A Very Capable Life

Zarah Petri came to Canada from Hungary in the 1920s. At 16, she lost her job in a Hamilton knitting mill because she got married. During Prohibition, the teen bride made up for lost income by bootlegging her home-made pear liquor. She boosts her earnings further by growing and selling illegal poppy seeds to the ethnic bakery trade. During World War II, when meat is rationed, she sells freshly butchered hogs from the trunk of her car to grateful Italians and Portuguese. For Zarah, anything not forbidden by the Ten Commandments is legitimate. Her memoir has been written in the first person by her son, John.