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610 CKTB| Rum Runner’s Christmas & When Whiskey Fueled the Detroit River · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: One of our palace. Another voice on the show Good
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Friend is John lid Key. He joins us this morning,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Good morning, John.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Good morning, Jean.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I should mention that in addition to being a broadcaster,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: you owned a newspaper. You're a journalist, you're a writer,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and you've just prepared a great column. It's a little
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: bit of Canadian history that I don't think many people
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: even know about. And the name of the story is
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: called the rum Runners. Christmas. Explain tell us about this
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: beautiful piece of Canadian history.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Well, let me set the scene. Okay, one hundred years ago. Today,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: it's nineteen twenty five Christmas Week. Most people, you know,
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: some things stay the same. People are thinking about egnog,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: about wrapping paper. But one hundred years ago, if you
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: were standing on the Windsor Detroit riverfront on our side
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: here in Canada, you weren't looking at a peaceful river.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: You're looking at the Windsor Detroit Funnel, the absolute epicenter
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: of a global black market of alcohol. It's the Roaring twenties.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: It's twenty degrees below zero Canada and the United States
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: of bambooze. Detroit is quite frankly the thirstiest city on
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: earth because of the demand just one mile away at
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: the shortest part of the river, and due to an
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Ontario loophole, it's legal to produce alcohol in Ontario for warehousing,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: delivery and export to the US, even though it's illegal
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: everywhere around us. The second that that alcohol hit the
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: river on the Canadian side illegal, The second that it
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: hit the US side of the river illegal over there.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: The second that it hit the US land illegal in
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: the state and in the city and in the country.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: So it's a mile wide river highway connecting both of
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: our downtowns, and at night it's a traffic jam of
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: vehicles that are on the ice and they're running without headlights,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: all to avoid the police. And as you said, I
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: call this run runners Christmas. It's when the Detroit River frozen,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: ran on whiskey fueled Stewda bakers. Families were sleeping, but
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: men were out there risking their lives to keep America's
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: fart holiday parties fueled.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Tell us about the whiskey six.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the whiskey sixes. These are not your standard cars,
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: and these were not your standard family grocery getters. These
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: were usually student bakers or Fords that were souped up
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: to have massive six or eight cylinder engines, giving them
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: their names Whiskey sixes Whiskey eights. And they needed that
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: raw torque because they had stripped out their backseats to
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: the cars and they were loaded down with hundreds of
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: cases of Canadian club rye whiskey. A normal car suspension
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: would snap, but these Whisky sixes were built to haul
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: freight at high speeds, and the driving conditions were terrifying.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: The Detroit River is not a swimming pool. It is
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: a living, moving thing, and when it was frozen, the
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: current underneath carves out invisible air pockets where the ice
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: can be paper thin. And this actually leads to the
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: most chilling detail of it, the open door rule. It
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: didn't matter if it was minus thirty outside. You never
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: drove with your door shut. Divers would tie their doors
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: open with a rope because if you hit an air
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: pocket and the nose of your car started to dip,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: you didn't have time to start fumbling for a door handle.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: You threw yourself out of that moving vehicle onto the
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: ice in a split second, and when you felt that
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: sickening thud, you either prayed or found God.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Wow. Now, is it true that these whiskey six drivers
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: going on this very very dangerous ice of the Detroit River,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: they were responsible for seventy five percent of all illegal
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: booze entering the US back in the roaring twenties.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: That's absolutely right, Gane, think about that, three out of
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: four drinks in the United States started right here in Windsor, Ontario.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: In Canada, we kept their parties going, and again it
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: was just because of this legal loophole where it was
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: allowed to be produced, manufactured, and delivered, but it couldn't
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: be sold here. Once it left, it became.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Contraband Now they made a lot of money, the people
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: in Windsor taking this stuff illegally into the United States.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So what did they do with all the money? I
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: seem to recall that they tried to make Windsor on
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the other side of the river, sort of like the
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Las Vegas North.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: So there was a lot of money that was made here,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: and it helped to build up what modern Windsor came
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: to be. We're talking about community centers, we're talking about
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: religious institution, Gorgeous houses were built during the Prohibition era.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: It really made Windsor what it is today. But it
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: didn't just stay here, and it wasn't just money. We
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: weren't just exporting our whiskey. We also exported the architecture
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: of the underground economy. I mean we're talking we perfected
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: cross border logistics, security, money laundering, sourcing, contact making. One
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: prime example of this as a guy whose name was
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Mode Dalats and he's one of the original run running
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: kings of the Detroit River and he's on the US side,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: but he couldn't have done anything without the booze that
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: he got from US here. And he decided to move
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: to Nevada, and he took everything he learned here and
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: brought it to Las Vegas. And this guy went on
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: to help build the desert in the Stardust, the Vegas
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Convention Center, even the University of Nevada Las Vegas. And
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: if that's not enough, he was actually credited with inventing
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: the casino lounge concept itself. And you can look this
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: all up. It's a wild story. So when you look
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: at the lights of the Vegas Strip or the sphere today,
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: you're looking actually at the direct descendants of a glittering,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: icy Detroit River and the logistics of cross border crime
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Windsor was a silent co founder of Sin City.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's an incredible story. Now, the irony of this,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: of course, now, because of the tariffs in the trade war,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Doug Ford took all US alcohol and wine products off
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the shelves. And we just learned two days ago that
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the company in Kentucky that makes Jim is going to
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: be closing down production for probably two to three months
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: because they can't sell the product. And most people don't
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: know this, but the LCBO is the greatest purchaser of
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: wine and liquor on earth. So it's kind of flipped
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: around the other way now it has.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And I'll give you just a little bit of an
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: update here, not to step on your toes, but Jim
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Deane has actually updated that and they said they're shutting
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: down their flagship distillery for the entire year next year now.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: And this speaks to the power that we have here.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: It's the irony of it all. Last one hundred years ago,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: the US was the buzzkill trying to plug a bottle
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: that was open while we were popping corks. Today, though,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: the rolls are flipped and we're not little mosquitos fighting
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: at a giant we're the gatekeepers of this. All the
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: US spirits industry is desperate to get their bourbon, all
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: of their products into Canada. But instead of now dodging
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: police on the ice, they've got to deal with the LCBO,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: the SAQ Premiere, forward, other premiers, and of course their
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: own President, Donald Trump, who created all of this. And
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: so we saw this. US exports of booze dropped seventy
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: five percent over night when tariffs came into effect. We
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: went from being the smugglers to being the toughest bouncers
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: at the door, quite frankly. And it proves that this
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: one mile stretch of water is one of the most
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: consequential borders. For how is the most consequential border for
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: alcohol in North America, but also one of the most
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: consequential stretches of water on the entire planet. We traded
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: our whiskey sixes for boardroom tables.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: An incredible story. So what happened when prohibition broke and
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: everything was legal again? I guess a lot of people
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: run of a pretty well paying job.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, people like in any industry that typically
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: transitions from illegal from illicit to licit.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Illegal to legal.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: They found opportunities within that industry as well. In many
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: cases these were people who would go on to operating
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: on our side of the border logistics and other industries.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: But we know that in nineteen twenty seven, when Ontario
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: ended prohibition, the LCBO system came into effect and that
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: just created more opportunities as well. We saw the introduction
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: the moving away from speakeasies to regulated bars and restaurants.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: And it's a one hundred years but I mean, look
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: at the system we have today. You can walk into
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: a corner storage gene.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's all because of the Whiskey Sixers. I
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: love that satory. It's great.