(died 8 June 1933, aged 87), merchant. Described both as native of Germany and Poland, he may have been born in an area of Germany which became part of Poland after WWI. He is stated in his obituaries to have emigrated to the United States at age 17, and to have come to Canada in 1863. Since he would have been 17 in 1863, if the figures stated are correct, we can assume that he was only briefly in the United States. His wife’s obituary, however, seems to make the emigration to the United States about 1870. Isaac Simon lived in Detroit, then in Hamilton and Brantford, Ont., before settling in Alexandria.

     Isaac Simon, a married man with a family, came from Brantford to Alexandria in the summer of 1897. (Glengarry News 2 & 9 July 1897) Alexandria was his home and place of business for the remainder of his life. He opened a general store in the Glengarry Block on the northeast corner of Main and Kenyon Streets in Alexandria. In March 1900 he moved his business across the street to the Sugarman Block on the southeast corner of Main and Kenyon Streets. This new location remained the home of the Simon general store into the 1950s. For a time in his early years in Alexandria, he lived in the former house of R.R. (Big Rory) McLennan. Successful and well-regarded, Isaac Simon, the “Dean of Alexandria Merchants,” died suddenly in Alexandria, shortly after he had been “sitting out in front of his store chatting with passers by.” The funeral and burial were in Montreal. Jewish. (at least six children, four surviving him) His wife, Ettie Silverstone, like her husband a native of Poland or Germany, died at the Simon home, which at that time was at the corner of Main and Kenyon, Alexandria, on 8 Nov. 1908, predeceasing him by a quarter-century. The children included George Simon, the Alexandria merchant and mayor, and Rose Simon, who married the Cornwall merchant S.W. Jacobs, the son of Moses Jacobs and first cousin of S.W. Jacobs the MP. Isaac Simon’s brother Hiram Simon was a general merchant at Greenfield. (Fraser 1959)

Standard Freeholder 9 June 1933, Glengarry News 16 June 1933 (QF), and classified notice in The Montreal Daily Star 10 June 1933 * wife dies, GN 13 & 20 Nov. 1908 (portrait) * Ostrom 313 * Fraser (1959) 195, 259 * Simons’ of Greenfield, store stock of sold, GN 21 Feb. 1902 * Moses Simon, Isaac’s son, leaves for B.C., GN 29 Jan. 1904, marries, GN 31 July & 7 Aug. 1908 * obituary of Joseph Edmond Lalonde, former employee of I. Simon’s store, GN 10 March 1939