Nina Chisvin: Grandmother. Storyteller. Sweet tooth. Gabalot. Born June 6, 1932, in Winnipeg; died Nov. 24, 2024, in Winnipeg, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease; aged 92.
Nina Chisvin.Courtesy of family
When Nina Chisvin was in her 50s, she and her girlfriends went to Israel. There, for no other reason than the fun of a good shtick, she pretended to be a Hollywood actress alongside her producer and director scouting a movie location. The locals bought it and thought she was beautiful and glamorous (which she was). When asked years later what came over her to create this persona she said: “Because I could be whoever I wanted to be.” Nina loved to be both funny and sincere.
Nina Globerman was the youngest of four children born to Maishel and Raichel Globerman, Jews who fled persecution in Pinsk in the late 1920s, which was then part of Poland, for a safer life in Canada.
When she was growing up in Winnipeg, her family was poor. Like all young children, she did not grasp at the time the sacrifice her parents had made to build a life in Canada, but certainly did later in life.
Nina’s parents prioritized education; unlike material objects or status, an education was the one thing that could not be stripped away by persecutors.
In her early years, she attended Peretz Shul (School). When she transitioned to public school in Grade 7, she was reprimanded for asking too many questions in class. Nina was an excellent student, and curious and well-read throughout her life.
At the age of 20, she married Manuel Thompson. Nina and Manuel built a house from scratch and lived in the North End of Winnipeg. Though they came from different socio-economic backgrounds, they fostered a lively, loving home for 35 years. They had three children, Ellen, Sorel and David.
Nina raised her children to be mensches, to be respectful and they learned the Globerman motto: to be early is to be on time. While her children grew up wanting for nothing, they walked through the world without an ounce of entitlement. She never forgot where she came from.
In her late 50s, Nina and Manuel divorced. She began working as a teacher’s aide in the local Jewish nursery school and later the Jewish public library. In the mid 1990s, Allan Chisvin was dropping off books to donate to the library. They caught each other’s eye and in the days to come, Allan brought a book a day as a ploy to see her. They shared a sense of fun and adventure, and both liked to gamble. In 1997, they tied the knot in Las Vegas.
Nina believed that it’s never too late to try something new. In her late 40s and early 50s, she took classes at the University of Winnipeg. She also took swimming lessons well into her 80s, having never learned as a child.
Nina could be sassy and judgmental and wasn’t afraid to speak plainly to those she loved. When one of her granddaughters told her she had a girlfriend, Nina looked down at her prickly legs and said, “Honey, when you take a lover you’ve got to shave your legs.”
Nina taught her family a lot about the power of enduring friendships, too. She remained lifelong friends with about a dozen women from childhood. They called themselves the Gabalots (gab-a-lot). At a reunion in the mid-2000s, they had their photo placed on pillows with “The Gabalots” embroidered underneath. Nina proudly displayed that pillow on her red-velvet couch and would fondly share stories with her family about the women.
Nina loved being a Baba. Her own grandmother and extended family were killed in the Holocaust. She showed up to every school play, swim meet, recital, graduation and all the everyday moments in between. Her five grandchildren loved to bask in her pride; she conveyed so much in just a look.
At family dinners, she’d make her famous “cutleten” (her made-up Yiddish word for hamburgers) and mashed potatoes. She always said that she wanted two things on her headstone: “girls just want to have fun;” and, “she made the best cutleten.”
She possessed a love of all sweet things, planting flowers on her balcony and teaching her grandchildren to sprinkle white sugar on strawberries.
She truly saw the fun in life and wanted to squeeze every bit of sweetness out of it.
Belle Riley Thompson and Piper Riley Thompson are Nina’s granddaughters.
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