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

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). As Hunt aptly writes, the U.S. during Porhibition "was about as dry as the mud flats of the Mississippi at high tide."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Jul 26, 1996
• ISBN: 9781459713505

C.W. Hunt

C.W. Hunt, a former history teacher, business executive, and entrepreneur, retired from business to devote his energies to writing in 1996. He has written six books on the history of the Belleville area including Booze, Boats and Billions and Gentleman Charlie and the Lady Rum Runner. He lives in Belleville, Ontario.

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Prologue

There are not many of them left. But the few old-timers who remember the days of Prohibition do so with a twinkle in their eyes, Those were the days son, those were the days. For Canadians, Prohibition provided an opportunity to get rich by selling good Canadian whisky and beer to legally dry America at greatly inflated prices. Although the U.S.A. banned virtually all manufacture and traffic in alcoholic beverages after 16 January 1920, in reality the great republic was about as dry as the mud flats of the Mississippi at high tide.

American film and literature have popularized the colourful characters thrown up by Prohibition’s great experiment.

Canada’s small population and the taboos of an uptight rural Protestantism prevented us from celebrating the equally colourful characters and events of our own past. This is finally changing. James Dubro and Robin Rowlands’ excellent book on the crime czar Rocco Perri, who was the Canadian equivalent of Al Capone, reveals Perri to have been one of the most charismatic individuals in the annals of crime. Perri has the dubious distinction of making Hamilton – not Toronto – the head office for Ontario’s mobs. Old established distilleries and breweries expanded frantically during these years to supply the huge American market. In the process, Canada became one of the world’s leading producers of distilled spirits, known the world over for the quality of our rye whisky. Men like Rocco Perri and Ben Kerr were the point men who connected the titans of the distilling industry with the bootleggers to the south. Unlike Perri and most of these point men, Ben Kerr came from a solid middle-class family. Some branches of his family were more than just middle class. His brother, George, rose to the vice-presidency of Canadian Westinghouse. George’s sons have been equally successful. James Kerr became president of Trans Canada Pipe Lines, and Robert Kerr was a prominent physician in Vancouver. One of Ben Kerr’s great nephews is a practising lawyer in Hamilton, another is Bob Morrow, the long time mayor of that city.

How did a man with such impeccable family origins come to be the King of the Smugglers? Initially, Kerr was acting within Canadian law. As Harry Hatch, then-president of Hiram Walker-Gooderham and Worts, put it, the Volstead Act does not prevent us from exporting at all. It prevents somebody over there [U.S.A.] from importing. There is a difference.

However, the legal distinction did not matter to the good burghers of Ontario. Prohibition was a moral issue. Once Kerr had taken the step of smuggling booze into the United States, it was an easy second step into violation of Canadian laws. For years, the career of Ben Kerr was kept under wraps by a newspaper sympathetic to the family. His mysterious and violent death on Lake Ontario has remained a subject of controversy. At various times, Kerr operated out of Belleville, Port Hope, Whitby, and Trenton. In each town you can find two or three different explanations as to what happened that dark night on the lake. But his direct descendants have all passed away, and photos and information, whose existence was not known, have now been made available. The strange story of this lone wolf of Canadian crime can now be told.

One

Double Death

Behold. I show you a mystery.

1 Corinthians 15:20

The rectangular red-brick building with the steeply pitched green roof stands empty now. But in 1929, the CN train station in Brighton, Ontario, was an important centre of village activity. In the spring of that year, Len Wheat, a slight fair-haired youth of twenty years, and four bulky older men stood on the station platform on a blustery March morning. They were waiting for the train which would take them and the two wooden crates with human remains back to Hamilton. One of the crates contained just bones plus a hand with a barely discernible tattoo. The tattoo said simply, Rose, but that was enough. Alf Wheat had had it tattooed on his hand in memory of his first wife. Len had been sent by the family to identify their father’s remains. Three days later, the body of a second man had been found floating in the water nearby. Len Wheat had identified the body as that of Ben Kerr; the man the Americans called, the King of the Smugglers.

Now the youth was taking both bodies back to their grieving widows. He did not mind the presence of the four policemen who had come down from Hamilton to investigate the two mysterious deaths. One officer had been a friend of his father and, like Len, the police suspected foul play. For the next sixty years, Len Wheat held the opinion that his father and Ben Kerr had been murdered on the lake by hijackers. Unknown to Len, the police suspected Rocco Perri, a headline-grabbing gang boss and Canada’s first millionaire mobster.

The train with its macabre cargo arrived in Hamilton on Sunday morning, 31 March. The bodies were picked up by the Blatchford and Wray Funeral Parlour, who were to prepare them for the funeral services being held the next day. There was not much to prepare. The men had been missing in the lake for almost five weeks. In order to stop the growth of bacteria and absorb the odour, the mortician covered the bodies with topical powders containing dried formaldehyde and sawdust. He then placed each body, which were sealed in metal containers, inside the coffins.

The service for Alf Wheat was held from Blatchford and Wray’s stately parlours on Main Street West in Hamilton. Louisa Wheat may have taken some comfort from the large turnout for her husband’s funeral. Alf had been a popular man, a decorated war hero who remained active in the militia after the war. The service began at 2:30 in the afternoon. Two hours later the services began at the same parlour for Ben Kerr.

At the second service, the ordinary working men and women who carried the burden of poverty and grief on their slumping shoulders were replaced by men whose expansive girth and manner signified the satisfaction of success. The wives of these men had the upright carriage and confident smiles denoting respectable middle class.

However, on this day the smiles were muted, replaced by a disconcerting unease. The man they were burying was of their class but not of their kind. During his life, he had been a source of endless gossip and embarrassment. Now, in his manner of dying, he had added an element of mystery.

The service was conducted by the Rev. Doctor Samuel Russell who had married Ben and Louisa May sixteen years before. He had been retired for many years but had agreed to Louisa May’s request in deference to her faithful attendance and support of the Anglican Church. Tall, grey-headed and stooped, the elderly cleric’s presence commanded attention. He had been raised in the High Church, and wore the long, flowing gown and soutane particular to that branch of Anglicanism which aspired to Catholic symbolism. The Reverend Russell brought a dignity to the occasion, much desired by the widow Kerr and by the dead man’s parents and brothers. After the service, the family accompanied the hearse to the Hamilton Cemetery for a burial ritual which, given the severity of the weather, would be mercifully brief.

The small knot of men and women standing near the hearse had to struggle to maintain the gravity of the event. Winds, gusting furiously, tore at their garments causing the women to clutch at their mandatory wide-brimmed black hats. The men tried to keep their fedoras on their heads with one hand while using the other to prevent their overcoats from blowing up under their elbows.

March had gone out like a lion. Hurricane force winds had torn off barn roofs, flooded rivers, and knocked down trees, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to southern Ontario. Of those present on that bitter, raw day, at least a few must have thought how appropriate it was. For almost all of his forty-five years, the man they were burying had led a tempestuous and stormy life. The Reverend Russell of Christ’s Church Cathedral stepped a few feet in front of the rest while the pall bearers lined up to receive the casket from the hearse. George Halcrow, one of the six pall bearers, had been a popular public figure. He had distinguished himself as a Hamilton alderman and controller before moving on to a turbulent career in the provincial legislature as an MPP of the Independent Labour Party.

A stocky man, Halcrow grabbed the coffin rail firmly with one hand, holding his coat down with the other. This allowed the wind to tear off his fedora, sending it rolling down between the rows of headstones, where it played tag with the dead leaves from last autumn. Halcrow didn’t give a damn about the hat or how he should be dressed. He was a working man, and had served many years as head of the plumbers’ union. As an MLA representing Hamilton East for the Independent Labour Party, he had frequently battled the province’s conservative establishment.

Halcrow and Kerr had been friends for over twenty years. They had first met as union activists at a time when unions were regarded by respectable middle-class folk as the enemy of democracy and the social order. Both had been rebels who had fought hard for the rights of the working man.

Of those present at the brief funeral, Jack Morris Jr. was probably the least surprised by Ben’s violent death. The advent of American Prohibition had been a windfall, both for Canadian distilleries and for the rumrunners who delivered their product. For three years, winter and summer, young Morris had made big money, travelling Lake Ontario with Kerr and Alf Wheat. The younger Morris knew at first hand the risks involved in the trade, and was convinced the two men had been killed by becoming trapped in one of the fields of ice that often floated invisibly just below the surface of the lake. A few months earlier, Jack had given up the big money because he felt the risks had become too great. Consequently, he was still alive to talk about his adventures.

The most distinguished man at the funeral service was George Robert Kerr. Just two years older than Ben, the eldest brother had recently been promoted to vice-president of Canadian Westinghouse, one of the largest employers in the city of Hamilton. He and Ben had not been close for many years. George had worked his way up the corporate ladder. He belonged to the right clubs and fraternal organizations, was a member of the Dominion and Ontario Legislative Committees of the Canadian Manufacturers Association, was president of the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce, and had recently been included in the book Prominent Men of Ontario. Ben, on the other hand, had been a maverick and a law breaker. His headline making activities as a smuggler had been a major source of embarrassment, both to his wife and to his three brothers and their families.

It was Louisa May, Ben’s widow, who had decided on the brief service. There had been no visitation, just a brief chapel service at the funeral home. The obvious presence of the Hamilton Police, both inside and outside the chapel, reminded the mourners that this was no ordinary death. Jack Morris suspected that the police were there because they had not ruled out the possibility that the two men had been murdered that dark night on Lake Ontario when they had gone missing. Although she seldom spoke of Ben afterwards, his widow maintained to the end that Ben had been murdered by his competitors.

She stood there now, serene and composed, her teenaged daughter standing self-consciously beside her. Both were dressed in mandatory black: long black gloves, black dresses modestly reaching to the ankles, and wide-brimmed black hats with veils completed the ritual attire. The black veil enhanced Louisa May’s alabaster skin and large dark eyes. Not quite forty, she was easily the most attractive woman present.

With the pall bearers in position, Reverend Russell began moving forward in the direction of the open grave. The angry wind grabbed his words, hurling them into the void. But snatches of Psalm 90 drifted back – Thou turnest man to destruction . . . thou hast set our misdeeds before thee: and our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

The family would go to great lengths to keep the sins of Ben Kerr secret. Louisa May Kerr would, in the end, deny his very existence.

Two

The Strike and the

Piano Player

John Benjamin Kerr was born in Hamilton on 29 February 1884. It was the apogee of the Victorian Age when family ancestry was as important to social position as wealth and power. The Kerrs were not wealthy, but they were certainly well bred. Ben’s grandfather came to Canada from Northern Ireland and was the first fish and game inspector for the province of Ontario. He built an impressive home on the brow of Hamilton Mountain, and then constructed his own private road to gain access to the city. The house featured an elegantly curved hipped roof with irregularly placed dormier windows. The house would later become a designated historic building. Ben’s paternal grandmother, a wealthy woman in her own right, was a member of the aristocratic Winslow family.

When Ben’s grandfather died, the post of Fish and Game Inspector passed on to his uncle Fred, who held it until his death in 1898. During his early teenage years, Ben learned to hunt and shoot under the tutelage of his rugged uncle. These practical skills, while common among the rural population, were also popular with the solid middle class burghers and professional classes. Canada was then barely a generation removed from the pioneer stage.

When Uncle Fred died, the post passed on to Ben’s father, Charles John Kerr. By this time the job had expanded to the point where additional men were needed. Eventually, Charles Kerr had five deputies helping him to supervise the counties of Wentworth, Halton, Lincoln, Brant, Peel, and Waterloo. The additional responsibilities meant a greater income and the family enjoyed a modest prosperity.

Like his brother Fred, Ben’s father was an avid outdoorsman. These two men, who spent much of their lives in the woods and on the lakes of southern Ontario, passed on their knowledge of the weather and the outdoors to young Ben. At a time when accurate weather forecasts were not available to the public, Ben learned the skills involved in predicting storms, the onset of high- and low-pressure systems, and other weather phenomena so essential to the mariner and outdoorsman.

The outdoorsman was the aspect of Ben’s personality with which most people were familiar. But in his early years, he was known for his talents as a pianist. He had probably studied the classics at the insistence of his mother, Helen, who came from a family which valued education. At the turn of the century only 6 percent of the population went beyond elementary school, but Helen’s two brothers finished university and then went on to obtain their doctorates. His uncle, Benjamin Arthur Bensley, was a full professor of zoology at the University of Toronto and a director of the Royal Ontario Museum.

Ben was in the 94 percent that did not go beyond elementary school. A rebellious youth, he left school at the age of thirteen, spending the next two years in the highly regarded stonemason trade. Two years later, at the age of fifteen, he began his apprenticeship as a plumber with the Adam Clark Company which had offices, shops, and a retail outlet at 7 Main Street West in downtown Hamilton. Ben began his apprenticeship in 1899 and would remain with Adam Clark for a decade.

Repairing boilers, installing furnaces, welding pipes, all of this was hard work, but it was infinitely better than working as a factory hand or general labourer, most of whom were unorganized and earned about half the wages of a plumber or skilled tradesman. The average factory worker put in twelve hours a day, six days a week. As a skilled tradesman backed by a union, Ben worked a ten-hour day, five days a week, and just five hours on Saturday.

Local 67 of the Steam Fitters and Plumbers Union was organized in 1899. Ben was one of the earliest members. By 1909 he was the local’s business agent, one of the more important and better paying jobs in the union. At about the same time, George Halcrow was working as a plumber with International Harvester and holding various positions in Local 67. In 1912 Halcrow was elected President of the local. The two men were nearly the same age, and both lived in Hamilton’s north end, a largely working class area with a strong identity with the union movement. It was the age of the robber barons, when workers were harshly exploited by owners and management. Government and police generally sided with the haves to put down the have-nots. Ontario had no minimum wages, no paid holidays, no unemployment insurance, and no right-to-strike laws. There was some government protection for women and children. They were not allowed to work more than sixty hours a week in factories, and the larger plants could not hire a boy under the age of twelve or a girl under the age of fourteen. Wholesale merchants and shopkeepers were less regulated, but were prohibited from working a boy under fourteen or a girl under sixteen more than twelve hours a day. The majority of the population was still largely rural, which was reflected in the provincial legislature. The farmers and the sons of farmers who sat in the legislature brought their farm work ethic with them, and had little sympathy for the idea of a minimum nine hour working day for grown men. There was some regulation of safety and sanitation conditions, but there was inadequate enforcement so that factory workers frequently toiled under conditions of poor lighting, unhealthy ventilation, and a general lack of safety precautions; industrial accidents were a regular occurrence. For the urban worker, life was a treadmill of grinding poverty, debilitating disease, and exhausting labour, broken only by the observance of the Sabbath – there were no paid annual holidays.

As a consequence of these conditions in the early years of the twentieth century, the industrial area of Hamilton (the north end) with its population of tradesmen, factory workers, seamstresses, and exploited immigrant labour, was a cauldron of frustration ready to boil over and scald its capitalist bosses.

Hamilton was an early centre of worker and union activity. The first working man elected to the House of Commons was an employee of Hamilton’s Great Western Railway. Canada’s first regional labour federation was organized at a convention held in Hamilton in 1872. It was organized by James Ryan, secretary of the Nine Hour League of Hamilton which championed the radical idea of a nine hour work-day. Daniel J. O’Donoghue, the first trade unionist elected to the Ontario Legislature, was a Hamilton printer.

In the early years of the century, Americans were investing more money in Hamilton than in any other Canadian city. Fuelled by cheap electricity and a plentiful supply of labour, heavy industry was flourishing. It was inevitable that the capitalists, believing in the doctrines of freedom of enterprise and the rights of property, would come into conflict with the emerging power of Hamilton’s unions. One of the earliest and most violent confrontations took place between the Hamilton Street Railway Company and its workers.

In the larger cities, electric street railways, or radials, as streetcars were commonly called, carried more people to their destinations than any other form of transportation. Horse-drawn buggies were predominant in the villages and rural areas, and bicycles were at their peak of popularity in the cities and larger towns. Motor vehicles were still a novelty. The movement of large numbers of workers from home to factory or office could be done more cheaply and faster by streetcars than any other mode of transportation. A strike would be a considerable inconvenience to a great many of Hamilton’s workers, both blue and white collar.

The union was demanding recognition, plus wage parity with their counterparts in Toronto who, at twenty-two cents an hour, were making four cents an hour more than Hamilton’s tram operators. The company responded that, Toronto excepted, they were better paid than any other street railway workers. Despite several rounds of arbitration, the company refused to comply with the contract that had earlier been negotiated.

The Hamilton Street Railway Company had some of Ontario’s most distinguished citizens on its board of directors. Their aim