Rum Running in New Brunswick

[00:00:05] I am Mark, the New Brunswick Traveler and here we talk about New Brunswick stuff. On this podcast I'll be talking about some of those natural wonders, be talking about some of the people that live in New Brunswick, past visitors that have come

[00:00:22] to New Brunswick, and maybe even some ghosts that I find along the way. So for now let's get started. Today I have with me Andrew McClain, the author of Backyard History Forgotten Stories from Atlantic Canada's Past. Welcome to Enby Traveler, Andrew.

[00:00:48] Hi there, thanks very much for having me on. Before we start talking about rum in New Brunswick, I'd like to know what inspired you to start Backyard History and begin to share forgotten stories from Atlantic Canada. Well I do

[00:01:11] have always had a lifelong interest in history. I do have a degree in it, I studied it but it's kind of hard to get a job with history so I did all sorts of other work all over Canada and then like many a Maritimeer I ended up back

[00:01:24] here because of the pandemic. I got laid off from a job that sent me traveling all over all over the continent really and ended up back home. And I took that time to get kind of reacquainted with our past mostly by

[00:01:39] going on hikes and finding interesting things researching it and then I started putting it up online. The first story was about the Lake Utopia monster, a sea monster so it combined like research into the actual background and the

[00:01:51] storytelling thing so they just put that online without thinking anyone would care and it took right off and I got offered a job writing a newspaper column which is now in 19 newspapers and then turned that into a podcast of

[00:02:06] my own called the Backyard History Podcast which you can check out on your favorite platform and then like Mark said at the beginning there's a new book called Backyard History as well everything called Backyard History

[00:02:20] it's easy to remember and you can actually grab a signed copy if you want on my website backyardhistory.ca. book. It's sort of convenient when you have a podcast to begin with then you can turn around and make a book

[00:02:32] out of the episodes. Yeah, yeah exactly. It's kind of I always try and put a focus on what people back then actually saw like finding quotes and stuff like that and with my podcast is a bit of a different format almost like a

[00:02:47] bit like plays and I got quote unquote voice actors to just my friends to read these quotes in voices from the time to kind of give people like maritimeers from the past a voice in our time which is really cool and people

[00:03:03] have been responding to that quite well and especially young people which is a surprise because you know the stereotype is that they're not interested in New Brunswick history but they're definitely quite passionate about it which is fantastic. So I am interested in as I read the

[00:03:20] newspaper articles that you'd written and then bought the book I saw two or three different episodes that you had about Rome in New Brunswick and so I just would like for you to maybe provide some of the most fascinating rum

[00:03:38] related tales that you covered. Yeah, rum has a long history going back in New Brunswick throughout the maritime since for better or for worse a bit of a life blood going through and personally I'm quite a fan of all

[00:03:56] the crazy rum running stories and prohibition era but the history with rum in this province went back before that I was invented in the 1600s down on the West Indies by the time it made it here it was I think some I've

[00:04:12] had a quote of someone describing the quality as most of the fans were people who could not afford better not afford a choice meaning not they could afford better quality rums but the strange thing is so this room I have

[00:04:27] to clarify so this isn't the like you know that's the 40% rum that you would get in a liquor store today the stuff was really strong we're talking like 60 to 70% in strength and people would drink a lot of it it was maybe

[00:04:46] we'd be best to think of like how we drank coffee today our forefathers drank rum so they called it an anti-fogmatic and they would drink it with breakfast this is a tumbler a little glass of rum with breakfast same as we

[00:05:02] would drink a coffee and much like we have coffee breaks at work today they would have rum breaks I live in Frederickton and right here in Frederickton downtown that they would have a rum bell right down by City Hall

[00:05:17] City provided service and every day at 11 in the morning and at 4 in the afternoon the rum bell would ring and the workers would take a break it would be like a coffee break today for us except they would be drinking rum at

[00:05:34] work so they would just have their tumbler rum and then they would go back to work was rum ever included as part of their salary yeah actually that was included for most salaries actually it was considered kind of a health and

[00:05:49] safety thing oddly enough so if you were working outside it was considered that it was actually unsafe to do manual labor outside without rum because basically you would get cold for example if you're a fisherman you should have

[00:06:01] rum in you to keep you warm was the thought even I saw even blueberry pickers who were almost always children would get rum as part of salary very concerning and I think a really great example of that would be

[00:06:18] in Moncton there was a shipyard there with Joseph Salter and rum was included as part of their wages and this guy had the shall we say controversial idea at the time that maybe having annual workers working in a shipyard wasn't

[00:06:34] the safest thing in the world so he actually he was the first one in New Brunswick to suggest not having run on the job very controversial so in New Brunswick as prohibition was going on particularly in the United States there

[00:06:53] was a lot of rum running that was being done here in New Brunswick I think it probably was not considered wrong but rather considered to be sort of a good challenging way to make money and also provide a service for the local community

[00:07:12] anything you'd like to say particularly about what you found on the idea of rum running yeah so I think rum running is kind of misunderstood like in large part because of the American media you know you have the Al Capone's of the

[00:07:28] world all these rum running gangsters but like you were just saying Mark it wasn't quite like that here a lot of the rum runners were ordinary people often they were farmers and fishermen we have to remember this happened there's some

[00:07:39] overlap with the surprise surprise about economy and the Maritimes and then further into the Great Depression as well so a lot of people it wasn't like gangs although we did have those often it was kind of freelance rum

[00:07:53] runners let's say especially Kent County was renowned for their farmers and fishermen being heavily involved in in rum running but often it would be the amount of money that you could make off of this was enormous right so you could

[00:08:10] the average salary for working dawn to dusk and a manual labor at the time was about a dollar sometimes less meanwhile for a single trip if you were a captain aboard one of these rum running ships coming back from the

[00:08:26] states on a single trip you can make $400 so that's like more than most Maritimes salary for like a year on a single trip so you can see the benefits of that too right and it also brought in a lot of exciting things at

[00:08:40] the time high-end electronic goods that were being invented in the 20s refrigerators American fashion stuff like that so there was lots of benefits and yeah people didn't look down on it as criminals I mean a lot

[00:08:55] of people were involved themselves I'm sure a lot of your listeners have relatives that were involved in that but then there were people buying them here locally too and often these people included like police chiefs judges

[00:09:08] stuff like that so yeah it wasn't them it wouldn't be looked upon as wildly controversial despite it being illegal well I know that New Brunswick in the 1920s was beginning to build a lot of highways which just made it more

[00:09:27] convenient for those rum runners to be able to get to the border and get more room yeah for sure New Brunswick was actually one of the leaders in North America and highway development we put a big push in the 1920s on developing

[00:09:43] new roads and yeah that was definitely used for rum running I think it's one of the reasons that I'm personally so interested in rum running is my grandfather who lived up on the North Shore in New Brunswick would tell stories

[00:09:54] about this when I was a kid and one of them he I don't think that the family was directly involved but like a lot of New Brunswickers they were indirectly involved you see so he would he was just a little boy but his dad would leave

[00:10:09] the barn door open at night they left on a farm up in the Flatlands so they would leave the barn door open at night and then at night they would see some headlights go in and a car go in and the doors would shut and then the

[00:10:20] next morning the car would be gone but there would be a $5 bill there so basically what was happening is that these were rum smugglers this was their barn was a place where they would go in a safe spot they would spend the night

[00:10:33] and then you get $5 which as I said people only making a dollar a day back then for like a tough daunted desk manual job like $5 for forgetting your barn door open pretty good deal especially up on New Brunswick's

[00:10:45] North Shore. That sounds exciting so what's coming up soon that backyard history? I am just finishing up the actually just before coming here I was sending off an email to the book printers and trying to get my second book in so we're gonna

[00:11:06] have volume two more more stories and actually it's gonna be some exciting new rum running ones including included in this book so there's a lot of work that goes into getting a book out so yeah I'm glad that that one's going to be

[00:11:21] finally out and it's also gonna be available on my website so that's the one I'm focused on the most right now we're also putting out new stories every week on the Backyard History podcast and then the newspaper columns

[00:11:36] and stuff like that so yeah there's a lot going on and it's because of the interest of New Brunswickers and Atlantic Canadians in their our past which I find so so heartening. Well that is very exciting and Andrew thank you so much for agreeing

[00:11:53] to spend some time with me here today and I'll be putting all the information about your website and how to order your book and everything right in the show notes. Well thanks very much for having me Mark I really

[00:12:07] appreciate that and you have a great day thank you you too. It's been a real joy being with you today I appreciate you taking the time to listen to the podcast if you go to my website mbtraveler.com you can leave

[00:12:26] a comment you're going to do a rating and I look forward to seeing you back here again next week and oh by the way you can also buy me a copy there on that website if you care to have a great day and a wonderful week.