Grade 10 History – Roaring 20s

Prohibition in Canada

Adapted from

· Fetal Alcohol Disorders Society. 2005. Indepth: Prohibition. (Online). Available: http://www.faslink.org/prohibition%20timeline%20canada.htm

· Virtual Saskatchewan. 2007. Rum Runner Moon. (Online). Available: http://www.virtualsk.com/current_issue/rum_runner_moon.html

At the start of the 20th Century, there was lots of alcohol in Canada. For example, Toronto had about one bar for every 150 citizens and Montreal had one bar per every 70 citizens.

Alcohol was taking in toll on many families, and during WW1, groups like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and the United Farm Women of Alberta formed to ban alcohol. Recall, women could not vote before WW1. As such, Canadian politicians did not support women’s ideas about prohibition….If politicians had supported the cause, they would likely lose votes from men. As well, the sale of alcohol is a big source of tax revenue for Canada’s governments. The tax would be lost if the sale was prohibited.

The Conscription vote gave some women the right to vote, and by the end of WW1, all Canadian provinces prohibited the sale of alcohol. The Temperance Movement tried to close the bars and taverns -- the sources of much drunkenness and social misery. NOTE: Alcohol could still be sold by the government for industrial, scientific, mechanical, artistic and medical uses. As well, distillers could sell their products outside their own province with proper documentation.

Yet, the sale of alcohol continues. Illegal drinking establishments, known as speak-easies and blind pigs, spring up in many cities. The illegal sale of alcohol, called bootlegging, rose dramatically. In some provinces, people who claim to be ill can buy alcohol with a doctor's prescription. The prescription system is widely abused, a point noticed most during the Christmas holiday season with long lineups at neighbourhood drugstores.

The USA prohibition laws are much more restrictive than Canada. In the USA, the manufacture, sale and transportation of all beer, wines and spirits were forbidden. Liquor legally produced in or imported into Canada was smuggled into the USA…often accompanied by violence, erupted in border areas and along the coastlines. Smugglers dodging the U.S. Coast Guard (nicknamed the “Dry Navy”) not only had to hide the liquor, they had to be careful about not breaking the bottles. Quart bottles were packed in straw in tins usually used for olive oil or crushed fruit and hidden away in barrels, kegs and wood cases. Bottles were even concealed in sails that were tied and wrapped loosely around a mast or a stay. A single rum-running boat or schooner could carry as many as 5,000 cases of liquor bottles. These “bottle-fishing” schooners unloaded their illegal cargo to motorboats under cover of darkness. Some rum-runners were shot, and there was the constant risk of colliding with another vessel by accident or in frantic attempts to escape.

To move alcohol overland, cars such as the Model T Ford were used. The rum-runners used hidden compartments under the floor of the back seat to transport the booze.

The rum-runners employed children as runners. For example, 11-year-old Larry 'Moon' Mullin made good money as a 'crawler' in Moose Jaw's tunnel system. For two-bits a pop, Moon ran errands and delivered messages for the top gamblers and bootleggers who inhabited the city's underground. It would take a grown man a full day on good job to honestly earn that kind of money. Moon and his friends idolized the gangsters who controlled the underground. Moon said, "I never met (Al) Capone, although he was around at the time. I did meet 'Diamond Jim' Brady, his henchman. He was a Chicago gambler and a gunman, but he was a wonderful man as far as I was concerned. To us boys, he was heaven-on-earth, the kind of man we would have liked to have been when we grew up. He was straight-forward looking, he was honest, and what he said he meant. I know he was supposed to have killed men, but those were different times and circumstances. If somebody interfered with everybody making a living, well, they had to pay for it. He told us to never gamble, never smoke and never drink. As far as we were concerned, the gangsters were the good people – they were the best men I met."

By 1930, prohibition ends with the exception of P.E.I. It stays “dry” until 1948.

Task: Write a story about the rum-runner – police chase.