At 6:45 AM, Leonard Cohen was born, the son of Nathan and Masha Cohen at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal.
Leonard Cohen spends his childhood with his parents and older sister, Esther Cohen, in the Westmount family home (pictured) at 599 Belmont Avenue. More information about LC's childhood can be found in the accompanying video.
The impact of his father’s death when Leonard Cohen was nine (Nathan Cohen was 52 when he died) was important to his growth as an artist even though its psychological impact remains ambiguous. First the ambiguous part – it’s an oft repeated anecdote that weeks after his father’s death and burial, Cohen buried one of his father’s bow ties wrapped in a paper containing a few lines of verse. While some have identified that act as an especially significant point in Cohen’s artistic development, Cohen himself accounts it as “just a singular gesture,” going on to note, “I don’t know why I did that.” On the other hand, his father’s death also resulted in Cohen receiving an inheritance large enough to allow him to pursue the afore mentioned artistic development as a poet and novelist as well as to live, to some extent, as he wished without the immediate urgency to earn enough money selling poetry and prose to pay the rent.
Leonard Cohen has his bar mitzvah at 13 at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim. (Note: exact date in 1947 unknown)
Also purchases first guitar. (Note: These events took place in 1949 but exact dates are unknown)
Leonard Cohen reads: For Wilf And His House (1955), Beside The Shepherd (1956), Poem (1955), Lovers (1955), The Sparrows (1955), Warning (1956), Les Vieus (1954), & Elegy (1955) Note: exact release date unknown
Leonard Cohen read his poetry while Maury Kay & members of Kay’s band played at Dunn’s Jazz Parlour, Montreal
