Between 1920 and 1933 the issue of prohibition proved to be the greatest challenge to Canada-U.S. relations. When the United States adopted national prohibition in 1920—ironically, just as Canada was abandoning its own national and provincial experiments with prohibition—U.S. tourists and dollars promptly headed north and Canadian liquor went south. Despite repeated efforts, Americans were unable to secure Canadian assistance in enforcing American prohibition laws until 1930. Bootleggers and Borders explores the important but surprisingly overlooked Canada-U.S. relationship in the Pacific Northwest during Prohibition. Stephen T. Moore maintains that the reason Prohibition created such an intractable problem lies not with the relationship between Ottawa and Washington DC but with everyday operations experienced at the border level, where foreign relations are conducted according to different methods and rules and are informed by different assumptions, identities, and cultural values. Through an exploration of border relations in the Pacific Northwest, Bootleggers and Borders offers insight into not only the Canada-U.S. relationship but also the subtle but important differences in the tactics Canadians and Americans employed when confronted with similar problems. Ultimately, British Columbia’s method of addressing temperance provided the United States with a model that would become central to its abandonment and replacement of Prohibition.

Between 1920 and 1933 the issue of prohibition proved to be the greatest challenge to Canada-U.S. relations. When the United States adopted national prohibition in 1920—ironically, just as Canada was abandoning its own national and provincial experiments with prohibition—U.S. tourists and dollars promptly headed north and Canadian liquor went south. Despite repeated efforts, Americans were unable to secure Canadian assistance in enforcing American prohibition laws until 1930. Bootleggers and Borders explores the important but surprisingly overlooked Canada-U.S. relationship in the Pacific Northwest during Prohibition. Stephen T. Moore maintains that the reason Prohibition created such an intractable problem lies not with the relationship between Ottawa and Washington DC but with everyday operations experienced at the border level, where foreign relations are conducted according to different methods and rules and are informed by different assumptions, identities, and cultural values. Through an exploration of border relations in the Pacific Northwest, Bootleggers and Borders offers insight into not only the Canada-U.S. relationship but also the subtle but important differences in the tactics Canadians and Americans employed when confronted with similar problems. Ultimately, British Columbia’s method of addressing temperance provided the United States with a model that would become central to its abandonment and replacement of Prohibition.

Between 1920 and 1933 the issue of prohibition proved to be the greatest challenge to Canada-U.S. relations. When the United States adopted national prohibition in 1920—ironically, just as Canada was abandoning its own national and provincial experiments with prohibition—U.S. tourists and dollars promptly headed north and Canadian liquor went south. Despite repeated efforts, Americans were unable to secure Canadian assistance in enforcing American prohibition laws until 1930. Bootleggers and Borders explores the important but surprisingly overlooked Canada-U.S. relationship in the Pacific Northwest during Prohibition. Stephen T. Moore maintains that the reason Prohibition created such an intractable problem lies not with the relationship between Ottawa and Washington DC but with everyday operations experienced at the border level, where foreign relations are conducted according to different methods and rules and are informed by different assumptions, identities, and cultural values. Through an exploration of border relations in the Pacific Northwest, Bootleggers and Borders offers insight into not only the Canada-U.S. relationship but also the subtle but important differences in the tactics Canadians and Americans employed when confronted with similar problems. Ultimately, British Columbia’s method of addressing temperance provided the United States with a model that would become central to its abandonment and replacement of Prohibition.

Temperance workers had their work cut out for them in the Upper Peninsula. It was a wild and woolly place where moonshiners, bootleggers and rumrunners thrived. Al Capone and the Purple Gang came north to keep Canadian whiskey passing through Sault Ste. Marie to Chicago and Detroit. Federal enforcement agent John Fillion double-crossed both his office and the bootleggers. The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island survived due to gambling and fine Canadian whiskey brought in by rumrunners, sometimes assisted by the Coast Guard. Author Russell M. Magnaghi dives into the raucous history of Yooper Prohibition.

Uses previously unstudied Coast Guard records for New York City and environs to examine the development of Rum Row and smuggling in New York City during Prohibition. With the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, “drying up” New York City promised to be the greatest triumph of the proponents of Prohibition. Instead, the city remained the nation’s greatest liquor market. Smugglers, Bootleggers, and Scofflaws focuses on liquor smuggling to tell the story of Prohibition in New York City. Using previously unstudied Coast Guard records from 1920 to 1933 for New York City and environs, Ellen NicKenzie Lawson examines the development of Rum Row and smuggling via the coasts of Long Island, the Long Island Sound, the Jersey shore, and along the Hudson and East Rivers. Lawson demonstrates how smuggling syndicates on the Lower East Side, the West Side, and Little Italy contributed to the emergence of the Broadway Mob. She also explores New York City’s scofflaw population—patrons of thirty thousand speakeasies and five hundred nightclubs—as well as how politicians Fiorello La Guardia, James “Jimmy” Walker, Nicholas Murray Butler, Pauline Morton Sabin, and Al Smith articulated their views on Prohibition to the nation. Lawson argues that in their assertion of the freedom to drink alcohol for enjoyment, New York’s smugglers, bootleggers, and scofflaws belong in the American tradition of defending liberty. The result was the historically unprecedented step of repeal of a constitutional amendment with passage of the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933.

This work is an accurate, wide-ranging, and entertaining account of the illegal liquor traffic during the Prohibition Era (1920 to 1933). Based on FBI files, legal documents, old newspapers and other sources, it offers a coast-to-coast survey of Volstead crime--outrageous stories of America's most notorious liquor lords, including Al Capone and Dutch Schultz. Readers will find the lesser known Volstead outlaws to be as fascinating as their more famous counterparts. The riveting tales of Max Hassel, Waxy Gordon, Roy Olmstead, the Purple Gang, the Havre Bunch, and the Capitol Hill Bootlegger will be new to most readers. Likewise, the exploits of women bootleggers and flying bootleggers are unknown to most Americans. Books about Prohibition usually note that Canadian liquor exporters abetted the U.S. bootleggers, but they fail to go into detail. Bootleggers and Beer Barons examines the major cross-border routes for smuggling liquor from Canada into the U.S.: Quebec to Vermont and New York, Ontario to Michigan, Saskatchewan to Montana, and British Columbia to Washington.