Finding Your Roots this Tuesday, February 2, at 8:00 p.m. on PBS, features The Visionaries — business mogul Richard Branson and architects Maya Lin and Frank Gehry, who learn how their ancestors took audacious risks to create opportunities, and how their luck, ingenuity and chutzpah was passed on to them.
This episode may have a Canadian twist, albeit it a small one.
In Canada, we call Frank Gehry one of our own. Most biographers, however, describe him as a “Canadian-born American” or “Canadian-American” since he eventually settled in the US.
‘Finding Your Roots’ will likely explore architect Frank Gehry’s Polish roots with a brief nod to his early years in Toronto.
Mr. Gehry was born Ephraim Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, to parents Irwin Goldberg and Thelma Caplan. His parents were Polish and Jewish. For a time, he and his sister lived with their parents in Timmins, a mining town in northeastern Ontario.
In 1947, when Mr. Gehry was 18 years old, his family emigrated to the United States, settling in Los Angeles. It was then when they changed their surname to Gehry. A few years later, Mr. Gehry changed his first name to Frank.
Despite Mr. Gehry having grown up in Toronto, I suspect Finding Your Roots will trace his roots further back to Poland.
If you missed last week’s episode of Finding My Past with Jimmy Kimmel, Norman Lear, and Bill Hader, you can watch it and previous episodes here.
