Historian taps into city’s bootlegging history
Lethbridge was alone not voting for prohibition in 1916
Digging deeper into the history of Lethbridge, president of the Lethbridge Historical Society and city council member Belinda Crowson has released her sixth historical publication through the Lethbridge Historical Society. Her new book features stories of prohibition, bootlegging and rum-running in Lethbridge and is called “Squirrel Whiskey, Mr. R and Prohibition in Southern Alberta.”
In 1916, Lethbridge was the only city in Alberta that voted against prohibition, even though the province went dry the same year. The prohibition vote was close in Lethbridge, and there were many people across southern Alberta who actively supported prohibition. There were also people involved in bootlegging and making their own alcohol, in defiance of the law and police.
“Between 1916 and 1924, Alberta experimented with prohibition of alcohol, and the book focuses on that, but it focuses on the first prohibition in Alberta which was in the Northwest Territories of the late 1800’s,” says Crowson. “Lethbridge stood out against other places — we are the only city in Alberta that voted wet, so cities like Calgary, Medicine Hat and Edmonton voted to go with prohibition. Lethbridge was the only one that said they would like to keep the alcohol and it was partly because of our location, on the boarder of B.C. and Montana, but it also had to do with the fact that many people who were here making decisions, were a part of the earlier prohibition and realized how difficult it was to enforce the laws and so Lethbridge had a very different perspective.”
Crowson gathered her information from a variety of resources including personal family stories, community history books, provincial police records and historical archives as far away as Saskatchewan to piece together the history of how Lethbridge was overpowered by bootlegging and rumrunning.
One main connection to the whole story that was discovered, was a man by the name of Mr. R who was one of the largest bootleggers in Alberta.
“Mr. R was one of the largest bootleggers in Alberta and he brought in several hundred thousand dollars just in a couple of years of bootlegging,” says Crowson. “A lot of people in their family histories talk about working for him, so I tried to understand his network and how he achieved it and also whether people were for or against it, whether they were on the police side and turned a blind eye. It was interesting to see that perspective.”
Around that time, the Alberta Provincial Police was recently formed and had a hard time monitoring and managing the large amount of bootlegging happening in the town. With a small team, the police tried their best to stop the illegal activity, but even some of their team admitted defeat and went to where the money was.
“In some cases the police had to supply their own cars, and if you were bootlegging one of the things that you do is you make money,” Crowson explains. “Bootleggers were actually able to supply their rum-runners with really good cars, so the police had a lot of difficulty, and when you read the book you will find that not a lot, but a few police officers switched sides as well, because there was better money on the other side.”
While gathering all of the information and piecing together the proper story line for the hushed topic in history, Crowson realized the past was dictating a current issue we are facing in societies today.
“One of the things that I loved about doing this was writing this right around the same time as the cannabis discussion,” says Crowson. “There were a lot of correlation that you could kind of connect.
“One of the interesting things was the first week that liquor stores were available in Lethbridge, they ran out of product. AGLC probably could have used the information on the past to help them with the issues they are facing today with cannabis.”
“Squirrel Whiskey, Mr. R and Prohibition in Southern Alberta” ties into some of the other historical books that Crowson has published including the book “We Don't Talk About Those Women!,” which is about the red light district in Lethbridge. She says many of the names carry over from that book because the red light district and the rum-running days were happening at the same time.
The new book, along with the five others written by Crowson, are available through the Lethbridge Historical Society, and at various locations around the city.
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