Grade 10 History - Unit 2
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 speakeasies 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.