After a few years in Liverpool, England, Sam immigrated to Canada to join his brother Shalom in a business venture trading with Indians and fur trappers in the wilds of Ontario. Sam settled in a small town in Ontario, Brockville, that had barely a handful of Jews in residence. It was natural that he would seek contact with fellow Jews for religious, cultural and social needs. The closest Jewish community of a reasonable size was in Syracuse, New York. It was here that he was introduced to a young lady, recently arrived from the Bessarabian region of Russia, named Devorah Livshin. They were married in June 1914 and settled in Brockville, where their first child, Jenny, who was known to everyone as Zelda, was born in 1915. Zelda was my grandmother.
My great-grandmother, Devorah, or Dora, arrived at Ellis Island in August 1912. According to one of her very unreliable stories, she claimed to have had booked passage on the RMS Titanic, but that her family in Russia persuaded her to wait until the summer. Dora's arrival on the SS Rotterdam is documented in the Ellis Island website, so we know that that's true .
My grandmother was born in March 1915, during a week of intense battles in France in the middle of World War I. In fact one of her first memories was that of an effigy of a decapitated Kaiser Wilhelm being led through the streets on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918. Sam's brother Shalom's wife died of influenza during the terrible pandemic, and the family moved to Montreal to help care of his children. .
The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution establishing National Prohibition opened up new opportunities for the Sack brothers. Sam and his brother learned how to drive a truck and would smuggle whiskey over the border for the famous Bronfman family. While the Bronfman's got richer, the Sacks just got poorer Shrewd businessmen they were not. Eventually, after a falling out with Uncle Shalom, and Dora's to be reunited with her family, they (including in the addition, in 1919, of Brina) relocated to Syracuse.
