100 years ago today, while families slept and dreamed of eggnog and wrapping paper, the Windsor-Detroit riverfront was anything but peaceful. It was Christmas week, 1925, and the frozen river had become the “Windsor-Detroit funnel”—the epicenter of a global black market for alcohol.
In a recent segment, Jon Liedtke joined Gene to discuss his article, Rumrunner’s Christmas: When a frozen Detroit River ran on Whiskey-fueled Studebakers. It’s the story of how a frozen river, a legal loophole, souped-up vehicles, and Canadian whiskey kept the Roaring Twenties roaring in the United States, how Windsor was a silent co-founding partner of Las Vegas, and how “The Big Flip” occurred, switching Canada from the supplier of whiskey to the gatekeepers of American alcohol due to retaliatory tariffs & actions.
Transcript: (Generated from Gemini AI)
Gene: One of our pals, another voice on the show, a good friend is Jon Liedtke. He joins us this morning. Good morning, Jon.
Jon: Good morning, Gene.
Gene: I should mention that in addition to being a broadcaster, you owned a newspaper, you’re a journalist, you’re a writer, and you’ve just prepared a great column. It’s a little bit of Canadian history that I don’t think many people even know about. And the name of the story is called “The Rum Runner’s Christmas.” Explain, tell us, tell us about this beautiful piece of Canadian history.
Jon: Well, let me set the scene, okay? A hundred years ago today, it’s 1925, Christmas week. Most people, some things stay the same. People are thinking about eggnog, about wrapping paper. But a hundred years ago, if you were standing on the Windsor-Detroit riverfront on our side here in Canada, you weren’t looking at a peaceful river. You’re looking at the Windsor-Detroit funnel, the absolute epicenter of a global black market of alcohol.
It’s the Roaring Twenties. It’s 20 degrees below zero. Canada and the United States have banned booze. Detroit is, quite frankly, the thirstiest city on earth because of the demand, just one mile away at the shortest part of the river. And due to an Ontario loophole, it’s legal to produce alcohol in Ontario for warehousing, delivery, and export to the U.S., even though it’s illegal everywhere around us.
The second that that alcohol hit the river on the Canadian side—illegal. The second that it hit the U.S. side of the river—illegal over there. The second that it hit the U.S. land—illegal in the state, and in the city, and in the country. So, it’s a mile-wide river highway connecting both of our downtowns. And at night, it’s a traffic jam of vehicles that are on the ice, and they’re running without headlights, all to avoid the police. And as you said, I call this “Rum Runner’s Christmas.” It’s when the Detroit River, frozen, ran on whiskey-fueled Studebakers. Families were sleeping, but men were out there risking their lives to keep America’s holiday parties fueled.
Gene: Tell us about the Whiskey Sixes.
Jon: Yeah, so the Whiskey Sixes, these are not your standard cars. And these were not your standard family grocery-getters. These were usually Studebakers or Fords that were souped-up to have massive six or eight-cylinder engines, giving them their names: Whiskey Sixes, Whiskey Eights. And they needed that raw torque because they had stripped out their back seats of the cars and they were loaded down with hundreds of cases of Canadian Club rye whiskey.
A normal car’s suspension would snap, but these Whiskey Sixes were built to haul freight at high speeds. And the driving conditions were terrifying. The Detroit River is not a swimming pool; it is a living, moving thing. And when it is frozen, the current underneath carves out invisible air pockets where the ice can be paper-thin. And this actually leads to the most chilling detail of it: the “Open Door Rule.”
It didn’t matter if it was minus 30 outside; you never drove with your door shut. Drivers would tie their doors open with a rope because if you hit an air pocket and the nose of your car started to dip, you didn’t have time to start fumbling for a door handle. You threw yourself out of that moving vehicle onto the ice in a split second. And when you felt that sickening thud, you either prayed or found God.
Gene: Wow. Now, is it true that these Whiskey Six drivers going on this very, very dangerous ice of the Detroit River, they were responsible for 75% of all illegal booze entering the U.S. back in the Roaring Twenties?
Jon: That’s absolutely right, Gene. Think about that. Three out of four drinks in the United States started right here in Windsor, Ontario, in Canada. We kept their parties going. And again, it was just because of this legal loophole where it was allowed to be produced, manufactured, and delivered, but it couldn’t be sold here. Once it left, it became contraband.
Gene: Now, they made a lot of money, the people in Windsor taking this stuff illegally into the United States. So what did they do with all the money? I seem to recall that they tried to make Windsor on the other side of the river sort of like the Las Vegas North.
Jon: So, there was a lot of money that was made here and it helped to build up what modern Windsor came to be. We’re talking community centers, we’re talking religious institutions, gorgeous houses were built during the prohibition era. It really made Windsor what it is today. But it didn’t just stay here, and it wasn’t just money; we weren’t just exporting our whiskey. We also exported the architecture of the underground economy. I mean, we’re talking, we perfected cross-border logistics, security, money laundering, sourcing, contact making.
One prime example of this is a guy whose name was Moe Dalitz. And he’s one of the original rum-running kings of the Detroit River. And he’s on the U.S. side, but he couldn’t have done anything without the booze that he got from us here. And he decided to move to Nevada. And he took everything he learned here and brought it to Las Vegas. And this guy went on to help build the Desert Inn, the Stardust, the Vegas Convention Center, even the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. And if that’s not enough, he was actually credited with inventing the casino lounge concept itself. You can look this all up; it’s just a wild story.
So when you look at the lights of the Vegas Strip or the Sphere today, you’re looking actually at the direct descendants of a glittering icy Detroit River and the logistics of cross-border crime. Windsor was a silent co-founder of Sin City.
Gene: Wow. That’s an incredible story. Now, the irony of this, of course, now because of the tariffs and the trade war, Doug Ford took all U.S. alcohol and wine products off the shelves. And we just learned two days ago that the company in Kentucky that makes Jim Beam is going to be closing down production for probably two to three months because they can’t sell the product. And most people don’t know this, but the LCBO is the greatest purchaser of wine and liquor on Earth. So it’s kind of flipped around the other way now.
Jon: It has. And I’ll give you just a little bit of an update here, not to step on your toes, but Jim Beam has actually updated that and they said they’re shutting down their flagship distillery for the entire year next year now.
Gene: Wow.
Jon: And this speaks to the power that we have here. It’s the irony of it all. A hundred years ago, the U.S. was the buzzkill trying to plug a bottle that was open while we were popping corks. Today though, the roles are flipped. And we’re not little mosquitoes biting at a giant; we’re the gatekeepers of this all. The U.S. spirits industry is desperate to get their bourbon, all of their products, into Canada. But instead of now dodging police on the ice, they’ve got to deal with the LCBO, the SAQ, Premier Ford, other Premiers, and of course their own President, Donald Trump, who created all of this.
And so we saw this—U.S. exports of booze dropped 75% overnight when tariffs came into effect. We went from being the smugglers to being the toughest bouncers at the door, quite frankly. And it proves that this one-mile stretch of water is the most consequential border for alcohol in North America, but also one of the most consequential stretches of water on the entire planet. We traded our Whiskey Sixes for boardroom tables.
Gene: An incredible story. So what happened when prohibition broke and everything was legal again? I guess a lot of people were out of a pretty well-paying job.
Jon: Yeah, you know, people, like in any industry that typically transitions from illegal to legal, they found opportunities within that industry as well. In many cases, these were people who would go on to operating, if on our side of the border, logistics and other industries. But we know that in 1927, when Ontario ended prohibition, the LCBO system came into effect. And that just created more opportunities as well. We saw the introduction, the moving away from speakeasies to regulated bars and restaurants. And it took a hundred years, but I mean, look at the system we have today. You can walk into a corner store, Gene.
Gene: Yeah. And it’s all because of the Whiskey Sixes. I love that story. It’s great.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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