Stills in the Hills: Moonshine Memories from Around Canada’s First Polish Kashub Community

Abstract

Abstract “Stills in the Hills” documents the long tradition of imbibing among the notoriously self-sufficient Polish-Kashub and Galician settlers of Renfrew County, Ontario, Canada. It reaches back to the regions the settlers left—Prussian-occupied Pomerania and Austrian-occupied Galicia—and uses moonshine as a lens to examine the transnational origins of production and consumption. Using printed sources and local historical memory, this study peers into the transfer of the practice to Canada as well as subversive efforts of locals, in the community and the ethnoscape, to avoid the long arm of the law. Additionally, it unpacks several of the problems created, or exacerbated, by alcohol in the ethnic community.