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Moose Jaw Tunnels

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Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan is a town best known as a retirement and tourist town. In present day, Moose Jaw is a quiet town in a flat and quiet province. However in the roaring twenties, life in this town got a lot more hectic as illegal alcohol and gangsters started creeping their way into the tunnels and roaming the underground of Moose Jaw. Before gangsters occupied the tunnels, Chinese immigrants came to Canada seeking work and finding it on the railway. Since they were getting paid little to none and by being ridiculed by white people for coming into their land and stealing their jobs, they couldn’t afford houses or areas to sleep in and that’s when the tunnels came into use. The Chinese immigrants used the tunnels to sleep and seek …show more content…

Loc.gov/contact/). Saskatchewan went dry in the year 1917 and repealed in the year 1925 (Finkel, Andrew. Esask.uregina.ca). As a way of cheating the prohibition system, they used speakeasies. Speakeasies were places you could get alcohol illegally without police knowing of your location. Gangsters nicknamed Moose Jaw “Little Chicago” because of the connection between the smuggling of illegal alcohol between two cities( Running, Kelly. Carlyobsrevor.com). The tunnels were served as speakeasies for gangsters to come and drink without the police knowing of your position. Tunnels were also used for alcohol to come in for storage and escape via rail car (Running, Kelly. Carlyobservor.com) At the pinnacle of the tunnels, business was booming. More illegal enterprises were popping up in the tunnels as it reached its full potential. As the network of tunnels amplified so did the illegal enterprises as they started popping up left and right. Brothels, Casinos and speakeasies were one of the many enterprises that the network of tunnels had to offer as the tunnels started to become bigger and exceeding its potential (Fraiser, Corbin. BackpackCanada.com). One of the reasons why the tunnels are still recalled to this day is the fact that Al Capone was a common caller to …show more content…

Al Capone is arguably one of the most notorious gangsters in the whole world and to say he went regularly to small town Moose Jaw is pretty big. However, saying Al Capone went to Moose Jaw without actual evidence of Al Capone going to Moose Jaw is a pretty enormous claim. There are artifacts that have been linked to Al Capone being in Moose Jaw but without any evidence, it isn’t certain that Al Capone ever went to Moose Jaw (Krauss, Clifford. Nytimes.com). Once Prohibition ended in the U.S.A (1933), (“Prohibition Ends”, History.com) the tunnels had limited to negative use. Soon after the gangster era slowly started fading away and the tunnels soon became abandoned by the people inhabiting them. They were almost forgotten by the new construction that was being made in front of the tunnel entrances. However, in modern day Moose Jaw, a new use is now used for the tunnels. One of the more notable things Moose Jaw is known for is its tourism. One the most popular places there are the gangster tunnels of Moose Jaw. You have your choice of two tunnels, the story of the Chinese immigrants or the

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