The St. Lawrence Islands have already been the smuggling hideout who traded alcohol there all year round, taking advantage of winter ice to circulate.
“The islands of the St. Lawrence are like a living organism so they are intertwined by human history, biological and geographic activities,” says the geographer Rodolphe de Koninck, who is one of the Quebec academics who have most studied these islands.
From the start of his career in 1966, he went to the islands of Sorel on the recommendation of his research director, Louis-Edmond Hamelin, of Laval University. He spent three months there observing nature and people.
“There was a form of agriculture that has become quite rare since, called island pastoral. People let their cattle and sheep graze all summer upon and they were butcher in the fall, ”summarizes the geographer today retired.
No man’s land
In the islands of Sorel, where he conducted his doctoral studies, he documents the customs of the islanders who live there all year round. Using ice bridges – a practice that will disappear with the arrival of the seaway – families can set foot on the continent all winter.
“The population lived there autarkically, as if they were sort of outsourced the history and activities of the continent,” he explains to the Journal.
Smuggling
It is in this context that an important contraband network developed from the 1920s, all along the St. Lawrence to the Madeleine Islands.
A century ago, this archipelago knew the greatest prosperity in its history because of its role in alcohol traffic from Europe.
Richford History Society
The smugglers took advantage of their proximity to the islands of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon which placed them in the heart of the network. French territory was not subject to prohibitionist American laws (Volstead laws, applied from 1920 to 1933) which prohibited any alcohol trade in the United States.
It was legally imported from alcohol cargoes from Europe (champagne, scotch, cognac, rum) as well as Canadian distilleries, before re-explaining them clandestinely to Canada and the United States.
Many coastal islets around Berthier-sur-Mer, ISLET and Rivière-du-Loup received covers filled with smuggling alcohol.
3 famous smugglers
Alfred Lévesque, the king of the transcontinental
Originally from Rivière-Bleue, he filled his alcohol alcohol alcohol and passed through the St. Lawrence Islands. At the top of his career, his network had some 2000 smugglers.
Corporation of the heritage of Rivière-Bleue.
Lilian Miner: Queen Lilly
She operated a brothel near Sutton, the Palace of Sin. It used the river islands and the east cantons as a way for alcohol. Its reputation exceeded borders.
Conrad Labelle, the smuggling tsar
He engaged in his activities in the Lacolle region using forest roads to avoid customs officers. Its vehicles were changed to resist the shots and transport large amounts of alcohol. He would have provided champagne and whiskey to a ball in honor of the American president Warren Harding.
The time of a beer