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LORNE JOYCE: OPTOMITRIST, FISHERMAN, HISTORIAN…PERHAPS RUM RUNNER

             “LORNE ALWAYS LAUGHED BEFORE HE SPOKE AND WITH HIS LAUGHTER THERE WAS A TWINKLE IN HIS EYES.  HE WAS A GOOD MAN.  I SPENT A WONDERFUL

Lorne Joyce is a man that is  hard  to forget.  He is gone now but shortly before his death we talked about fishing, rum running and, of  course, stonehookers.

Let me use his voice…pretend  I am Lorne using the notes I made that day…I remember him so well.

             
Picture of a typical fish boat…i.e. shaped  like a jelly bean.

“My dad and brothers were Port Credit fishermen…commercial kind.  No fishing rods…they were used by the sport fishermen and women.  We had long nets designed to catch adult fish  by their gills.  Our fish boats

were ugly things.  Fishboats looked like giant jelly beans…long, round on bottom and top, with side opening doors and a low transom so they could see where we

were going.  We dropped  the nets from the side doors…lead weights on the bottom, bobber floats on the top.  Then we would wait.  Drop other nets  in the mean time.

After a week or so we would return to the  first nets and pull them up hopefully with fish trapped by their gills.  Those nets were expensive…perhaps $25,000…so a

lost net was  a disaster.  Buoys were set above the nets so they could  be found.  How  were they found?  “We used a compass and  a  watch.”  Hauled the nets with with 

a roller winch.  Busy time. Detaching fish, gutting and cleaning them, packing them in ice  in summer time and stowing them in the fish boat.  Where did we get the ice”

We cut big blocks of ice from the Credit River in January and February, piled the blocks under straw in our ice house which was really just a simple shack. On a good day we could haul in ten tons of fish…whitefish for instance.  Big hauls were exhausting…they had to be cleaned fast, iced, packed in fish boxes on Port Credit dock and then

shipped  to the big fish markets in Chicago, New  York…even San Francisco.  Winter time fishing was dangerous.  Ice on the  lake could trap a fish boat.  I remember

Dad talking about one fish boat that got both trapped and  lost out on the lake ice for several days.  When  found the three men on board were alive but in bad shape

from the cold.

“Ice was dangerous in another way.   Winter spray would freeze on the fish boat.  Get thicker and thicker until there was real danger the boat would roll 

over.  We had to crawl  out with axes and try to knock big chunks of that heavy ice off … we could slip off ourselves. 

“Yes, men did die.  In January 1943, the Thomas brothers never returned.  They were lost somewhere near Port Dalhousie.  We sent the steel hulled Naomi to scour

the lake for them but all that  was found as a burned coat.  Fire  and  ice, bad combination.  Even  the Naomi got into trouble that year.  The tug was so heavily iced over

when it lumbered into port that the crew  had crawl out through the wheelhouse window.   Commercial fishing was a 12 month business full of risks.  The price we got

was the biggest risk of all.  Fish had to be sold fast.  By the 1940’s big catches did  not happen often.  The fishery was  getting fished out…Then  in 1960 our fish shacks

were sold from under us.  The land on the  east bank of the Credit River was put up for sale by he Federal government.  We were finished.”

“Our best years were the 1920’s.  But our money was not all  made by fishing.  Some  of the fishermen ran a little rum.  Dad did but he was  not proud of the fact for we are a Temperance family.  None  of us drink.  The lure of fast money trumped moral  principles.  Prohibition in the United States was a godsend

to a lot of fishermen.  The 13th amendment to the American constitution banned alcohol.  But it did not ban the thirst for whisky and beer.  Some Canadians

undertook to quench  that thirst.  We had Prohibition in Canada for a while but our distilleries were allowed to continue making the stuff.  Weird, right?

This is  how it worked shipping liquor from the Main Duck islands.  A large boat loaded with crates and  sacks  of whisky and beer would pick up the stuff  from Canadian

distillers like Corby’s, Gooderham and Worts, motor to the Main Duck islands and  then transfer the liquor to smaller motor boats that would race

to secret destinations  on the US shore….used  low sleek  and fast little launches.  Easy money.  Price of a bottle of whisky sky-rocketed  to $40 each. That’s $500 a

bottle today.  Big time criminal activity…got bigger and bigger…more and more dangerous.  Roots of organized crime.  People got killed.  Boats got burned.  Politicians, police, normally law  

abiding citizens got corrupted.  Speak easies proliferated.  Gangs got rich.  Al Capone emerged along with other big time criminals. 

“American coast guard boats were armed with machine guns.  I remember dad saying that one

rum runner bent over to grab a lunch sandwich and a US machine gun peppered the windscreen just missing him.  For a while rum runners built fast boat

that could  outrun the Coast Guard boats. We laugh about those days now but rum running was no joke. Lake Ontario was dangerous at night.”

THE

“Joe  Burke was the big rum runner in Port Credit…or so I was told.  During the years of  Canadian Prohibition, He  would  buy a lpad of liquor from a Canadian distillery, have it shipped by train to Port Credit, load it on a boat here and assure  Canadian customs people that the liquor was being shipped to St. Pierre and Miquelon, French

territory off the coast of Newfoundland.  Then peddle the liquor to American criminals.   His rum running boats never had enough gas for the long

trip up the St. Lawrene.  Only enough to get across the lake and  back.

“  Sometimes we  failed to sell the beer to the Americans and had to bring it back to Port Credit.   That was why we always had  about 150 feet of good rope

on board.  To avoid Canadian  customs people we would tie the  sacks beer to the long rope and drop it overboard just outside Port Credit harbour.   Then use

a drag a  hook to recover the beer when it was safe.   I know you are  wondering if we drank any ourselves.  We  did not but others did.  Opening a sack

of beer would get the big time bootleggers angry.  Dangerous.  To get around that the sack would be held over awashtubm and then slammed with a  hammer.  Bottles

would break and beer would leak into the washtub.  Ladle the foamy stuff into tin cups.   Explain to big time bootleggers, “ Sorry, Accidentally broken!  ” 

“My Dad  died  in 1928,  Shortly before he died he told mom to sell the boats as fast as possible.  Why?  Because they are old, made of wood,

and will rot fast.  She sold them but got next to nothing for them.  The same was happening to the stonehookers about then.

Both the fishery and stoehooking were in decline.    Stonehooking  was killed by the cement factories.  Commercial fishing limped along

until the late 1940’s and1950’s 

              

What remains?

 Some stonehookers houses are still in Port Credit.  The Naish house for instance 

And the Wilcox Hotel  And the blacksmith on Stavebank.  Perhaps most surprising is  the survival

of one old and decrepit ice  house over by Riverside  School.  

FISHING  to 1950    Fishboats open and Fishboats covered

 

 

They would motor out into Lake Ontario, often heading for the waters around  Main Duck Island far to the east.   Eight foot nets were strung together and dropped in the lake … corks on one side, weights on the other so the nets would hang vertically.  Buoys were attached to mark the place.  Lots of nets used…if a winter storm destroyed the nets the fishermen could lose as much as $25,000 and this did happen.  Five or ten days later they would return to the nets using a compass and a watch.  Compass and watch…think about that.  Then they would roller-winch in the nets, detach the fish and begin to clean and pack them on the ice that had been stowed in Port Credit ice house from the previous winter.  On a good day a fisherman could get ten tons of fish.  Big hauls like that had to be cleaned and iced fast and then shipped to the big fish markets in Chicago, New York…even San Francisco.

 

Ten tons!   That was good day.  There were not a lot of good days.  

 

Up early in the morning and out into the lake.  Fog made things difficult but winter ice was the biggest hazard.  “Ice formed on the water and once in a while the b oats would get trapped.  My Father (Bob Joyce) always managed to get home safely but I remember one time one boat with three men abourd was trapped in the ice for several days and my father and others searched for them, day after day.  It was scary.  The boat was finally found and the men were alive but in very bad shape from the cold because while the boat was covered and had a motor and stove which would normally keep them warm, they ran out fuel after the first few days.”*

 

(*Grandpa Bob (Joyce) spins a few tales to his grandchildren in the year 1993, P.17, book loaned from Sandra Church)

 

Men used axes to knocking off  chunks of ice from the sides and deck…trying to lighten the boat lest she capsize.  Those fish boats would never win a beauty contest.  Looked like an odd shaped wooden piano box afloat…or to use another metaphor…a toad sliding across the ice…a giant bobber.  But These covered fishing boats were a great improvement over earlier fishing boats … a covered deck with a side door for hauling in nets was a lot better than an open deck because the fishing fleet was a 12 month operation and protection was a godsend even if the slick lines of the old schooners were jettisoned.   

 

Some died.  The Thomas brothers were missing in January 1943 somewhere off Port Dalhousie.  The steel hulled Naomi scoured the lake for three days and all they found was a man’s burnt coat.  The Thomas brothers were never found.  Then men on board the NAOMI were at risk themselves for their tug was so heavily iced over when they lumbered into Port Credit the men had to crawl out the after-wheelhouse window.   Winter fishing was not some kind of holiday.

Naming fish boats was not always flattering.  The Norma Jean was named after Mrs. Bob Joyce .  She was not amused…being named after a schooner or one of the sleek launches in the harbour was OK.  But to be named after a fish boat!  A floating block of wood…a toad in the water.  Forget it. 

 

THIS photographer who took this picture was threatened by the men in the skiff.  “You better not be taking a picture”  A rum runners spped launch

had run aground  on the Detroit River and  the rum runners rushed to transfer the liquor to shore before being spotted by the Coast Guard sometime in the 1920’s

1)   Canada adopted Prohibition in 1916. Repealed it in 1921

Not to be deterred, Province of Ontario passed its own prohibition. The Ontario Temperance Act (OTA, 1921-1927) outlawed the sale and consumption of any alcoholic beverage in Ontario. OTA did not restrict alcohol manufacture. It did restrict any distiller or brewer from selling their products within the province. Producers moved their sales operations to Province of Quebec.2 This allowed products made in Ontario to be legitimately sold from Quebec, and then legally shipped to foreign customers from Ontario.