In 1919, Prohibition was passed. For Prohibition supporters, it was an enormous victory, but for men like my great-grandfather, George Largay, it was an enormous loss. George Largay was a graduate of the National Brewer's Academy in New York, with a Master's degree in Brewing. He started off in Canada, with jobs in Montreal working for Molsen Brewing Company, and later at a brewery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Then came the explosion. It was the time of World War One. The explosion was a collision between a munitions ship and a cargo ship. It was the biggest explosion in the world until the Atomic bomb. That explosion not only devastated the brewery, but most of my great-grandparent's house. Here is my Great-uncle Roland Largay's recollection of what happened after that.
Katie Dean
My first sister Grace had been born two days before the explosion. At the time of the explosion, my mother was sitting in bed with the baby. The midwife heard the blast in the distance and quickly threw a thick comforter over my mother and Grace. Seconds later all of the windows exploded and the grass went flying. Glass was embedded in the wall behind my mother, and the comforter was shredded, but my mother and Grace were uninjured. The same was true for my father. He was working on the third floor of the brewery at the time of the explosion. He was knocked down two flights of stairs, but was unharmed. This incident was the reason my family moved away to Hudson, New York.
At the time that Prohibition was declared, my father had a wife and seven children. So in order to support them, my father got a job as a brewmaster of the Evans Brewing Co., in Hudson. Then Prohibition was declared, and the sale of alcohol was illegal. He then was the official brewmaster for most of the Elks Clubs in upstate New York and Detroit. What he was to do was go to these various Elks clubs and set up miniature breweries. He used to go from one to another putting in the brews. He wasn't selling it. He wasn't what they call a rum-runner or anything. He was just putting through the brews. And whatever the Elks Club wanted to do with it, well that was their problem.
These were the days that they would make bath tub gin. This was also the time when Al Capone and the Mafia started getting big. While the U.S. had banned alcohol, it was still legal in Canada. The organized crime groups would smuggle gin into the States through Canada and whiskey from England.
In 1932, President Roosevelt was elected. My father foresaw that Prohibition was going to be repealed by Congress as the Democrats had promised, so he bought two abandoned breweries; one in Amsterdam New York, and the other in Waterbury, Connecticut. An so when it was repealed, he had everything cleaned and ready to operate and he was able to process some of the first legal brews after Prohibition. Red Fox Ale, the name of his beer, became very large among the small breweries. When World War Two came around, Largay Brewing Company sold most of its output to the U.S. Armed Forces that were stationed all around the world. I know this first hand because I was stationed in Africa at the time and we, the Navy, were having a picnic and it was Red Fox Ale that was served.
At the end of World War Two, my father could tell that the days of small brewing companies were numbered. And since he had such up-to-date equipment because of the large part he played in supplying the Armed Forces, he was able to sell everything to a large brewing company by the name of Ropert. And because of the advanced brewing equipment, he was able to get a premium price. Ropert even bought the name Red Fox Ale, and for a long time, they continued to make it.
Roland Largay
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