Morris Norman was born in Germany in 1946. His parents were Hejnoch (Harry) and Jadwiga (Jesse) (nee Kaisman), both Holocaust survivors from Poland. During the Second World War, Jesse survived by being hidden for four years in the attic on a farm owned by a non-Jewish family. After the war, Morris and his parents lived in the Lechfeld Displaced Persons Camp near Augsburg, Germany until immigrating to Canada around 1954.

The family first arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax before moving on to Toronto. There, they lived with Jesse’s relatives, then on their own on Christie Street. Harry and Jesse eventually purchased a home on Clifton Avenue in Bathurst Manor where they lived for the next 50 years. Morris lived with his parents at this residence until his marriage to his wife Julie.

Morris’s passion for collecting began early with an interest in stamp collecting. This quickly led to a life-long pursuit as an avid collector of Canadiana, specifically Judaica. He purchased lots at auction and donated them to the Ontario Jewish Archives, as well as other institutions such as Brock University, The City of Toronto Archives, Library and Archives Canada and McMaster University. Morris’ focus on collecting and preserving was his way of acknowledging the life his family had built from the devastation and loss forced on them during the Holocaust.

The Morris Norman collection is as eclectic as Ontario Jewry itself. It consists of a large number of individual items including photographs, publications, artifacts, posters, sound recordings, and ephemera like calendars, receipts, flyers, ink blotters, promotional items, and business cards. There are also records documenting the Franklin family, owners of a large amount of property in Toronto in the late 1800s and early 1900s; radio and television scripts written by Wayne and Shuster, Henry Karpus and Russell Bradley; a collection of Nat and Lou Turofsky photographs; and records documenting Berul Sugarman, a concert violinist and orchestral leader whose career spanned from the 1940s until the 1980s.