By Phil Egan in the book, “Keeping the Peace”
On the third day of February, 1920, The Observer announced, “Famous Police of Northwest to have Men Here.” The Northwest Mounted Police, soon to be known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, were about to station a unit in Sarnia. Their task would be to patrol a border that had become the new highway for smugglers and rum runners – the fanciful name given to those smuggling liquor, beer and wine into an American market thirsty for the illicit product.
In 1919, the American Congress passed the Volstead Act. Taking effect on January 1, 1920, the constitutional amendment banned both the manufacture, import, purchase and consumption of alcoholic beverages in the United States. Prohibition had also been enacted in Canada during the Great War under the War Measures Act. However, there was one striking difference – in Canada, the manufacturers were still permitted to produce the product for export to foreign markets.
Some historians believe that prohibition laws actually created a bigger market for booze than had ever previously existed on both sides of the border. As long as beer and whiskey were being manufactured in Canada, it was available to consumers in both countries. Blind pigs, or speakeasies, as illegal drinking clubs and establishments were known, proliferated. Prohibition, in the words of one historian, ushered in “one of the wildest, craziest and most colourful periods in history” – the Roaring Twenties.
In early June of 1920, three “special officers” from Toronto were in Sarnia. Rumours had been rampant in the city for months describing gangs of smugglers trafficking along the river in “wet goods.” The provincial detectives were in town to investigate the rumours and to make arrests. Within three weeks, they managed to confiscate over $1,000 worth of illegal liquor. The bulk of the contraband was being stored in the county jail.
The following week, American enforcement agents announced that a fleet of six of “the fastest boats on the lake and the river” would soon be patrolling the Detroit River to St. Clair River corridor. U.S. authorities were taking heat about the amount of illegal product coming into the country. On the Canadian shore, export liquor designated as “headed for Cuba” was instead landing on a shore only kilometres away.
On August 4, 1920, the Sarnia Observer bemoaned the increasing activity of bootlegging and rum running on the local waterfront:
“Just as the church bells were chiming on Sunday morning last, three motor vehicles drove hurriedly down the London Road towards the St. Clair River. Two were touring cars – one acting as front guard and the other acting as rear guard. The object of their attention was a motor truck wherein, it was said, was transported a jolly little load of booze. The three motors drove down to the waterfront; the booze was removed from the truck into a waiting launch which disappeared at once, headed in the general direction of the U.S.”
The same newspaper reported that “the police cells at Windsor were so full of bootleggers and rum runners” that police were compelled to begin placing prisoners in the lockups of nearby towns. By October, it appeared that multiple arrests and convictions in the Windsor-Detroit area forced the smugglers to shift their focus to the St. Clair River. An organized gang was believed to be operating in Western Ontario with its headquarters in Sarnia. The gang was said to own “a fleet of automobiles, a motor truck, and one of the fastest speed boats on the river.” Prominent citizens of Sarnia, Port Huron, Brantford and London were said to have cleared over a million dollars from the operation.
Occasionally, however, there were casualties and collateral damage. Old-timers in Port Huron speak knowingly of a brand new touring car, loaded with liquor, sitting on the St. Clair River bed. It was said to be the victim of an attempt, one winter day, to drive across river ice not quite thick enough to hold its weight.
The increased smuggling on the river soon attracted police attention. By early December, American prohibition enforcement officers meeting in Sarnia with Canadian License Inspector George Lucas and provincial authorities proclaimed war on the rum men. The two countries were taking unprecedented steps to stop the illicit traffic in “wet goods.” In the Windsor-Detroit area, an agreement had already been put in place allowing Canadian officers to chase “hooch smugglers” into Michigan, and to allow American officers to stalk them into Canada. A similar reciprocity, it was now announced, would exist between Sarnia and Port Huron police.
In Sarnia Police Court, Magistrate Henry Gorman was doing his best to help stamp out the smuggling trade. Big fines were being levied on local offenders, and they were escalating – from $200 and costs in 1920 to over $1,000 by early 1921. In one major case involving a Toronto man, Provincial Constable C.F. Airey and High Constable W.J. Coulter had arrested the occupants of two cars containing more than 20 cases – 244 bottles – of liquor labelled “Green River” and “Old Kentucky.”
“This is the first time in my life I’ve ever tried this,” one of the offenders told Magistrate Gorman, “and it will be the last.”
Others weren’t so quick to learn the same lesson. In June, a large shipment of liquor from Waterloo was stored overnight in the city. The following morning, a truckload of the contraband was intercepted by American customs officials. A gun battle ensued along the riverfront in Port Huron between the rum runners and police. The smugglers escaped, but narrowly. Fifty cases of liquor and the truck were confiscated. One month later, police in Port Stanley arrested a Sarnia man named Alex Crosley, who they suspected of being involved with a smuggling ring running illegal liquor between Port Stanley and Cleveland. Police felt they were beginning to win the battle against the rum runners, but the war was destined to continue until the repeal of the Volstead Act – 12 years in the future.
In Sarnia, Chief Lannin opened 1922 by declaring a city-wide campaign against individuals selling bottles of liquor. Provisions in the Ontario Temperance Act had provided a loophole, most noticeably being abused around the Christmas season, allowing doctors to prescribe liquor “for medicinal purposes.” It was a good era in which to be on friendly terms with your neighbourhood physician. The police courts began to see a steady stream of citizens being fined for selling bottles to undercover officers.
While Chief Lannin was slowly making progress in Sarnia, the illegal liquor traffic was on the increase south of the city, where a long stretch of the river was not strongly policed on either shore. On February 25, 1922, the Sarnia Canadian Observer described:
“…the finding of a boatload of Seagram’s Special Whiskey abandoned out in the ice floes of the river near Courtright. Police and revenue officials on both sides of the river do not deny that traffic on an increasing scale exists, and point out the comparative ease with which boatloads of illicit brew or bona fide whiskey can be run across the river below Sarnia with an ease that makes the business much more profitable than tending to the affairs of the farm.”
Boat owners along the river were able to rent to the rum runners at a price of $4 to $5 an hour compared to the 75 cents per hour paid by those wanting a simple recreational excursion on the river. Also, it appeared that brand-name liquor was in such plentiful supply that the market for “white mule” – the artificially coloured moonshine – was drying up. If people were going to break the law, they wanted to do it with the real stuff.
That is not to say that substitutes for the real thing were not being used at all. On Sunday morning, February 18, 1923, the mutilated body of a man living on the First Nations Reserve was discovered on the tracks of the Pere Marquette Railway where he had been struck and killed by a freight train. Provincial Police Officer Leslie Atkins and High County Constable William Scott followed a trail of lemon abstract that led from the body to the store of a Mrs. Jacks on Chippewa Street. Questioned by the police as to the amount of the extract which she had in the store, Mrs. Jacks produced 22 bottles of the alcohol-laced product. Suspicious, police decided to search the premises, ultimately seizing an astounding cache of 2,000 bottles of raspberry, almond and lemon extract. A witness was found who confessed to purchasing two ounce bottles of extract for 35 cents a bottle. It appeared that the victim of the train had consumed enough of the concoction to collapse on the tracks in advance of the oncoming train. Mrs. Jacks was arrested, and the extract was confiscated and stored in the provincial police office on North Front Street.
Back and forth from the Detroit River to the St. Clair River, the war between the police and the rum runners continued through the late 1920s. Law enforcement periodically declared new campaigns to stamp out the illicit trafficking. Rum runners continued to explore new smuggling methods, but there was a definite move towards faster and more powerful boats. In the 1924 Ontario prohibition plebiscite, Ontarians voted narrowly, by a margin of 51.5% to 48.5%, to retain the Ontario Temperance Act as opposed to the government-controlled sale of alcoholic beverages.
In late September of 1925, frustration with the continued deluge of Canadian liquor into Michigan led U.S. customs officials to initiate daily searches of every freight car entering the state, both at Detroit and Port Huron. As many as 50 agents descended on the trains. They also appeared at the Detroit Tunnel, and at the docks of the Wabash, Pere Marquette, and Grand Trunk railroads. Later, manpower dictated that the searches would be made only intermittently.
The following September, in 1926, hijackers stole a boat containing 1,000 cases of ale from the wharf alongside the Sarnia Brewery. The abandoned vessel was later found beached off the Point Edward range light. Police found that almost half of the cargo was missing. A number of villagers were deputized to guard the boat and remaining cargo through the following night.
Six weeks later, during the first week of November, 1926, another adventure played out on the river off the docks of the Sarnia Brewing Company. It seems that booze was not the only contraband being smuggled across the St. Clair River. Throughout the month of October, police in Port Huron had been receiving reports of “aliens” being robbed following their illegal arrival on the American side of the border across from the Canadian shore.
On that particular Saturday night, an American patrol boat, later argued to have been in Canadian waters, was fired upon by revolvers from the American officers and brought to a standstill. Four Sarnia men aboard the vessel were arrested by Port Huron police. The craft was examined, then towed to the American shore where the Sarnia men – all in their teens or early twenties, were turned over to U.S. immigration officials.
No aliens had been found hidden on the boat, and the Sarnia captives were ultimately released. The Americans claimed that an organized smuggling ring had been active in Sarnia for some time on the river, dropping as many as “a dozen aliens nightly” in Port Huron. For the most part, however, U.S. officials were patrolling the river for rum runners rather than human smugglers. Seizures of contraband continued non-stop for years. Not untypical was the seizure of the tug, Victory, together with a fast hydroplane in late April of 1928. On that occasion, the smugglers surrendered 75 cases of beer and seven cases of Canadian whiskey to U.S. agents.
Ontario ended prohibition in 1927, establishing the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) to “control the sale, transportation and delivery” of alcoholic beverages in Ontario. Brewers Retail was created to sell beer in a controlled manner, while wines and spirits (as well as beer) were sold in LCBO outlets. Wineries and breweries were also allowed to sell from their own stores, which were limited in number.
Smuggling and rum running during American Prohibition took place all across Canada, but the Detroit River to St. Clair River corridor was the flashpoint. Canadian historian Daniel Francis, whose book, Closing Time, studied the era, estimated that 80% of the liquor manufactured in Canada during the period entered Detroit from Windsor.
It could be lucrative – the primary reason why rum runners were tempted by the narrow St. Clair River. According to Francis, a case of Canadian whiskey purchased for $15 could be sold for as much as $120 in America. But changing social mores led to a gradual but increasing custom in America of ignoring the ban. On December 5, 1933, Utah became the thirty-sixth state to ratify repeal of the unpopular Volstead Act.
The great American Prohibition Era was over, and some citizens of Sarnia were decidedly richer for it.