12 December 2008
Prohibition Resulted in Some Creative Smuggling Techniques
Moose Jaw Saskatchewan - Prohibition in the Northwest
Territories (present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan), was first enacted in 1875.
In the 1880s, when the Canadian Pacific Railway was under construction, the Mounties continued to enforce the prohibitory laws in
railway construction camps and at communities of settlers who brought their thirsts with them.
A product of Prohibition was the whisky salesman whose ingenuity for smuggling liquor into the North-West Territories and
keeping it out of sight knew no bounds.
One salesman shipped an organ to a railway construction camp under the pretense that it would be used for church services, but the
organ couldn't produce a squeak - it was a empty shell, lined with tin and full of booze.
In August 1885, while making their usual inspection of a passenger train at Moose Jaw, the Mounties "found bottles hid under
cushions and in every conceivable corner where a bottle could be hid - in all about 12 dozen were found."
A few months later, another big haul was made in Moose Jaw.
The Regina Leader reported: "A cargo of oatmeal consigned to different points looked a little suspicious to the eyes of a
Mountie. "On investigation each barrel was found to contain a ten-gallon keg of the "real old stuff"
securely packed in the centre and completely surrounded by the meal. The whole capture amounted to 55 gallons!" A Mounted Police
inspector ordered the liquor poured on the ground.
Moose Jaw's Annie Hoburg was the best known of all the bootleggers between the Manitoba border and the Rockies. Annie arrived here in
the spring of 1883, just as settlement was getting underway, and opened the Railroad Restaurant on Main Street, a front for her
bootlegging activities. Author Pierre Berton called her "the most ingenious of the whisky peddlers on the prairies." Her
methods of importing booze from Manitoba made entertaining gossip up and down the rail line. It was common knowledge that she often
returned from a visit to Brandon or Winnipeg with alcohol concealed in a circular rubber bag fastened around her waist and hidden
under the voluminous petticoats of that period. And there were occasions when she brought back a keg of spirits wrapped as a baby or
disguised as a pillow.
In spite of her boast that she could outwit "all the Mounted Police in the Northwest," the law
finally caught up with Annie in June 1883 when she imported two barrels of whisky - one labelled beans, the other beef - consigned to
an unknown Peter Smith at Pasqua. One of the barrels toppled off the station platform onto the path of an oncoming engine and was
reduced to splinters. To hush up the train crew, Smith produced a glass of whisky, which didn't stop one person from snitching to the
police. When Smith found himself under arrest, he swore that Annie Hoburg was the "sole guilty party." The Hoburg whisky
trial was held in Regina before a justice of the peace. "May it please your honour," pleaded the defence, "my client
Mrs. Hoburg stands charged here with a very serious offence. Now what is the proof against her? Is there a title of evidence that she
knew anything about this whisky? There is absolutely none."
"The evidence is perfectly clear," replied Justice Lejeune, and fined Annie $200 and costs, which she paid out of her purse.
When Annie returned to Moose Jaw that evening she and "a number of admiring friends... went out and had a good time." After
the whisky trial, Annie married a Manitoba homesteader and settled into respectability.
Annie leased the Railroad Restaurant to Nina Dow who was, according to one historian, "one of the better known of the prairie
prostitutes." Nina's reign in Moose Jaw was short. Two months later, she and her "waitresses" packed up and headed
west, arriving in Calgary on the first passenger train to enter that foothills town.
In Moose Jaw's Great Fire of 1891, the Railroad Restaurant, which stood on the later site of Joyner's Store, was reduced to
ashes.
|
