The Growth of a Family Empire

When Edgar Bronfman was a little boy, his father built a bicycle path behind the wall that surrounded the Bronfman estate rn Montreal. That way Edgar could ride in complete safety from any danger of kidnapers. It was a few years after the Lindbergh kidnaping, and Sam Bronfman was a man who liked to anticipate trouble and take precautions. That was a trait he had inherited from his father, Yechiel, who had been a prosperous miller in Bessarabia in Eastern Europe. When Yechiel went to Montreal in 1889 in flight from Russian antiSemitism, he booked passage not only for his wife and three children, but also for a young rabbi to guard his children's Jewish faith in the New World.

Yechiel went to Western Canada, started dealing in real estate and bought a hotel. Sam soon acquired a hotel of his own, but the coming of Prohibition in Canada in 1916 forced him to close the bar. He also saw that the law permitted alcohol sales across provincial borders. So, although it is just a coincidence that bronfen is the Yiddish word for whisky, the young Bronfman brothers started a wholesale mail-order liquor business. For a time it flourished, but as the Canadian authorities gradually took over all retail liquor sales, the Bronfmans began looking south.

When Prohibition hit the U.S. in 1919, it looked as if the brothers Bronfman had no place left to turn and were out of business. Not for long. They quickly developed a brisk trade with U.S. bootleggers, and Sam snapped up a foundering Canadian competitor called Joseph E. Seagram & Sons. Seagram's represented quality, and even in the days of bathtub gin, Sam always approved of quality. By the end of the '20s, more than 1 million gallons a year of Canadian whisky came illicitly into the U.S., and a sizable proportion of it came from Seagram's. Until his death in 1971, Sam insisted that there was never a direct funnel between himself and speakeasies in the U.S., and he once dismissed the question by observing, "I never went on the other side of the border to count the empty Seagram bottles."

Sam, having been taught by the rabbi from Bessarabia, gave lavishly to charity and urged his children to do the same. The family gave a $1 million wing to the Israel Museum, and still donates at least another $1 million annually to various worthy institutions. For the making of more money he also relied on his children, particularly his oldest son. Scrappy and assertive, Edgar went south to Williams College in Massachusetts, but after three indifferent years he transferred to Montreal's McGill University to get his B. A. degree.

Starting as manager of Canadian operations, he moved up in 1957 to become president of Seagram's U.S. subsidiary, which controlled 90% of the company's business. In the same year, his younger brother Charles took over the parent Canadian company. A network of trusts assures the continued control by Sam's children, including Minda, 50, who is married to French Investment Banker Alain de Gunzburg, and Phyllis, 48, an architect. The empire's vast holdings now include interests in real estate, oil and natural gas. The children's mother, Saidye, continues to live in the family compound near Montreal and still consults with Edgar on all important business questions, for the business remains in many ways a family affair. Security once again is tight along the brick walls, but the bicycle path is gone.

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