Moses Znaimer

Znaimer was born to Jewish parents (Aron Znaimer and Chaya Znaimer née Epelsweig) from Latvia and Poland, who had fled the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and relocated to Kulob in the Soviet republic of Tajikistan. Following the war, his family lived in a displaced persons camp in Germany, arriving in Halifax before ultimately ending up in Montreal in 1948 where they settled in a third-floor flat on Montréal’s storied Saint Urbain Street.

In his youth, Znaimer attended United Talmud Torah and then Herzliah High School in the United Talmud Torahs of Montreal private school system, where he developed a reputation for the quality of his voice while performing Friday services. He has remarked that the young women flocking to hear him sing the prayers gave him a taste of what it is like to have groupies.

He graduated from McGill University in Montreal with a B.A. in philosophy and politics, and from Harvard University with an M.A. in government in the mid-1960s.

In 2005, Znaimer received a Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Canada's highest honour in the performing arts, for his lifetime contributions to broadcasting. In 2006, he was made a member of the Order of Ontario.

Moses has been in a relationship with Marilyn Lightstone since they met at McGill University in the early 1960s. They never had children.

A collector of vintage television sets, including the set David Sarnoff presented at the 1939 World's Fair, Znaimer's MZTV Museum of Television is located at The ZoomerPlex (ZoomerMedia building), in the Liberty Village area of Toronto.