#moonshining operation

Welland County jail records belie the accuracy of such newspaper accounts. In the decades under consideration here, Niagara residents of British descent outnumbered foreigners among those charged with alcohol-related crimes. Foreigners were over-represented among those arrested for alcohol-related offences in 1920, while Niagara residents of British descent were under-represented, a situation that reflects the suspicion of foreigners that prevailed as a result of the First World War and the labour unrest that followed.

By 1930, however, despite an increase in the proportion of foreign-born residents in Welland County, their presence among those arrested for alcohol-related crimes declined significantly.  They made up only sixteen percent of those in this category. The proportion of British residents arrested for drunkenness and related crimes grew appreciably to seventy-two percent of the total. According to the chiefs of police of Crowland and Port Colborne, an important reason for this change was that the decriminalization of brewing and winemaking for home consumption made it difficult to catch those who sold home-made wine and beer without a licence, a category that included most foreign bootleggers.

There were a number of reasons in addition to racism that drew the attention of Niagara’s dominant groups to immigrant drinking and bootlegging specifically. Because their crowded quarters were not ideal for relaxation, many immigrant men spent their leisure time in public places. They loitered on public sidewalks, finding refuge in railway stations in the wintertime. In good weather on holidays and weekends, they moved from urban sidewalks to the “bush.” They were visible in these locations and, hence, vulnerable to arrest. In June 1919, for example, “a lot of foreigners” were “drinking wine and carousing” in the bush near Stamford. While most escaped when the opp came upon them, the four who were caught faced the choice of paying steep fines or serving three months in jail.

Ontario’s early twentieth-century liquor laws also helped to criminalize immigrant alcohol consumption. Both Ontario’s Temperance Act (1916–27) and the Liquor Control Act (from 1927) permitted the possession of liquor in a private residence. Boarding houses with more than three boarders, of the type that housed a great many foreign immigrants, however, did not qualify as private residences. Both boarding-house keepers and residents were thus subject to prosecution for behaviour deemed perfectly legal for people who could afford to live in single-family homes. 

While foreign immigrants were not alone in running and living in boarding houses, the attention of the press and public officials, including liquor inspectors, focused largely on immigrant boarding houses, which least resembled Anglo-Canadian households. As noted above, many foreign migrants, married or single, came to Canada on their own. The boarding houses they inhabited were frequently all-male establishments. In the eyes of English Canadian observers, therefore, they lacked the stabilizing, moral influence of women. Because of the desire of the sojourners to live as inexpensively as possible, even boarding houses run by immigrant couples were often very crowded. One reason that women joined their partners sojourning in Canada was that they hoped to increase household income by keeping boarders. To do so, however, they placed as many beds as possible in every room, at times renting the same bed to two men who worked and slept in shifts. Many boarding-house keepers – men and women – sold alcohol, just as they provided food for their boarders. Because their economic prospects were limited, boarding-house keepers, as well as other petty entrepreneurs in Niagara’s immigrant communities, such as grocers and operators of ice-cream parlours, billiard halls and even gas stations, also engaged in more than one type of enterprise, including bootlegging. Paying hefty fines on occasion was less expensive than purchasing a licence to sell liquor. Despite the involvement in bootlegging of some career criminals, such as John Trott, Police murderers, and the sensational stories about foreigners in Canada collaborating with American gangsters who drove fast cars and carried automatic weapons, immigrant bootlegging in Niagara was primarily on a modest scale. Even so, it was lucrative. In 1916, for example, when a large scale police raid netted twenty-three blind-pig operators, most were fined, but none had any difficulty paying the $300 fine on the spot.

The possibility of profiting from the sale of alcohol was especially appealing in a context where other economic prospects of immigrants were limited. Not surprisingly, therefore, the recollections of immigrants who came to Niagara before 1930 and their children offer a very different perspective on immigrant bootlegging than the views of English Canadian newspapers, temperance advocates, and officials. Foreigners recognized that offering such services was a way to increase their income with very little expense. Indeed, according to a Hungarian sojourner, they regularly had to sell liquor if they wanted to succeed during the interwar years. The trade-off was that they frequently had to put up with their boarders’ drunken behaviour.

The innocuous name given by foreigners to establishments engaged in bootlegging – social clubs – indicated the wider acceptance of this practice among immigrants than within the host society and may also have been intended to hide what was happening in these businesses. Some bootleggers bought by the gallon and sold by the glass. Others made the wine and beer that they sold. Their chief appeal for customers was that their prices were lower and their hours of operation were longer than those of hotels. In the 1920s, hotels were closed during the dinner hours, just when the day shift was ending for workers. Some social clubs enhanced their appeal by offering home-cooked food as well.

Peter Santone, a barber and Crowland township councillor, endowed immigrant bootlegging with epic proportions. No doubt exaggerating for effect, he recalled with amusement that Charlie Jary, a Hungarian immigrant, “sold more wine than the liquor store.” According to Santone, most of the Italian businesses in Welland “did a little bootlegging on the side.’ The practices of small business owners from other ethnic groups were similar, and bootleggers and their clients were not necessarily of the same ethnic origin. In the 1930s, when Adam Farioli was working at the Electro-Metallurgical plant in Welland, he and his friends from work patronized Markoff’s gas station on King Street. Markoff was also a bootlegger. “Going to Markoff’s,” he remembers fondly, “was a ritual.” After they cashed their paycheques on Thursday nights, Farioli and his friends stayed around for drinks. Rather than discrediting them, the engagement of ethnic businessmen in such lucrative illegal activities enhanced their standing in their communities. Speaking of Tony Nero, for instance, Santone recalls: “He treated the Italians good.” He carried many people through the lean times when he gave them credit. “He sold groceries in the front, used to bootleg in the back.”

The recollections of an immigrant family from Bologna provide us with the clearest illustration of bootlegging driven by a sense of mutualism among working-class immigrants. When the family of seven arrived in Welland, the father had difficulty finding work, so the family rented a house that was not much more than a shack. A mere two months later, an explosion destroyed the house and killed the father. Families from the same region of Italy came to the aid of the widow and her children. For a while, five of the children were taken in by different households of paesani, while they helped the mother find an apartment that could accommodate the entire family. The mother then took in two boarders, and her paesani helped her to set up a social club. She made wine, and, as her daughter recalled in the 1980s, “a few friends would come and drink it. That way she made a little money because she was desperate to.” This is how the family survived until the children were old enough to go out to work.