Cigar Weekly

Sid Kling had many passions, two especially: He loved teaching and Florida. He merged these passions at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute when, in addition to teaching courses in urban studies and geography, he became an authority in retirement studies. He had studied with Max Kaplan, renowned director of leisure studies at the University of South Florida, and became a Canadian pioneer in this field.

At Ryerson, Sid developed and taught a course on vacationing and retiring in Florida. It became one of the most popular evening courses because of his witty illustrations and hard-nosed advice about the pitfalls of investing in Florida. The course's popularity led him to publish two bestselling books on the subject, which also appeared in French.

Co-operatives were another of Sid's passions, in particular co-operative housing as a solution to constant rent inflation before rent control in Toronto. He became a consulted authority on the subject and lived in and helped to run one of the best such co-op apartments.

Sidney, born near the "Ward," the predominantly Jewish area of pre-First World War Toronto, was the son of immigrants from Galicia, which is now part of Poland. His father, Oscar, had learned watchmaking in London, and in Toronto he and his wife, Anna, opened a jewellery store at Yonge and Gerrard streets.

Sid graduated from Oakwood Collegiate in 1941 and enlisted. After military service during the Second World War, where he had done some mapping, he decided to attend the University of Toronto and became a geographer. As part of his graduate studies, Sid spent more than a year in the early 1950s doing research and studying in Havana at the same university attended then by the young Fidel Castro. It was this sojourn in Cuba that resulted in Sid's lifelong attraction to the Caribbean and his love of Cuban cigars. Students and colleagues used to joke that you could find Prof. Kling by following the cigar smoke.

After his father's passing, Sid tried to manage the jewellery store, then converted it into a camera store, photography and cameras being another of his interests. However, his real talent was teaching. He first taught at the University of Toronto in Scarborough, then joined the new geography department at Ryerson.

A multifaceted man, Sid learned - during one of his longer stays in Florida - how to build and play the dulcimer, and he was also a skillful gourmet cook. Most of all, he was always good company. Married a second time in 1974, he leaves behind Elvereene, his wife and best friend, his son Waynne, four grandchildren and generations of appreciative students.