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September/October 1998 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor's Notebook Feature: Worm-picking Our home and native tongue À la carte

"American people want go fish but they no like pay for worms," one Greek woman says as she straps on her equipment, neatly summarizing the economics of the industry. It is the most extensive interview any of the pickers grants all evening. A worm truck is the antithesis of Cheers — a place where nobody knows your name.

"Could I speak to you at home about this work?" she is asked.

"I forgot my phone number," the worm picker replies.

"I come to Canada, I can't find a job, I don't speak English, I don't go in a store, rob people, kill people, what am I going to do?" George Alafogiannis shrugs. "Wash dishes or pick worms."

We're in the office of OK Bait Ltd. in Toronto's west-end rust belt, where the Alafogiannis family maintains a chilled warehouse capable of interning more than two million worms for shipment to the United States. Nearly 30 years ago, Alafogiannis, a cook on a Greek cargo ship, chose worms over washing-up and never looked back. He describes OK Bait as a medium-sized operation and rejects as calumny the rumour that the men at the anterior end of the business are filthy rich.

"I see on TV in Ottawa they did a documentary that said you make a million dollars picking worms," he says. "I call the guy and I tell him, 'I give you a bucket. I take you out. You see if you make a million dollars picking worms.'"

The Alafogiannis family tries to run the most circumspect operation possible in a fiercely competitive agribusiness that has no labour unions, trade associations, occupational health and safety standards, workers' compensation, sales licences or government inspectors. In dry summers, as 1998 was shaping up to be in early June, prices rise sharply and well-managed inventories can be sold at handsome profits. In rain-soaked years, supply drowns demand.

There are frequent crises. A couple of years ago, George says, he lost six million worms to some mysterious affliction that killed them soon after picking. He blames "acid rain, or they give medicine for cows." It is a typical lament in a pessimistic business. Among the men and women of worms, seldom is heard an un-discouraging word.

"We're completely dependent on the weather," his brother Nick agrees. "To find worms, we have to follow the rain, wherever it is — Windsor, Walkerton, Barrie, Kingston — we just go. No worms, no money. No money, no funny."

"We keep track of Environment Canada," John says. "They're wrong 50 percent of the time. We do just as well ourselves, looking out the window."

Nick Alafogiannis is a trained electrician. John is studying accounting. Neither expects to remain forever in his father's trade. They will turn it over to the Southeast Asians — Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians — who already make up the vast (and very silent) majority of the pickers and drivers in this physically gruelling and least ennobling of outdoor trades.

George's boys started at the bottom — bent over in a farmer's field, plucking as fast as they could. Now John manages the distribution network and Nick picks up the pickers at dusk and drives them to wherever the worms are and catches an hour or two of sleep while they labour.

"What technological changes have you seen in recent years?" I ask Nick.

"Rechargeable batteries," he replies.

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