Though he’s 82 and from a traditional Jewish family, Max Iland never had a bar mitzvah – until last year.

A child survivor of the Holocaust, Iland was in hiding with Belgian farmers when the time to read his portion came and went. Then, after the war, with his mother, Itka, and little brother, Kopel, dead, it was not something that was at the top of his agenda, or that of his father, Avram, who survived.

But in May 2014, with hundreds of youngsters participating in the March of the Living (MoL) looking on, Iland said the blessings and read his Torah portion in a moving ceremony at the top of Masada, in Israel.

Then again last month, back in his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Iland read another portion before family and friends at the Beth Jacob Synagogue.

For Iland, each bar mitzvah ceremony carried special meaning, both for himself and as an act of loving kindness – chesed – for Kopel.

Iland still gets choked up and puts a conversation on pause when he thinks about his brother, who was only three when he and their parents were deported to Auschwitz.

“My brother has been part of me ever since the war,” said Iland, in a telephone interview from his home outside Sault Ste. Marie. “I know he didn’t have a bar mitzvah. I thought he should have a bar mitzvah. I thought I’d do it for him and for myself. At Masada, the bar mitzvah was for my brother. In Sault Ste. Marie, it was for me.”

At Masada, he was surrounded by young people eager to share in the life cycle event with the man they had come to respect.

Eli Rubenstein, spiritual leader of Habonim Congregation and of the MoL, officiated at both services.

The youngsters participating in MoL were in awe of Iland, said Rubenstein. And even in his hometown, many non-Jews attended the bar mitzvah, paying respect to one of the city’s beloved school teachers, he added.

If Iland’s bar mitzvah story is atypical of others of his generation, his postwar life is likewise unique.

After being hidden in attics, basements and haylofts by Paul and Lena Pirotte, he was reunited with his father.

They moved back to the Liege area  of Belgium. Iland trained to be a tailor, but after serving two years as a commando in the Belgian armed forces, he moved to Canada, where the wide open spaces beckoned.

After working in construction in Montreal for one year and then on a tobacco farm near Tilsonburg, Ont., Iland moved to a logging camp near Sault Ste. Marie. He worked for 15 years as a logger. “It was the kind of life that I liked,” he said.

He eventually enrolled in Trent University as a mature student, earning a teaching certificate. He went to work in the Soo as a high school special education teacher. He held that job for 25 years until he retired.

His love of the outdoors never waned. He still canoes, cross-country skis and chops his own firewood.

He heats his home outside of town with a wood furnace that he personally feeds several times a day, with wood he has prepared from his 70-acre plot of land. It takes 25 cords of wood each winter to heat his home, he said. (A cord is a pile four feet high, eight feet long, generally with an average piece length of 16 inches.)

For years, while enjoying the outdoor life of northern Ontario, Iland had not talked much about his wartime experiences. But as he got older, he wanted to return to Europe to see the place where his family had been killed.

He’s been on the March of the Living twice. He enjoys talking to the kids, who he said are finding it hard to deal with the difficulties of being Jewish. Part of his self-imposed mission was to build up their confidence in dealing with bullies and reinforce their pride in being Jewish, he said.