William Shatner — actor with roots in the Russian Empire
William Shatner was born in Notre-Dame-de-Grace, Montreal, in March 1931, to Joseph Shatner, a clothing manufacturer, and Ann Garmaise. All four of his grandparents were Jewish immigrants from settlements in Ukraine and Lithuania, territory divided at the time between the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary; they reached Montreal around the turn of the twentieth century and joined the Jewish immigrant community there. The family name was Schattner, and his grandfather Wolf anglicised the spelling.
He took a commerce degree at McGill in 1952 and went into theatre rather than the family business, working at the Stratford Festival, making his Broadway debut in Marlowe's Tamburlaine in 1956, and appearing in the live American television drama of the period. He was cast as Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek in 1966. The series ran three seasons, was cancelled, and then turned into one of the most durable properties in entertainment, carrying him through seven feature films and a career that never afterwards required him to look for work.
What kept him interesting was a willingness, unusual among actors of his standing, to be in on the joke. He led T. J. Hooker through the 1980s, recorded spoken-word albums that began as camp and ended as something critics took seriously, hosted and narrated widely, and then won Emmy awards for Denny Crane, the shameless attorney he played on The Practice and Boston Legal, along with a Golden Globe. He was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2019.
In October 2021, aged ninety, he flew aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-18 and became the oldest person to go to space. He was not, as is often reported, the first civilian to do so. He described the experience afterwards not as exhilaration but as grief - the blackness above and the fragility below - and said the strongest feeling he came back with was of a funeral.
His grandfather Wolf Schattner anglicised the family name after the family reached Montreal.
"Grandparents emigrated from Ukraine and Lithuania to Montreal around 1900"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Ukraine / Lithuania
He grew up in the Jewish immigrant community of Notre-Dame-de-Grace in Montreal, took a commerce degree at McGill, and went into the theatre instead of his father's clothing business.
All four grandparents were Jewish immigrants from settlements in Ukraine and Lithuania, then divided between the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary, who settled in Montreal around 1900. The family name was Schattner; his grandfather Wolf anglicised it.
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Ukraine / Lithuania. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.