Jack Singer

Jack Singer (1917 – February 2, 2013) was a Canadian real estate developer, financier, and philanthropist. Although he owned numerous properties across Canada and the USA, he is most famous for his acquisition of Zoetrope Studio in Hollywood, once the primary film property of director, Francis Ford Coppola. Furthermore, the impressive and world-class Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary is named after him. Jack Singer was born in Calgary in 1917, one of four siblings: Hymie, Diane (Aceman), and Rosalie (Franks). Singer and his late wife, Shirley (née Cohen), had two sons, Alan Singer and the late Stephen Singer, plus five grandchildren: JL, Leslie, Adam, Quinn, and Carly. His mother, Bella Singer, was born in 1880 in Radom, Poland, the eighth of eleven children. In 1905 she married Abraham Singer and the couple soon left to seek a better life in Canada. Bella first worked as a housekeeper at the Palliser Hotel, and then ran rooming houses during the early years, while Abraham began a number of successful business ventures. He was a scrap dealer, a second-hand store operator, a Banff hotelier, and later owned a number of farming and commercial realty operations. Singer’s immigrant parents used their savings to help hundreds of Jews escape persecution before and during the Second World War, and in doing so, instilled in their son an entrepreneurial and philanthropic spirit. The Singers required each person they brought over to bring somebody else, ready to work. Perhaps 1,600 Canadians now count themselves descended from Bella’s "pyramid scheme." In 1944, Singer married Shirley Cohen. At the urging of a close friend who was smitten with Cohen, Singer reluctantly agreed to date her, fully intending to hand off Cohen to his buddy. However, upon their first meeting, Singer fell madly in love and, instead of a matchmaker, he became a groom. It would not be long before the Singers were a fashionable power couple in Calgary social circles and, until her death in 2001, their impact upon the city’s culture was most significant.