization, has been running a city-wide relief centre, but feeling frustrated that politicians aren’t using the words “climate change” to describe what has caused this summer’s devastation. On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner hears from these four Jewish residents on the front lines of the out-of-control Bald Range fire. Related links: Learn more about how to donate to the Jewish Federation of B.C.’s Wildfires relief fund and to the Chabad of Okanagan’s Fire relief efforts fund. Watch Rabbi Shmuly Hecht’s supplies depot video Read about the August wildfire in 2023 that came within metres of Kelowna’s Okanagan Jewish Community Centre, in The CJN . Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izizie Helenchilde (produder and video editing), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

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  North Star with Ellin Bessner

  Jewish students speak out after landmark campus antisemitism study

  Aug 14, 202627 min

  On Aug. 5, a new national study of antisemitism on Canadian university campuses revealed a startling reality: 95.7 per cent of Jewish students surveyed said they had experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the past year. The report received wide coverage, including in The CJN , but there’s more to this story than that disturbing number. The 1,200 anecdotes submitted by students paint a vivid picture of being targeted by peers and professors for their faith and identities. The research was originally commissioned by the office of Canada’s Special Envoy on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism, Deborah Lyons, before Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government scrapped both her office and the Islamophobia czar’s in February 2026. When Carney announced the makeup of a new federal Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion in June, he told the members to tackle antisemitism first, especially on campus. That’s when the study’s authors reminded the government it already had the research sitting there, which it had paid for. But what else does this report tell us? What do Jewish university, college and CEGEP students actually say happened to them? And now that we have the research, what happens next? On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast with Ellin Bessner, you’ll hear several of the students who spoke out, along with Cary Kogan, a University of Ottawa professor who was an advisor on the report and helped make it public last week, who spoke with The CJN’s Zenith Wolfe. Related links A new report finds nearly 95%, nearly all Jewish students surveyed, personally experienced or witnessed campus antisemitism last year, in The CJN Read the report on the Government of Canada’s website , and please specially read the Jewish students’ personal comments . Read about the class action lawsuit against McGill University, and other legal actions underway against three other campuses including TMU, Western, and Windsor, in The CJN. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer/video editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

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  North Star with Ellin Bessner

  This Canadian soldier waited 109 years for his funeral Kaddish

  Aug 10, 202626 min

  When Canadian First World War soldier Pvt. Albert Detmold was killed by German shelling on Aug. 15, 1917, while digging communication trenches on the front lines in northern France, he could never have imagined that more than a century later, both a Chabad rabbi from Toronto and a Ukrainian Catholic priest from Saskatoon would preside over his formal military burial. Detmold’s remains were discovered by construction workers in a field near the French city of Lens in the summer of 2020. They’d lain there for over 100 years, sharing the fate of many hundreds of his comrades who lost their lives in the Battle for Hill 70, after Vimy Ridge. While Detmold’s name was later engraved on the Vimy Ridge Memorial as missing with no known grave, in late 2025, DNA testing and historical sleuthing allowed Canada’s Department of National Defence to make a positive ID. Arrangements were soon put in place to mount a formal reburial ceremony on July 9, in France, Detmold’s actual birth date. He was born into a prominent European Jewish family before coming to Canada, so inquiries were made about the possibility of having a Star of David engraved on Detmold’s gravestone. But officials ultimately decided to bury him under a cross, as the soldier had enlisted as a Presbyterian. Detmold’s great-niece, Liana Walters, of Tees, Alta., traveled to France to represent the family at the service, and told The CJN she “would have liked to have seen the Star of David on the tombstone as well.” On today’s episode of The CJN’s North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner speaks with chaplain Maj. (Rabbi) Arnold Noteh Glogauer, of Thornhill, Ont., who recently returned from officiating at the burial, and with Walters, the great-niece, about their surprisingly emotional farewell for the long-lost soldier. Related stories Read how Canada’s Department of National Defence Casualty Identification Program spent five years doing DNA testing and tracing Pvt. Detmold’s relatives, in The CJN. Watch our interview with the three Canadian experts who made the positive identification, on The CJN’s North Star podcast, on YouTube from April 2026. See the Canadian Armed Forces’ brief video of Detmold’s burial service. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( info@thecjn.ca) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Izzie Helenchilde (producer and video editor), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter https://thecjn.ca/north Watch our podcasts on YouTube Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)

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