As a result of prohibition in the United States, a chain of liquor warehouses was established in the Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Stocks of liquor running anywhere from 30 dollars to 100,000 dollars worth were kept in these warehouses. People from the United States would come over and buy this liquor to take back to the United States. They took it as far south as Omaha and retailed it at enormous profits. This went on in 1920, 1921 and 1922 and when it first started, men most engaged in it were young chaos from the United States out of the army. Two warehouses in Estevan, two in Bienfait, one in Oxbow and one in Carnduff, Carievale and Gainsborough. These warehouses were called 'Boozoniums'. There was terrific traffic from Canada to the United States. As time went on these people with the warehouses got more avaricious and started selling bad liquor. The transporters would take the liquor down to Omaha and sell it to their good customers and it would turn out to be bad. The customers would blame it on the person selling it to him and this was the start of hi-jacking. This was holding up the warehouse and just taking a load of liquor.

Another thing to remember is that after the first war, a lot of local banks went under financially and had to close down. They had all kinds of travellers cheques, etc. left behind. The U.S. liquor dealers would take these cheques from the abondoned banks, put on a good looking signature and pay for the liquor with them. Later the warehouse man would discover the bank had gone out of business.

Towards the end, a criminal element came into the business. In the beginning, before any bad liquor was being sold, there was very little crime apart from the liquor running itself. However, when the Americans started getting bad liquor, they started to retaliate by stealing liquor and by using cheques that were no good.

Bad liquor was watered down liquor and Mr. Wallace had a story to tell about a warehouse in Gainsborough;

'One of the liquor warehouses at Gainsborough caught on fire and burned. Al Rodgers came in and asked me if I had heard about this warehouse burning down. I said 'Yes' and Al said, 'You know, they had a hell of a time keeping that fire going'. Mr. Wallace said, 'How was that?.' Al said, 'They had so much water in the place.'

In so far as Saskatchewan was concerned, it was quite legal to keep liquor for exportation to the United States. The warehouses were always kept close to the border so the liquor would be taken across quickly.

Mr. Rodgers had a warehouse at Bienfait with about forty thousand dollars worth of liquor. The police raided him and seized all the liquor. Mr. Lynd defended him and the case was tried before a magistnate in Bienfait. The Magistnate convicted him and fined him one thousand dollars with six months in jail and they confiscated his liquor. Mr. Lynd appealed and Chief Justice Brown of Court of Queen's Bench presided. They won the appeal and the defence was that it was legal to keep liquor in Saskatchewan for exportation to the United States and that it was no concern of theirs that these people intended to break the laws of a neutral country. The Chief Justice agreed and gave Al back all his liquor and his fine.

They had taken the liquor and had stored it in the basement of the Provincial Police Headquarters which was on Third Street. Mr. Lynd and Mr. Rodgers got the liquor loaded and Mr.Rodgers said they had to have a drink. He opened the case containing Queen Anne which was the best you could buy in those days. The first bottle was tea. All the bottles in the case contained tea. Mr. Rodgers said sarcastically that it was the first time he had seen liquor go bad in bottles. The truth of the story was that the Corporal loved his little drink and had been busy during Al's trial.

From then on, as far as Saskatchewan was concerned, the rum - runners had nothing to fear as long as they weren't passing liquor in Saskatchewan. All they had to be afraid of was once they got over the border of the United States. Of course, these people in this business had certain routes with places where they could stay with no fear of being caught.

Lynn Lundquist was a person who was quite enthralled by all the stories of money to be made from liquor running. He decided to get started in it, but the very first load he took across the line he got caught with. He didn't know the places to go. They confiscated his liquor and put him in jail for a month or so. When he came back to Estevan, he was kidded a quite a bit about this incident. However, Mr. Lundquist said he was writing a book about rum-running and he wanted to have some experience.

For transporting the liquor the Americans would bring up stolen cars. Al Rodgers traded a bunch of liquor for one of these big cars. He then put insurance on it. Within a week, the car mysteriously disappeared. Al applied for his insurance on the grounds that it was stolen. The insurance company doubted Al's word and they wouldn't pay him. Al got Mr. Lynd to sue the company and the case was held in Regina. Al got his insurance.

Another famous incident was the case of the Matoff Murder. The foundation for it was bad liquor. Mr. Matoff managed one of the liquor warehouses in Bienfait. A shipment of liquor had come in for Lee Dillage who came from Lignite, North Dakota. Lee and Jimmy LaCoste of Bienfait worked a lot together and they were at Bienfait that night to get a shipment. The shipment went to the C.P.R. station at Bienfait and had been unloaded to the C.P.R. freight yards. When the trucks had been loaded, Dillage and LaCoste went to the office with Matoff to pay for this shipment. It was while they were in there that Matoff was shot and killed. It wasn't Dillage or LaCoste, it was someone else in the business, who must have heard about this shipment. When Dillage and LaCoste heard that Matoff had been shot, their first thought was to get out of there with the liquor. They got away across the line with the liquor. Because Dillage was in the rum-running business and because he ran away, the Crown's case against him was that he must have conspired with those who did the actual shooting. The real killers got away with money and neither the money nor these people were ever found. Both Dillage and LaCoste were charged with murder. They realized how serious the implications were against them so they came back and gave themselves up. They both were found not guilty.