Jay Armin

Teacher, violinist, b Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, 11 Jan 1915 - Toronto, 12 July 2008; BA (Manitoba) 1947, Associate in music PAED (Western Ontario) 1953. His family, named Sawatsky during the period that it was in the Ukraine, emigrated to Canada ca 1922 and settled in Manitoba, where he learned to play the violin in his late teens. He taught strings in high schools in Plum Coulee and Lowe Farm, Man, and in Leamington, Windsor, Stratford, and Toronto, Ont. He was head of the music department at Stratford Central High School 1963-5 and Burnamthorpe Collegiate in Etobicoke, Ont, 1965-75. In Leamington he founded the Mennonite Male Voice Choir in 1948 and conducted it 1950-2. He was also principal and singing teacher at United Mennonite Educational Institute near Leamington. He was an administrator with the NYO in 1962 and 1963 and was president 1970-3 of the Canadian String Teachers Association. In 1975 he became a string consultant for the North York Board of Education and an occasional teacher in Toronto schools. Among his pupils were his children, Otto, Paul, Richard, and Adele, whom he coached as members of the Armin String Quartet, and George Willms and Larry Pojhola. He retired in 1980.