VICTORIA OF THE 1890S WAS A HUB FOR SMUGGLERS

In the 1890s. the West Coast was awash with smugglers running Chinese
immigrants, opium, cigarettes and liquor over the Canada-U.S. border.
According to U.S. officials, Victoria was at the centre of this
illicit trade network.

On July 3, 1890, the U.S. treasury department sent one of its special
agents to Victoria to "get, as nearly as possible, into the inside of
the operations of the smuggling ring that is supposed to have
headquarters there," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported.

At the time, Victoria was an important source of opium and Chinese
immigrants being smuggled into Washington state.

Tough laws banned opium in many American jurisdictions and, in those
areas where it was legal, high duties made it expensive. Just a short
boat ride away in Victoria, however, the drug could be easily
purchased in the numerous opium dens in the city's Chinatown district.
Here it was legal, plentiful and relatively cheap.

Immigrants who lived in Chinatown were attracted to the U.S. by the
prospect of earning higher wages. But tough American anti-Asian
legislation prevented a legal route across the border, so Chinese
immigrants paid white smugglers anywhere from $20 to $25 a head to
sneak them across the Strait of Georgia on boats.

Flowing north from the U.S. into Canada were cheap cigarettes and
alcohol. The liquor trade was particularly lucrative for American
smugglers who sold their whiskey to aboriginal communities.

In 1876, Canada's federal Indian Act legally defined aboriginal people
as minors and prohibited them from buying, selling or consuming
alcohol. This led to black market liquor sales on many reserves.
American bootleggers eager to earn big profits flooded aboriginal
communities along the B.C. coast with cheap, poor-quality liquor,
causing all sorts of problems, including an increase in the number of
poisonings.

The penalties for getting caught smuggling varied.

The Daily Colonist reported in May 1891 that the owner of a
bootlegging sloop was captured near Chemainus. The owner, whose vessel
and cargo were seized, had a choice of either paying a $200 fine or
doing six months of hard labour. In June of the same year, a human
trafficker was caught in Pedder Bay and was given a $400 fine.

On the U.S. side, a man known as the "king of the opium smugglers of
the Sound" was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and serve two years in
jail after being found guilty on four counts of opium smuggling.

Arresting these maritime outlaws was difficult for law enforcement
officials on both sides of the border. The criminals sailed under the
cover of night and operated in a smuggler's paradise of isolated
channels, hidden coves and secluded bays around Vancouver Island and
Puget Sound.

A member of the U.S. Revenue Marine Service described to the Daily
Colonist how -- even when authorities managed to track down smugglers
- -- "the rascals are extremely hard to catch. ... We give them a futile
chase but unless the breeze fails them or some accident befalls them,
they generally elude us. A swift launch or craft on the order of a
torpedo boat is what we need to cope with the[m]."

The case of Andrew Holt, one of the most notorious criminals sailing
West Coast waters in the late 1880s, illustrates how tough smugglers
could be and how well equipped they were. After years of trying to
locate him, U.S. agents finally tracked him down in March 1890. But
when they went to arrest him, he refused to be taken alive. The
authorities shot and killed him.

Recognizing the value of using his sloop, which was known for being
one of the fastest in Puget Sound, authorities pressed it into service
chasing smugglers.

Smuggling was a cat and mouse game, one that the U.S. treasury
department agent visiting Victoria in June 1890 learned authorities
could easily lose.

While exploring local waters, the agent claimed to have discovered a
smugglers' cove with a large cache of opium destined for the U.S. on a
steamer known as the Grace. He and his men followed the ship's
movements closely, hoping to catch the ship's crew in the act of
smuggling, but the Grace never took the opium.

Thinking they had "checkmated the smugglers," the Americans
"congratulated themselves" -- until, that is, they went back to the
island and noticed that the opium was gone. It had been smuggled away
on another ship.

Humbled, they were forced to concede that the smugglers "enjoyed the
last laugh this time and the checkmating ha[d] been all on their side."