production ended, the volume of whiskey Canada’s distilling industry produced exploded. Pierre and Miquelon sailed to the rescue.Ĭanadians actually faced a mixed bag of alcohol restrictions themselves no laws prevented them from making liquor, just selling it, and when U.S. Canadians were willing to supply their needs, and when the Canadian government tried to halt the bootlegging trade with its southern neighbor, the French citizens of St. Fishermen pulled their dories up on land and hung up their nets and lines while their home islands floated on a veritable sea of whiskey, wine and money.ĭespite the ban on booze, millions of Americans still wanted to drink. For centuries, the hearty islanders-about 4,000 inhabitants in 1920 and a little over 6,000 today- made their living off the sea, mainly by fishing for cod. Although 2,400 miles from the homeland, the French colonial possessions sit just 16 miles off Canada’s Newfoundland province nonetheless, they remain the last vestiges of French territory from the wars that long ago divvied up North America. Pierre, about a thousand nautical miles north of New York City, became a wholesale trading post for the alcohol Americans craved. Almost every drop went aboard rumrunners-smugglers’ ships sailing south with their costly cargo to quench an insatiable American thirst for the prohibited booze.ĭuring Prohibition, the port in St.
SAINTS ROW 2 MAP EXPORT FULL
A decade later, with the ban on the production, importation and sale of alcohol in full swing, more than 4 million liters in whiskey alone flowed into the islands’ warehouses-along with hundreds of thousands of cases of wine, Champagne, brandy, and rum-and then flowed right back out. That was before Prohibition began on January 16, 1920. The remote islands imported a total of 98,500 liters in all between 19. But thanks to quirks of geography, history and law, the French archipelago served up much of the booze that Prohibition was supposed to keep Americans from drinking. The tiny islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon-cold, fogbound and windswept specks in the North Atlantic midway between New York City and Greenland-lie far closer to polar bears and icebergs than the speakeasies and clubs where Americans tippled during Prohibition.
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