Whisky and Ice

The Saga of Ben Kerr, Canada’s Most Daring Rumrunner

Dundurn Press, 1995, ISBN 1-55002-249-0, Softcover, 194 pages

Price: $20 ORDER HERE

 By C.W. Hunt

 During the Roaring Twenties, Ben Kerr was known as the "King of the Rumrunners”. The U.S. Coast Guard put him at the top of the most-wanted list and offered a reward of $5,000. But ending up in Club Fed was not Kerr’s only worry – he had to contend with Hamilton crime lords Rocco and Bessie Perri.

 Whisky and Ice takes the reader back to the Prohibition era, when Canada and the United States were obsessed with "demon liquor” (not to mention the endless posturing by politicians) and when men like Kerr made a fortune feeding the American thirst for beer and booze. As Hunt aptly writes, the U.S. during Prohibition "was about as dry as the mud flats of the Mississippi at high tide”.

 

 

Author C. W. Hunt is a raconteur from Belleville, Canada who loves stories about rum-running, gambling dens, bootlegging, brothels and bothersome characters. His best-known book was Booze, Boats and Billions, the story of Prohibition and smuggling booze on the Great Lakes. Unfortunately it is out of print. It is possible to find one in a library, or you might even discover a bootleg copy somewhere.