Geddy Lee — music (rush) with roots in the Russian Empire
Geddy Lee was born Gary Lee Weinrib on 29 July 1953 in Willowdale, Toronto, the son of Morris Weinrib, born Moshe Meir Weinrib (1920-1965), and Mary Weinrib, born Malka Rubinstein (1925-2021), Polish Jews who had come to Canada after the Second World War. His parents were born in independent Poland; his connection to the Russian Empire runs through the generation before them.
His father came from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski. His mother was born in Warsaw, the daughter of Gershon Rubinstein, a butcher, and Rose Rubinstein, a dressmaker, and at about five moved with her family to her father's hometown, Wierzbnik, the Jewish quarter of the industrial town of Starachowice. Both Ostrowiec and Wierzbnik lay in the Radom Governorate of Congress Poland, which belonged to the Russian Empire until the First World War, and it was there that his grandparents' generation was born and lived.
His parents survived the Holocaust. They met as teenagers in the forced-labour camp at Starachowice, were later held at Auschwitz, and were reunited after liberation in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp. They married and emigrated to Toronto. His father died in 1965, and his mother supported their three children. Her accented pronunciation of Gary as Geddy gave him the name he later adopted legally.
In 1968 he joined Rush, a Toronto band formed that year by the guitarist Alex Lifeson and the drummer John Rutsey, replacing its first bassist, Jeff Jones. In 1974 Neil Peart took over on drums and became the band's lyricist, and the trio of Lee, Lifeson and Peart remained unchanged until 2015. Lee sang lead and played bass and keyboards on albums including 2112 (1976) and Moving Pictures (1981), and Rush became one of the best-selling rock bands in the United States, with some 27 million albums sold there.
Rush entered the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. Its three members were appointed Officers of the Order of Canada in 1996 and received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award in 2012. Peart died in 2020. In October 2025 Lee and Lifeson announced their first tour together in a decade, Fifty Something, with the drummer Anika Nilles; it opened at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles on 7 June 2026.
"His parents, Polish-born Holocaust survivors, married after liberation and emigrated to Toronto, where he was born in 1953."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Wierzbnik (Starachowice) and Ostrowiec, Radom Governorate, Congress Poland (now Poland)
His mother's father, Gershon Rubinstein, came from Wierzbnik, in the Radom Governorate of Congress Poland, part of the Russian Empire until the First World War; his father came from Ostrowiec in the same governorate. His parents themselves were born in independent Poland, in 1920 and 1925.
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Wierzbnik (Starachowice) and Ostrowiec, Radom Governorate, Congress Poland (now Poland). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"My name is Geddy because of how my mother said Gary. That's all of my family history in one word."