Closing Time: Prohibition, Rum-Runners, and Border Wars

The Prohibition era, with its attendant speakeasies, bootleggers, and mob bosses, is usually associated with America. Nevertheless, as Francis (Selling Canada) demonstrates in this fascinating account, Canada also experimented with prohibition of alcohol for 21 months in the twilight of the Great War, from 1918%E2%80%931920. During this tumultuous period, Canada funneled illegal hooch into the U.S. even as its own federal and provincial governments, at the behest of moralizing zealots, tried to stymie the domestic flow of forbidden spirits via a "tangled web of laws across the country." As was the case in the U.S., however, Canadian prohibition proved to be a pipe dream. In five chapters, Francis chronicles the myriad characters on both sides of the law who made the U.S.-Canada border ground zero for the prohibition wars. Fire-and-brimstone temperance crusaders such as Ontario preacher Leslie Spracklin and the Dominion Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquor Traffic faced equally fervent rum-runners like Alberta's Picariello clan and Hamilton gangland kingpins Rocco Perri and Bessie Starkman. Francis's engaging narrative is jam-packed with full-color photographs that make the Prohibition era jump off the page. This is a great read for anyone interested in this criminally under-appreciated period in Canadian history. (Apr.)