Allan Grossman
| Allan Grossman | |
|---|---|
| Ontario MPP | |
|
In office 1967–1975 |
|
| Preceded by | New riding |
| Succeeded by | Larry Grossman |
| Constituency | St. Andrew—St. Patrick |
|
In office 1955–1967 |
|
| Preceded by | Joseph Salsberg |
| Succeeded by | Riding abolished |
| Constituency | St. Andrew |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
December 25, 1910 Toronto, Ontario |
| Died | September 1, 1991 (aged 80) Toronto, Ontario |
| Political party | Progressive Conservative |
| Occupation | Insurance agent |
Allan Grossman (December 25, 1910 – September 1, 1991) was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Canada, for 20 years, a provincial cabinet minister and the father of the late former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, Larry Grossman. Together, the father and son represented the downtown Toronto, Ontario, riding of St. Andrew, and its successor St. Andrew—St. Patrick, for 32 consecutive years. Allan was also the second Jewish Canadian Cabinet minister in Ontario and the first to be a Tory. He was also the first elected Canadian official to visit China.
Grossman’s father, Moishe, had left Russian occupied Poland in 1907. Two years later, Moishe Grossman brought his wife Sarah and their then six children to Canada. Allan Grossman was the seventh child and the first member of the family to be born in Canada.
At age sixteen Grossman and a handful of other boys formed the "Junior Conservative Association of Toronto". Probably the first Toronto political organization for youths, it was the beginning of the "Young Progressive Conservatives."
Grossman became a successful businessman and organized his fellow insurance agents into a union to fight the entry into Canada of an allegedly communist-dominated union from the United States.
In 1951, former Toronto mayor, Nathan Phillips, then an alderman, was vacating his council seat to run for mayor. He persuaded Grossman to run in his ward against the Labor-Progressive Party (as the Communists were known) candidate who had narrowly been defeated during the previous year's election. Grossman ran and defeated the Communist candidate by a margin of 131 votes. The following year he won by 2,000 votes and became the senior alderman and one of the founding members of the Metropolitan Toronto Council. He was re-elected alderman in the subsequent two annual elections.
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