Whisky and Ice: The Saga of Ben Kerr, Canada's Most Daring Rumrunner

J.L. Granatstein is a professor of history at York University, the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s, and the author of The Good
Fight.

American prohibition—that foolish attempt to cut the United States off
booze—provided a golden opportunity for Canadians in every part of the
country that bordered on the U.S. In the west, the Bronfmans made a
killing supplying liquor to Americans; in the Maritimes, schooners
ditched their fish for flasks; and along the Great Lakes, motorboats and
launches carried cargoes of whisky south to a grateful nation. This
book, written by a former high-school history teacher who has published
another popular book on rum-running, is an examination of Hamilton,
Ontario’s contribution to the fight to cash in on U.S. prohibition.

Ben Kerr was a dapper, piano-playing sports-man who was a major
supplier in the 1920s thanks to his political and mob connections.
Rising out of the working class, he had a reputation in his city as a
friend of the workingman, a ladies’ man, and a popular fellow. He was,
of course, little more than a thug, defying the police and the American
laws with impunity. He was also cocksure, and he came to grief when his
boat foundered in 1929 thanks to his conviction that he could outsmart
the winter ice as he had outsmarted everyone else. Hunt’s book is well
researched and generally well written, and it adds a colorful character
to the history of Canada’s booze trade.