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Booze, Glorious Booze! Bill Wolchock and Prohibition in Manitoba

Ed. introduction: This story was originally published to our website in October, 2023, but it resonated so much with readers – who have continually told me they enjoyed it so much, I’ve decided to bring it back to our Home page every once in a while. It has received an astounding number of views since it was first published – over 10,000 – making it the most popular story ever published on this website.
To explain, last September, I began what turned into an unexpectedly amusing dive into a part of our Jewish community’s history that is endlessly fascinating to me when I wrote about a book that was published in October titled “Jukebox Empire: The Mob and the Dark Side of the Amerian Dream.”
That book is about someone by the name of Wilf Rabin, who was originally Wilf Rabinovitch. Rabin was born in Morden, but moved to Chicago as a young man. Eventually he became involved in the juke box business – a business which was ripe from the outset for exploitation by criminals, especially the Mafia, as juke boxes spun out huge amounts of cash that were never reported to tax authorities.
In the course of writing my article about that book, I mentioned several other Jewish characters who preferred to make their money illegally. I also referred to someone whose name was spelled “Bill Wolchuk” in a book about Winnipeg’s North End, but I made the mistake of saying “Wolchuk” wasn’t Jewish.
Boy, did that unleash a torrent of corrections from readers. It was made quite clear to me that Bill “Wolchock” was very much Jewish – and that he was practically a legend in this town.
Then I received a phone call from reader Arnold Rice, who told me that he had in his possession an article from a December 2, 2002 Winnipeg Free Press about Bill Wolchock. Arnold offered to loan me the article, but I declined, saying I could probably find the article on the Winnipeg Pubic Library digital archives.
That I did – and when I scanned the article, which was written by a former Free Press writer by the name of Bill Redekop, I thought to myself: Here’s the perfect article for our Rosh Hashanah issue: It’s much too long to ever fit into any other issue – and the theme will likely resonate with many of our readers who might consider atoning for their sins on Yom Kippur.
In any event, I was able to get in touch with Bill Redekop and I obtained his permission to reprint the article in full (for a fee, of course). It turns out the article forms a chapter in a book written by Redekop in 2002, titled “Crimes of the Century – Manitoba’s Most Notorious True Crimes.”
I told Redekop that I was actually able to find the book on Amazon – much to his amazement, but that it was also available at several branches of the Winnipeg Public Library. Now, it wasn’t easy transcribing that chapter of Redekop’s book, but I thought it might prove delightful reading for many of our readers.
So, here goes: The story of Manitoba’s greatest bootlegger – Bill Wolchock – someone whose success was on a par with that other great Jewish bootlegging family: the Bronfmans. (Wolchock, however, liked bootlegging so much that he turned down the opportunity to go straight, unlike the Bronfmans. Can you just imagine how much the Combined Jewish Appeal could have benefited from a “straight” Bill Wolchock? And what of all the buildings that would have been named after him – and honours he would have received from our Jewish community, if he had only decided to emulate the Bronfmans?)
A pair of employees talking on the floor of the CNR shops in Transcona sounds like an unlikely launch to the biggest bootleg operation in Manitoba history.
It was the early 1920s under Prohibition. Leonard Wolchock, 74 son of bootlegger, Bill Wolchock, tells the story.
“Sonny (nickname), a CNR boilermaker one day came up to my dad, who was a machinist with the railway and asked if he could make a part for him. “What’s it for?” my dad asked. “It’s for a still,” Sonny said. Sonny was making stills for farmers out in the country. My dad said, “Sonny, you want to make a still? I’ll make you a still and we’re not going to fool around!”
What began as a still to make a little booze for themselves and friends during Canada’s Prohibition certain soon turned into something much bigger. The two CNR workers realized there was an insatiable thirst for their product. “I don’t think dad planned to be in the business for a long time. It was just going good,” said Leonard.
“Before you know it, my dad was making big booze. He could knock out almost 1000 gallons a day. He wasn’t one of these Mickey Mouse guys making 10 gallons like in the country, like in Libau and all these places. And as time went by, he became very big.”
Sonny and Wolchock parted ways when Wolchock quit the railway to work full-time at alcohol production, but other partners came on side. Every one of them was the same: blue collar men like Wolchock who made a living with their hands.
During Prohibition in the 1920s, Bill Wolchock ran the biggest bootlegging business in Manitoba. He was producing tens of thousands of gallons of 65% overproof alcohol – 94% pure alcohol.
Later, after his business took off, Wolchock shipped almost exclusively to the United States and mostly to gangsters. He stored illegal in farmers’ barns from the village of Reston in southwestern Manitoba to the village of Tolstoi in southeastern Manitoba. He stored illegal booze in a coal yard that used to be on Osborne Street in Winnipeg; in a large automobile service station in St. Boniface;. and in a St. Boniface lumberyard. He stored booze in a Pritchard Avenue horse barn. Those are just some of the known locations.
At the height of the Great Depression, Leonard estimates his father employed as many as 50 people who would not have been able to put food on the table otherwise. “They all had families, they all had houses, they all could put groceries on the table, thanks to the illegal business,” said Leonard.
Crooks or entrepreneurs?
Wolchock’s story has euded historians all these years. When Wolchock was finally caught and sentenced to five years in prison for income tax evasion, the Second World War was on, and his case didn’t get the publicity it might have otherwise. Besides, the Prohibition era had been over for more than a decade and was old news. Wolchock hadn’t gone straight like the whiskey-making Bronfman family, but had continued to bootleg long after Prohibition had ended.
Leonard Wolchock told the story of his father and a gang of North End bootleggers for the first time for this book. The story was checked against news clippings from the period.
Wolchock owned at least two large stills in Winnipeg. A huge four-story still operation in a building that was in the 1000 block on Logan Avenue, just east of McPhillips Street, that produced up to 400 gallons a day; and a huge still in a building that used to be on Tache Avenue, about 300 meters west of the Provencher Bridge on the river side. He also had smaller stills, often in rural locations and owned portable stills. He moved around from barn to barn outside Winnipeg to elude police.
Wolchock never considered what he was doing wrong, said his son. He thought the governments were wrong. People were going to find a way to drink one way or another.
“My father was a manufacturer. He was filling a niche market. I’m not ashamed of anything he did,” said Leonard.
Even the police chief who lived just five doors down from the Wolchock home at 409 Boyd Avenue would drop in regularly for a friendly drink. The fire commissioner, who lived one street over on College Avenue and three houses down, was another thirsty visitor. Granted, Wolchock ran a little import liquor businesses as a front, which was legal at the time, but Leonard has little doubt the authorities knew what his father’s main source of income was.
“The chief of police knew what my father was doing, and the fire chief was over at our place all the time!” said Leonard.
When the RCMP finally moved in on his father for income tax evasion, it was a measure of the respect for Wolchock that he was never arrested. Police called his dad with the news, said Leonard. “The police chief phoned up and said, ‘Bill, I want you to come down.’ They never sent anyone to get him.”
Booze, glorious booze! Was it more glamorous in Prohibition when it was illegal, or was the illegal liquor trade more harmful by turning otherwise law abiding men into criminals? Was illegal liquor more dangerous to your health (alcohol poisoning), and did concealed drink drinking lead to more serious drinking problems?
While both Canada and the United States brought in Prohibition, there was a great gulf in how Prohibition played out in the two countries. Like a typical Canadian TV drama, Prohibition was more shouting than shooting in Canada. In the United States, it was more shooting. Much more.
Corpses in the gangster booze wars in the US were rarely found with just one or two bullets in them, but four, five, eight. Gangsters adopted the submachine gun invented by John Thompson in the 1920s, variously dubbed the Tommy Gun, Chopper Gat, and Chicago Typewriter. Frank Gusenberg took 22 bullets in the famous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, when Al Capone’s men disguised as police officers lined up seven of George “Bugs” Moran’s men against a warehouse wall and opened fire. One creative reporter at the time wrote the machine guns “belched death.”
These two news stories from a single September day in 1930 on the front page of the Manitoba Free Press are typical:
Detroit, Michigan: “An unidentified man was killed tonight by two assassins, armed with sawed-off shotguns who stepped out of an automobile, fired four charges into the body of their victim and escaped in the auto. It was the third gang killing of the week here.
Elizabeth, New Jersey: “Twelve gunmen waited in ambush within Sunrise Brewery here today, disarming a raiding party of seven dry agents and shot and killed one of the invaders.” One federal agent was found shot eight times. “The gangsters, who apparently had been forewarned of the raid, than escaped.”
There are likely several reasons why Canada didn’t go the gangster route. One, there were more loopholes in Canadian law to get liquor if you wanted. For example, you could get a prescription for “medical” brandy. Two, we have never been as gun-happy as the Americans. And three, our Prohibition didn’t last as long. Prohibition in the U.S. ran from 1920-1933. In Manitoba, Prohibition started in 1916 and ended in 1923.
While Canada didn’t have the gang wars like down south, it did become the feeder system, the exporter, the good neighbour and free trader to the U.S. for liquor. Our Prohibition was winding down just as American Prohibition was getting started in 1920. How fortuitous for an enterprising bootlegger! Manitobans could legally buy liquor from the government and run it across the border into the hands of thirsty Americans.
And being neighbourly, we did. One of the major gateways was the Turtle Mountains in southwestern Manitoba. Booze poured through the hills, said James Ritchie, archivist with the Boissevain and Morton Regional Library.
“A longstanding tradition of smuggling through the Turtle Mountains already existed before Prohibition. People had already been smuggling things across for 50 years or more, so alcohol was just more item of trade,” Richie said.
Minot, North Dakota, of all places, was a gangster haven and was dubbed “Little Chicago” back then. A railway town, it served it as a distribution hub for liquor coming in from Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
The 65-kilometer border of Turtle Mountain Hills is carved with trails every few kilometers so there was no way a border patrol could close down the rum running, said Richie. Many of the trails were simply road allowances where a road hadn’t got built. “If you tried to cross anywhere near Emerson, where it’s so flat, the custom guard could see your car coming from 10 miles away. You can’t do that in the Turtles. The custom guard can’t see you from 500 feet away,” said Ritchie.
Many a poor southwestern Manitoba farm family augmented their income with a little rumrunning. They could buy a dozen bottles every two weeks, the government-set allotment for personal use, and sell it for profit just a few miles away. “Prohibition created an economic opportunity for a lot of families,” said Ritchie.
But it was small trade compared to what the Bronfmans would do. Ezekiel and Mindel Bronfman arrived in Brandon in the late 1800s. The 1901 Canada Census lists them as residents of Brandon, along with their children, including Harry and Sam. It was after the Bronfmans had moved to Saskatchewan that they began selling whiskey to the United States in the 1920s. They exported whiskey by the boxcar-load. They later moved to Brandon briefly, where they continued the rumrunning before finally setting up in Montreal.
Meanwhile, Winnipeg was the bacchanalia of the West prior to Prohibition, as the late popular history writer James H Gray, liked to say. By 1882, Winnipeg had 86 hotels, most of which had had saloons. It also had five breweries, 24 wine and liquor stores (15 of which were on Main Street), and 64 grocery stores selling whiskey. The population was just 16,000.
When government turned off the tap, Manitobans went underground. Private stills sprang up everywhere. Ukrainian farmers were famous for their stills and acted as engineering consultants for the rest of the community. The Ukrainians seemed to have an inborn talent for erecting the contraptions, and some stills made the old country potato whiskey. In Ukrainian settlements like Vida, Sundown, and Tolstoi someone’s child was always assigned the task of changing the pail from under the spigot that caught the slow dripping distilled whiskey.
Even Winnipeg Mayor Ralph Webb, who had an artificial leg and was manager of the Marlborough Hotel, campaigned for more liberal liquor laws. Webb wanted to attract tourism by promoting Winnipeg as “the city of snowballs and highballs.”
The United States was interested in the Canadian experiment with Prohibition and summoned Francis William Russell, president of the Moderation League of Manitoba, a group that opposed Prohibition, to a U.S. Senate committee in Washington in 1926. Russell said Prohibition simply resulted in the proliferation of stills in Manitoba.
Arrests for illegal stills rose from 40 in 1918, two years into Prohibition in Manitoba, to 300 by 1923. “We found that the province of Manitoba was covered with stills,” he said. He claimed Prohibition hadn’t stopped drinking, it had just kicked it out of the public bar and into the home where it wreaked havoc on families.
One of the strangest still stories took place in the RM of Springfield, just east of Winnipeg, when an RCMP officer and a Customs inspector came across a “mystery” shack. Sure enough, they found a still inside and went in and began dismantling the evidence. Unknown to them, the owners arrived, saw what was going on, and set fire to the shack with them in it. The agents escaped the flames in time, but so did the arsonists, and no charges were laid.
Yet historical accounts only mentioned small stills in Manitoba. Some historians concluded there was no major bootlegging out of Winnipeg, just small neighbourhood and homestead stills. The story of Bill Wolchock shows that not to be true.
Winnipeg had two large thirsty markets in its vicinity: the Twin Cities, St. Paul and Minneapolis in Minnesota, and to a lesser extent, Chicago, Illinois.
St. Paul was a nest of gangsters. John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, and Ma Barker and her sons, all took refuge in the city at one time or another. The person who ran the underworld in St. Paul was gangster Isadore “Kid Cann” Blumenfeld.
Chicago, of course, was the gangster capital of North America, controlled by Al Capone.
Capone was just 25 years old when he controlled Chicago. It does seem that Prohibition brought many young people into crime. Another Chicago bootlegger, Hymie Weiss, was gunned down by Capone’s men at the tender age of 28. “Hymie Weiss was not Jewish as his name suggests, but Catholic. His real name was Wajciechowski, and Hymie was a nickname.)
Wolchock and his partners were in their early twenties when they started selling booze. Wolchock shipped pure alcohol to both the Twin Cities and Chicago, but more so to Minnesota. When his son Leonard attended a convention in Minneapolis years later, he was feted by a gangster-looking character who recognized Leonard’s resemblance to his father. The gangster offered to foot his bill.
Wolchock Sr. Also sold to Duluth, Minnesota, and to Alberta distilleries. It’s also likely he was also shipping to Minot, since he was storing alcohol in barns in southwestern Manitoba. His business was selling to other manufacturers who brewed the pure alcohol into liquor. He would get rich from it.
Archibald William Wolchock was born in Minsk, Russia, which is now in Ukraine, in 1898, and came to Winnipeg in 1906 with his parents. He grew up and married and lived at 409 Boyd Avenue, at the corner of Boyd and Salter Street. Wolchock wasn’t a gangster, but he sold to them. Leonard believes his father likely dealt with Kid Cann in the Twin Cities, who ran the illegal liquor business there. “My dad did a lot of business in St. Paul,” said Leonard.
Most of what Leonard knows about his dad’s business was told to him by friends and associates of his dad. His father followed the code of the day and kept his business and home separate. Wolchock had a simple rule for his son if people should ask about his work: he would press his index finger to his lips.
While at Assiniboia Downs a man once approached Leonard and said he knew his dad. This sort of thing happened a lot in Leonard’s life because he resembled his dad.
“The guy was a railroader,” Leonard related. “He said, ‘I knew your dad. We stole a train for him once. I said, ‘Get out of here.’ He said, ‘Listen, your dad said he had a big shipment going to Chicago that he couldn’t deliver by car. I told him, ‘Don’t worry, Bill.’ The man said a crew of four, including a brakeman, pulled an engine and three box cars over at Bergen cut-off and loaded them with alcohol. The alcohol, when it went by rail, was shipped in 45 gallon drums. Somewhere along the track, the railway men switched the cars over to the Soo Line track that went to Chicago. When the payoff came, Wolchock showed up at a secret location and dished out $100 bills like playing cards to the railroaders.
The Bronfman family knew about Wolchock and Wolchock, of course, knew about them. Wolchock was friendly with the Bronfman brother-in-law, Paul Matoff, who ran Bronfman stores in Carduff, Gainsborough, and Bienfait, Saskatchewan where he sold whiskey to American rumrunners. On October 4th, 1922, Matoff took payment from a North Dakota bootlegger. Shortly after a 12-gauge shotgun blast killed him instantly in the railway station. The murder was never solved.
“Matoff told my dad, ‘Bill, your market is in the States,’” said Leonard.
Another time a friend of Wolchock Sr., nicknamed Tubby, took Leonard aside. They bumped into each other at the hospital, where Wolchock was dying. “Tubby said he and his brother had a truck, and one day my dad called and asked if they had a tarp for the truck. They said, yeah, so dad said, “Go to such and such place, back up your truck, don’t get out, don’t look in the mirror, don’t do nothing. Someone will put something in your truck. Then go to this address and do the same. Don’t get out, don’t look in your rearview mirror, don’t do nothing.’ That’s how business was done.”
Wolchock was always a sharp dresser and wore suits and long overcoats. His shirts were specially made by Maurice Rothschild’s in Minneapolis and monogrammed AWW across the pocket. His suits were made in the Abe Palay tailor shop that used to be on Garry Street across from the old Garrick Theater. “My dad wore a fedora because he was bald,” said Leonard. One of Wolchock‘s favourite hangouts was the Russian Steam Baths on Dufferin Avenue, where he went Wednesdays and Saturdays.
When that closed, he and his bootleg pals went to Obee’s Steam Baths on McGregor near Pritchard.
Wolchock had a chain of people with various trades and skills on the payroll and always paid well. For example, he had agreements with several tinsmiths to make him the gallon cans to put the alcohol in when it was being smuggled by car.
One tinsmith told Leonard he used to make $200-$400 per week moonlighting for his father. He earned $30 a week on his day job as a tinsmith.
The gallon cans would be put in jute bags and tossed in the back of a car. The drivers would go across the border at small town points like Tolstoi and Gretna.
Border security back then wasn’t like it is today.
Wolchock couldn’t buy anything in bulk, like the sugar to make the alcohol or the cans to put the liquor into, because it would attract too much attention. So he had deals all over the place. He had a deal with a major local bakery, which used to have a central bakery and stores around Winnipeg, to supply him the sugar. He also had a deal with a bakery out on the West Coast.
Wolchock even had deals with hog farmers to get rid of the mash from alcohol production, which makes an excellent feedstuff for livestock. He had drivers and sales agents. He had a chemist on the payroll.
Wolchock also had two or three henchmen. They carried guns in shoulder holsters and hung around the family, but they were the only business associates that ever came to the house. “My dad lived a normal life. We sat and listened to hockey games, but he had strong-armed men around if there was any trouble,” Leonard recalled.
“My dad wasn’t a run-around,” said Leonard. “He was a family man. He was home for lunch and dinner all the time.”
Wolchock also had a friend highly placed with the federal excise office in Winnipeg. His name cannot be revealed here. He also had a highranking local bank official who helped him, but Leonard also doesn’t know in what way. Wolchock once gave his sister $30,000 to deposit in a bank, but that’s all Leonard knows about the transaction. Later in life, Leonard once asked the banker, a big gruff man who always smoked a cigar, what his arrangement was with his father. “None of your f-ing business,” the banker snapped.
One of the problems for Wolchock was where to put the money. He made piles of money, but he couldn’t deposit it in the bank like everyone else because he couldn’t explain to authorities how he made it. Leonard thinks he stashed it, but doesn’t know where. While the family didn’t live ostentatiously, perhaps because that would have attracted attention, they always had money at a time when most people didn’t. “People were dirt poor. There was no money around,” said Leonard. All four of Wolchock ‘s sons received vehicles when they were old enough to drive and all would later get houses when they left home.
One of Wolchock’s hobbies was collecting racehorses with names like Dark Wonder, Sun Trysts, Let’s Pretend. “My dad had a stable of horses in the early days to just get rid of the money,” said Leonard. Leonard’s mother Rose used to travel to watch the horses race at major racetracks in California and Hastings Park in Vancouver. Other enterprises Wolchock invested in included buying a ladies’ garment factory and the Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver. Leonard believes his father may have been a millionaire by the time he married Rose in 1927. Leonard was born the next year. “My mother’s family was poor. Dad gave them lots of money. He paid for everything. Money was of no consequence.”
His parents regularly took vacations in Hot Springs, Arkansas, which was sort of a racketeer tourist destination at the time, with legal gambling introduced thanks to gangster Meyer Lansky. It also had bath houses with natural hot springs. For some reason, racketeers had a thing for steam baths and hot springs.
Leonard claims – and insists it’s true – that his father would carry around $15,000 on him all the time. He once walked into a car dealership on Portage Avenue where McNaught Motors is now and bought a Cadillac on the spot with cash. “I never saw my dad with a wallet. All he had was a roll of bills with an elastic around it.”
Everything was in cash. For his bootlegging business Wolchock would buy six to eight cars at a time for his rumrunners to transport booze. He bought the cars at two Winnipeg dealerships where he had business relations. The first thing he always did with the new cars was tear out the backseat so he could fit in more alcohol. The stable of cars was parked inside a St. Boniface service garage. The runners had access day and night, mostly night. They sometimes went all the way to destinations like St. Paul, but usually they would just cross the border and unload into a shuttle car driven by an American rumrunner.
Wolchock and his merry men were a crosssection of Manitoba nationalities and religious origins in the 1920s. Wolchock was Jewish, and his cohorts were a mix of Poles, Frenchmen, Scotsmen, Ukrainians, Jews, Mennonite farmers near Steinbach, and Belgians – “a lot of Belgians,” Leonard said.
Leonard doesn’t know exactly how many people it took to run a still, maybe eight for the larger ones. When RCMP busted Wolchock‘s large still on Logan Avenue in 1936, it was the largest still ever found in Manitoba. Its operations extended to all four floors and into the basement, according to the Manitoba Free Press. The building also had an office, two vehicles and living quarters on the third floor. Employees gained entrance to the living quarters through a crawl space. In the living quarters were bunk beds and cooking equipment and books. The building was empty when police raided it. No charges were laid. The building was owned by the city from a tax sale.
Even after Prohibition ended and liquor was legal, it was government-controlled in Canada, so good money could still be made in bootlegging. The Bronfmans had managed the tricky business from illegal bootlegger to legal distiller, but not Wolchock. Like most law breakers, he didn’t quit while he was ahead.
RCMP finally charged Wolchock after customer Howard Gimble of Minneapolis got caught and ratted on him. Gimble was the key witness against Wolchock. The Manitoba Free Press reported that RCMP had tried been trying to nail Wolchock for years before Gimble gave them their break.
The charge was conspiring to defraud the federal government out of income tax moneys on liquor sales. The RCMP claimed he defrauded the government of $125,000, but that that was just a figure plucked out of the air, based on the scale of operation from a single portable still. The jury was locked up for the 10-day trial because of previous suspicions of jury tampering. Gimble told the court Wolchock had a portable still he moved from farm to farm near Winnipeg. RCMP found the still on Paul Demark’s farm in Prairie Grove, now a bedroom community at the end of Ste. Anne’s Road, just past the Winnipeg perimeter. But Gimble told the court Wolchock also used the still on the farm of Abraham Toews near Ste. Anne on Dave Letkeman’s farm just southeast of Steinbach, and in Jay Kehler’s barn one mile west of Steinbach. Court was also shown pictures of warehouses and buildings around Winnipeg, including St. Boniface, used in Wolchock ‘s illegal liquor business. Gimble also alleged Wolchock operated another still on a farm near Stonewall. He said it produced five thousands of gallons of alcohol that summer of 1940.
Wolchock and seven of his partners were convicted, but it took three trials. The first trial was declared a mistrial due to suspicion of jury tampering. In the second trial proceedings were halted when Wolchock required a hernia operation. Finally, he was sent to jail.
He got five years in Stony Mountain Penitentiary, and that was before there was such a thing as parole. It is the most severe sentence ever laid in Manitoba history for a liquor offense. Up to that point in March of 1940, no one had received more than an eight-month sentence for liquor offenses in Manitoba. Also convicted and sentenced were Ned Balakowski, three years; Ben Balakowski, eight months; Frank McGirl, eight months; Jules Mourant, one year. Sam Arborg, Eugene Mourant, and Cass Morant each received suspended sentences.
After serving his time, Wolchock remembered the people who helped him in prison. A prison guard at Stony Mountain named Mr. Anderson was always kind to Wolchock. When Wolchock finished his prison term, Leonard was sent out every Christmas over to the Anderson household to deliver food and presents.
Wolchock Sr. also gave generously to the Salvation Army. “He was a great guy to the Salvation Army because the Sally Ann was very good to him in jail,” said Leonard. His father also saw to it that Leonard took Jewish dishes to the Jewish prisoners in Stony Mountain on the high holidays.
He had money left when he got out of jail but the cost of lawyers for three trials drained a lot of it. Wolchock paid everybody’s legal fees. His wife Rose managed their family of four young boys while he was in prison for five years, and Wolchock, when he got out, bought the home then called Bardal Estate, formerly owned by Winnipeg Funeral Director Neil Bardal. It’s a large clapboard house at the end of Hawthorne Avenue in North Kildonan, along the river on what is now named Kildonan Drive. “There was a fireplace in every bedroom,” Leonard recalled. Wolchock also had money to buy a little company, Canadian Wreckage and Salvage.
But the money wasn’t anything like he was used to and, after a couple years, Wolchock called his old mates together for a meeting. He wanted to make one last batch. Who was in? So the men walled off a portion of the Bardal’s home basement. Two of Wolchock’s close friends were bricklayers – and they constructed a still behind the wall. There were no neighbors on Kildonan Drive at the time, so there was no one to detect the smell from alcohol production. The men made the alcohol, distributed to people they could trust, and dismantled the operation. Then they rode off into the sunset.
“The old man had a bundle of money and he dished out to everyone. Louis went to Sudbury and got a 7-Up franchise; Charlie went to California and bought a liquor store; Benny G bought a trucking company; Benny B moved to Vancouver; Ned went back to work.” There were others involved, but Leonard doesn’t know what became of them. Other partners had already taken their money and invested before the RCMP arrest: Johnny B moved to Vancouver and bought a furniture store; Fred S bought a retail fish store in Winnipeg that still exists today under different owners; another partner went into the hotel business.
And Wolchock? “My dad started Capital Lumber at 92 Higgins Avenue with a partner,” said Leonard. “He didn’t make money like in the past, but he still called the shots and had a successful little business.”
That was Prohibition.
“There was honour among men. Back then, your word was your bond. Nothing was written down. Everything was a handshake,” said Leonard.
“My dad came to this country and he always called it the land of milk and honey. He always said that. He said it after he got out of prison, too. He was never bitter.”
Archibald William Wolchock died in 1976 at age 78.
Features
More Than the Price: What Discount Culture and Screen Printed T-Shirts Tell Us About Identity and Community

Amidst the era where we’re inclined to speak in hashtags and memes, there remains something quietly powerful in the humble T-shirt—specifically the screen-printed t-shirt. Whether a frayed band tee from a 1998 concert or a crisp cotton shirt promoting some issue of the day, the T-shirt is a storyteller. And when these discounted T-shirts become more accessible, they are democratized, stories made more widely available, somehow ironically more valuable to the people wearing them.
In Jewish life, value has never been two-dimensional. Value is ethical. Value is social. And value, every now and then, is found in the rim of a bargain bin, where meaning isn’t lost, but amplified.
The Discount: A Jewish Perspective on Value
Discounts are typically considered in strictly economic terms: “Was it a good deal?” “How much did you save?” But in most Jewish cultures, there is an additional component: mindful spending. Whether through the bal tashchit principle (not wasting resources) or the practice of tzedakah (charity), Jewish religious doctrine will tend to encourage mindful consumption. A discount isn’t always getting more for less—sometimes it’s about transferring value, leaving cash on the neighborhood high street, or making room in your budget for what counts.
If a tiny Jewish-owned T-shirt store sells screen printed shirt specials for a discounted price during a synagogue fundraiser or youth pilgrimage to Israel, that discounted price sticker doesn’t cheapen the product—it maximizes its purpose. It’s not just a cheap wearable memory; it’s meaningful.
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Screen printed T-shirts are not merchandise—they’re message on wheels. Think of them as contemporary mezuzot, but not on the door, on the person. They announce affiliations, values, and sense of humor. They say: “This is who I am.” And in some Jewish communities, they’ve proved a powerful vehicle for unity and visibility.
From “Camp Shalom 2024” tees to “Shabbat Vibes Only” tees, screen printed shirts have become shorthand. For moments of communal joy—or despair—they’ve become uniform and uniforming. To collect money for Jewish causes, mark a bar mitzvah, or spread word about antisemitism, these T-shirts transcend fashion. They become statements.
And when these tees do become available on sale—after the game or through community programs—it’s not an end. It’s a start. The shirt that originally cost $30 and now costs $10 may end up in someone’s hands who couldn’t have bought it otherwise but wears it with the same, or even more, pride.
Discounted Doesn’t Mean Disconnected
There’s a sweet humility in something that’s undervalued—not because it’s less desirable, but because it’s got a second life to live.
Within Jewish mysticism is the principle of tikkun olam—repairing the world. In a small way, each discounted T-shirt that finds its second home brings us one step closer to this reality. A surplus of camp tops reformatted as pajamas at a homeless shelter. Unused Hanukkah tees donated to local teens. Or just, a well-constructed shirt brought into reach for a young person seeking to express himself.
Discount culture, in this case, is not consumer culture—it’s access. It’s about opening up symbols of identity, solidarity, and protest to greater populations. For communities like Winnipeg’s Jewish community—tight-knit, heritage-grounded, and always pushing forward—this involves ensuring that belonging to culture is never out of reach because of a price.
Printing the Future: T-Shirts as Tools for Cultural Continuity
When younger generations discover themselves, especially in diasporic societies, the tools with which they take hold of themselves change. While one may have sported a siddur on the sleeve, another will sport a message on their chest. That does not make it any less sacred—it merely makes it different.
And while a $5 shirt on sale might not feel like a sacred object, if it sparks a conversation about Israel, inspires curiosity about Yiddish, or gives someone the courage to say, “Yes, I’m Jewish,” then it has value far beyond retail.
Screen printed tees are becoming historical documents. They inform us about what people care about, what they are fighting for, what they are laughing at, and what they are daydreaming about. And because of commerce, more people can be a part of that visual conversation.
The Takeaway: Don’t Underestimate the Cotton
The next time you spot a rack of reduced-rate screen-printed T-shirts—whether at a Jewish community center, synagogue gift shop, or Internet site—see past the discount. Consider who produced the shirt, who first wore it, and who will next wear it. Reflect on the message emblazoned across the chest, and the community that wears it.
Because in an age of throwaway messages and fast fashion, all too often it is the simple cotton shirt—worn from use, screen-printed with purpose, and sold cheaply through sale—that does the lion’s share of cultural preservation.
Features
Don’t Ignore antisemitism on the Right

By HENRY SREBRNIK Most of us know that currently most antisemitism, usually masked as “anti-Zionism,” can be found on the left of the political spectrum in Canada and the United States, thanks to the hatred of Israel. The Jewish state is being isolated internationally, and its Jewish supporters harassed and attacked domestically. And since the political left controls much, if not most, of academia, the media, the “human rights” organizations, and other essential components of society, its negative effects are profound.
On the right, we find far more support of Israel. But this doesn’t mean we should ignore an atavistic, somewhat “old-fashioned,” form of antisemitism on the far right, particularly in the U.S. These people support isolationism in foreign policy. The most explosive issue involves Jews. They see neoconservatives – mainly Jews — as imperialists and themselves as defenders of the republic, including even against President Donald Trump himself.
They are obsessed with the idea of Israel as a uniquely evil force in world history and American Jews as a malignant fifth column. Was the recent striking of Iran’s nuclear program by Trump in America’s national interest, or a needless sacrifice for the Israel lobby, they asked?
Most prominent in this group is the talk show commentator Tucker Carlson. In the paranoid version of world events concocted by Carlson and his guests, it is the “neocons” who drive America to war in the Middle East, motivated by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insatiably expansionist ambitions.
The day after Israel commenced Operation Rising Lion against Iran, Carlson suggested the U.S. military was being controlled by Netanyahu. “Earlier this week, unnamed Washington sources expressed concern over Israel’s ability to fend off Iran’s retaliation, which would inevitably lead to Benjamin Netanyahu ordering the American military to step in and fight on his country’s behalf,” Carlson wrote in a newsletter. “We’re not going to imperil American national security, the American economy, or America itself on your behalf,” he continued.
At the conservative Turning Point USA (TPUSA) conference in July, Carlson also claimed that deceased convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was working for Israel’s Mossad. He said it is “extremely obvious” that Epstein “had direct connections to a foreign government.” Carlson went on: “Now, no one’s allowed to say that that foreign government is Israel, because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty.”
At a debate at TPUSA between comedian Dave Smith and conservative intellectual Josh Hammer about U.S. support for Israel, Smith asserted that “The level of Israeli control over our politics is frankly pretty undeniable.” He called Trump “a war criminal who should spend his life in prison.”
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, elected in 2020, initially made headlines for an antisemitic conspiracy theory she shared in 2018 suggesting that deadly California wildfires were caused by alleged Jewish space lasers controlled by the Rothschild family. She has gone on to further infamy. This past June she appeared to suggest in a post on X that former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 over his opposition to Israel’s nuclear program.
“There was once a great President that the American people loved. He opposed Israel’s nuclear program. And then he was assassinated,” Greene posted as she also defended her dissatisfaction with Trump’s strike on Iran.
She and Carlson shocked viewers after praising New York mayoral candidate and socialist Zohran Mamadani for how he ran his campaign after he won the New York mayoralty Democratic Party primary. “That guy was the only person in the New York City mayor’s debate to say he wanted to focus on New York City,” Carlson said on the June 27 episode of “The Tucker Carlson Show,” with Greene as his guest.
While Greene and Carlson strongly disagreed with Mamdani’s vision for the city, they praised him for running a New York City-centered campaign, noting his answer during a Democratic debate where candidates were asked what foreign country they would visit.
“I think most said Israel,” Carlson stated. “And he said, ‘I wouldn’t go anywhere. I’d stay in New York and like, if I want to meet Jewish constituents, I go to their synagogues, their homes or whatever, but I’d be here in New York because that’s what I’m doing. I’m running New York. That’s my job.’” Responded Greene: “Well, he gave the right answer.”
Another prominent antisemite who has condemned Trump’s support of Israel in the “Twelve-Day War” with Iran is Candace Owens. “This was not Trump’s decision; it was Bibi Netanyahu’s decision,” Owens told TV host Piers Morgan. “And that is the reason that he did it. We’re very aware that Israel is dictating our foreign policy, and we’d now like that to stop.” Like Greene, Owens has suggested that AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, was responsible for President Kennedy’s assassination.
Owens worked for a time at the right-wing youth conservative movement Turning Point USA, where she began to gain a following, including Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, who later appeared in public with her before he went on a string of antisemitic rants. She has made and endorsed numerous comments with roots in antisemitic stereotypes, including the blood libel, and her views have been praised by avowed white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Given that the Democratic Party has basically begun to abandon Israel, should the antisemitic right gain control of the Republican Party MAGA movement, Jews in America, and Israel internationally, would be left in a perilous position similar to the 1939-1941 period. That was when the America First isolationists, many of them fascists, and the Communist Party fellow travellers joined hands in refusing to oppose Hitler, following the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact (also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact) between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, signed that August 23, 1939. As we know, it led to the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Features
Two bookstores – two contrasting approaches when it comes to offering readers books by an avowed defender of Israel

By BERNIE BELLAN Recently we were contacted by a reader who asked us whether we would be interested in looking into why it is that McNally Robinson Booksellers does not offer any books written by Douglas Murray.
Who is Douglas Murray? you might ask. We have had several stories about Murray on this website over the years, most recently last November, in a story written originally for the Canadian Jewish News titled: “Douglas Murray: A Champion of Israel.”
To give you a better idea who Murray is, here is what Wikipedia has to say about him: “Douglas Murray (born 16 July 1979[)is a British neoconservative political commentator, cultural critic, author, and journalist. He is currently an associate editor of the conservative British political and cultural magazine The Spectator, and has been a regular contributor to The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, the Daily Mail, New York Post, National Review, The Free Press, and UnHerd.
“His books include Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (2006), The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017), The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (2019), The War on the West (2022), and On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West (2025).
“Murray was the associate director of the Henry Jackson Society, a neoconservative think tank, from 2011 to 2018.
“Murray is a critic of current immigration into Europe and of Islam. He became more well-known internationally due to his advocacy for Israel after the October 7 attacks in 2023.
“Murray has been praised by conservatives and criticized by others. Articles in the academic journals Ethnic and Racial Studies and National Identities associate his views with Islamophobia nd he has been described as promoting far-right ideas such as the Eurabia, Great Replacement, and Cultural Marxism conspiracy theories.”
Murray’s most recent book, as mentioned above, is On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West.
Here is the description of the book you can find on Amazon:
“In his travels through Israel and Gaza, #1 International Bestselling author Douglas Murray has seen the best and the worst humanity has to offer, and he has no trouble choosing a side.
“Murray is not Jewish and before October 7, he had never lived in Israel. However, he objects to being lied to, and Israel has been on the receiving end of the biggest, deepest, longest lies in history.
“Israel’s commitment to fundamental Western values—capitalism, individual rights, democracy, and reason—has made it a beacon of progress in a region dominated by authoritarianism and extremism. Israel’s principles vividly contrast with the ideology of Hamas, which openly proclaims its love of death over life. With incisive moral clarity, On Democracies and Death Cults exposes how the campus left and international establishment confuse this conflict by:
- “Calling on Israel for restraint and proportionality, while Hamas commits genocide.
- “Slandering Israelis as white colonialists, while only a third of Israelis are Jews of European ancestry.
- “Framing the conflict as oppressor vs. oppressed, when it is really between a thriving multi-ethnic democracy and a death cult bent on its annihilation.
“Drawing from intensive on-the-ground reporting in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon, Douglas Murray places the latest violence in its proper historical context. He takes readers on a harrowing journey through the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, piecing together the exclusive accounts from victims, survivors, and even the terrorists responsible for the atrocities. If left unchecked, misplaced sympathy could embolden forces that seek to undermine not only Israel, but all of Western civilization.”
Given that Douglas Murray is a staunch defender of Israel, what does it say about McNally Robinson Booksellers that they refuse to carry any of the five books that Murray has written to date?
We asked a spokesperson for McNally Robinson whether anyone wished to comment as to why it is that the store will not carry any of Murray’s books, but we were told that McNally Robinson has no comment to make.
As a result, we headed down to the store to take a look for ourselves at the selection of titles that McNally Robinson has on display about Israel and Palestine and that can be found under the heading “Middle East Issues.”
Here are the titles we were able to see in the store:
The Time Beneath the Concrete – Palestine between Camp and Colony; I Shall Not Hate; Jews Don’t Count; Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza (by Peter Beinart); Hope Without Hope; The Gardener of Lashkar Gah; States Without People; Hamas – From Resistance to Regime; The State of Israel vs. The Jews; Israel/Palestine; Banging on the Walls of the Tank; Perfect Victims; Genocide Bad; The Wall Between; The Palestine Laboratory; Road to October 7; Hamas; The World After Gaza; Palestine in a World on Fire; Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic; Loot – How Israel Stole Palestinian Property.
As well, McNally Robinson has a great many other books about Israel and Palestine that are available to order online, including (but not limited to):
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine – A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917-2017; Genocide Bad; A Genocide Foretold; The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine; Recognizing the Stranger (On Palestine and Narrative): The Question of Palestine; October 7th – Searching for the Humanitarian Middle
In contrast with McNally Robinson’s approach to the subject of Israel and Palestine, Indigo Books offers books that are more sympathetic to Israel. Given that Heather Reisman is the owner of Indigo Books and has demonstrated support for Israel, particularly through a foundation she and her husband, Gerald Schwartz, established, known as the HESEG Foundation, which provides scholarships for “lone soldiers” serving in the Israel Defence Forces, it should come as no surprise that Indigo Books offers books that contain a more pro-Israel perspective – in contrast with McNally Robinson.
As well, from time to time, Heather Reisman adds the title “Heather’s Pick” to a particular book, which means that book is “specifically recommended by her and comes with a money-back guarantee,” according to the article about her on Wikipedia.
Here are titles that were located on shelves under the heading “World History” that we saw on display at the Indigo Books location on Empress:
The Prime Ministers – An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (a “Heather’s Pick”); Mossad; A Child in Palestine; Understanding Palestine; Enemies and Neighbors; Palestine 1936 – The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict; The Hundred Years War for Palestine; The Wall; Israel – Palestine; Orientalism (by Edward Said); The Question of Palestine; Ghosts of a Holy War; The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine; A Half Century of Occupation; Can We Talk About Israel?; Deluge; A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy; Israel (by Noa Tishby); The Lemon Tree; Thirteen Days in September: The Dramatic Story of the Struggle for Peace (story of Begin and Sadat at Camp David); Son of Hamas; Israel – A Concise History of a Nation Reborn (a “Heather’s Pick”); Israel and Civilization; Terror Tunnels (by Alan Dershowitz); Israel – A History (by Martin Gilbert); Impossible Takes Longer; Israel Alone; Ally (by Michael Oren); On Being Jewish Now; The Story of the Jews; Antisemitism in America; The World After Gaza; The War on the West (also by Douglas Murray).
As well, Indigo Book has a lengthy list of other titles that relate to the subjects of Israel and Palestine and that can be ordered online.
We might also note that the Douglas Murray book, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West, was not only for sale at the Indigo Books location on Empress, it was showcased when we were there (July 24).
Readers should bear in mind though that both McNally Robinson Booksellers and Indigo Books are privately owned and it is the prerogative of the owners to choose which books they will sell.