[LINK] "P.E.I. bootlegger Gordie Dunn dies"

[rfmcdonald]

Sometimes, I think that people don't believe the stories that I tell about Prince Edward Island, that they describe a place too fantastical, too at-odds with mainstream North American society. They're true, though. Take the story of the Island's bootleggers, forced to close down in 2004--notwithstanding the end of Prohibition nearly six decades earlier and speakeasies were always illegal, people liked going to them anyway--after the provincial government passed legislation that would actually see the laws against bootleggers enforced. The death of one of the more prominent ex-bootleggers made the evening news.

Gordie Dunn, a well-known P.E.I. bootlegger, has died at the age of 69.

Dunn ran a bootlegging bar on Chestnut Street in Charlottetown called The Red House, until he closed it in 2004.

In recent years, Dunn battled cancer. He died Friday at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown.

Wes Edwards, a frequent customer, said he has fond memories of Dunn and The Red House.

"People came and went, and … over the years just everybody enjoyed being there," he said. "It was a fun place to go to. Gordie was very popular with everybody."

Bootlegging — selling alcohol without a liquor license — is illegal in the province but was tolerated for decades.

In an interview with CBC News in 1987, Dunn said his family bootlegged in the province for 75 years.

Gordie Dunn speaks with a CBC reporter in a 1987 interview. (CBC)"My grandmother, my grandfather and it moved on to my mother, my father and then it moved on to myself," he said. "It's a way of life."

In 2004, then-premier Pat Binns's government gave police new powers to seize the assets of illegal bars and raised the penalties for bootleggers.

Dunn — who had operated The Red House for 25 years — closed his doors the day the legislation passed, saying he couldn't afford to pay the prohibitive fines.

The reactions at CBC Prince Edward Island's Facebook page are more positive than anything else. Tradition lived on in him, it seems.