Once upon a time in 1970 - what odds! - when this scribbler's hair was dark and curly, a group of young rowdies was drinking some stuff.
And stuff it was. It was as clear as a glass of cold water. Poured into a spoon and lit a' fire, it burned with a transparent blue flame.
To prove we were chest-thumping bay-boys we poofed out the flames, and swallowed 'er down.
Yes, we did, eh b'ys?
I don't remember the source of that fiery distillation. Or if it had a name.
Could it have been 'Alky' smuggled in from St. Pierre?
I truly don't know.
And if I did, I wouldn't tell.
So there.
'Rumrunners' is a book about the 'smugglers from St. Pierre and Miquelon and the Burin Peninsula from prohibition to present day'.
Ever since humankind discovered the wonders (?) of imbibing alcohol there have been, for various reasons, smugglers risking life and … well, limb too, I s'pose, to make moola by running booze across lines of prohibition.
You know that.
The passing of the Volstead Act in 1919 up in The States ushered in the - capital P - 'Prohibition Era'.
Dice were cast. Lines were drawn. Glasses of bathtub gin were clinked and the age of the 'Rumrunner' flourished.
Strategically placed, the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, became a shadowy hub for the distribution of illegal - sorta, but not really - liquor in North America.
Close at hand, Newfoundland's boot-shaped Burin Peninsula jumped with both feet into the action.
While it wasn't illegal for the French islands to sell liquor, it was illegal for it to be brought into the United States.
Enter the rumrunner.
Rumrunners loaded liquor in St. Pierre and sailed off towards the continent. Outside continental territorial waters they hove-to and waited for smaller boats to sneak out from shore, off load from the larger boat and tan 'er for the beach.
Ironically, many of the rumrunners carried whiskey, rye and bourbon bottled in Canadian distilleries and shipped to their secondary business premises in St. Pierre.
Thanks to Prohibition, actor Robert Stack found employment in 1959. Remember him? He played Elliot Ness in television's 'The Untouchables'.
Ol' Elliot, as you know, spent most of his time attempting to prevent mobsters - Al Capone and legendary gangsters of that ilk - from smuggling booze into The States.
By the way, Al Capone once visited St. Pierre. He made the trip to keep tabs on his rum running business.
You must believe me - or more so, J.P. Andrieux the author of Rumrunners. It's too late to hie-dee-ho to St. Pierre and have yourself a gander at Al's straw skimmer, the hat he gave to a storekeeper as a souvenir, because apparently a new proprietor has chucked it out.
Rumrunning changed St. Pierre and Miquelon (Some nuisance saying that, almost as jaw-breaking as saying Newfoundland and Labrador) from fishing communities to boomtowns - boom islands? - of sorts.
But good times end. Prohibition was repealed.
P'raps Elliot Ness machine-gunned all the mobsters. As a result, the economy of St. Pierre … oh, alright, and Miquelon - nosedived.
In an effort to salvage - idden that a good rumrunning word? - some portion of the public purse, French folks bally-hooed across the strait to the Burin Peninsula: "Come on over and fetch some duty-free liquor."
Duty-free if it could be smuggled into the province. And it could be. Smuggled into the province that is. By the boat load.
Both the Newfoundland Rangers and the RCMP imitated Eliot Ness and tried to prevent smugglers from running booze across the narrow strip of ocean separating St. P and M from the Burin Peninsula.
Good-luck to youse coppers.
"The smuggling of spirits from St. Pierre to Newfoundland was considered something of a national pastime," writes J. P. Andrieux.
In 1989, a police spokesman commented, "Newfoundlanders consider smuggling liquor a God-given right."
Somewhat shrunken, the illegal trade among the three islands continues, despite all effort to eliminate it. That's what they say anyway.
But …
But I'm gambler enough to ante up … oh, say a toonie, that at Christmas, or on the eve of a Burin Peninsula wedding, a scattered boat slips off to St. Pierre and returns to some secluded Peninsula cove with a few bottles of stuff.
Oh, and prob'ly a couple of cartons of smokes.
Thank you for reading. Cheers.
Dunville
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