Memorable Manitobans: Nathan B. “Zim” Zimmerman (1898-1951)

Journalist.

Born at Winnipeg on 20 December 1898, one of five children of merchant William Zimmerman (1870-1946) and Yenta Daien (1872-1948), he was educated at Argyle School and the University of Manitoba, graduating from the latter in 1921. He worked briefly for the Manitoba Free Press then attended the School of Journalism at Columbia University and edited trade papers in New York before joining the editorial staff of the Winnipeg Tribune in 1924, remaining there until his death, writing as the drama critic NBZ.

Interested in drama, during university he was a member of the Menorah Society, a Jewish students’ theatrical group, and he later performed with the Sock and Buskin Club, a branch of the Winnipeg Little Theatre. He served as President of the Winnipeg Press Club (1937) and was a member of the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue. For a time he was the secretary of an association of Jewish “old-timers”. Unmarried, he lived with his sister and her husband.

He died in the Misericordia Hospital, of a brain haemorrhage sustained while preparing for the Winnipeg Press Club’s annual Beer and Skits production, on 22 April 1951. He was buried in the Shaarey Zedek Cemetery.

See also:

Beer & Skits and the Winnipeg Press Club: A Marriage Made in a Smoky Room by Scott Edmonds
Manitoba History, Number 70, Fall 2012

Sources:

Birth registration [Nathan Zimmerman], Manitoba Vital Statistics.

“William Zimmerman, local pioneer merchant is dead,” Winnipeg Tribune, 3 January 1946, page 17.

Death registrations [William Zimmerman, Yenta Zimmerman], Manitoba Vital Statistics.

“The Argyle name honors early Governor-General” by Claire Tisdale, Winnipeg Free Press, 7 February 1949.

“N. B. Zimmerman, city newsman, dies,” Winnipeg Tribune, 23 April 1951. [Manitoba Legislative Library, Biographical Scrapbook B10]

“Nathan B. Zimmerman, 53, veteran newsman, dies,” Winnipeg Free Press, 23 April 1951, page 6.

Obituaries and burial transcriptions, Manitoba Genealogical Society.

We thank Shelley Sweeney for providing additional information used here.

This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.

Page revised: 23 January 2023

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