It’s last call at Booze Can 2

Iqaluit RCMP have shut down a clandestine after-hours bar in a North 40 area building that once housed Iqaluit’s infamous “Booze Can.”

Armed with a search warrant, police seized 25 cases of beer and $425 in cash from building 2017-A in a raid conducted just before dawn last Saturday morning.

“We received a number of complaints from the community. The information we received this time is that it was an after-hours illegal bar that was being frequented by people in the community,” said Const. Mark Tindall.

Tindall said it appears as if the seized booze was aquired legally, but was being sold without a licence.

But this version of the Booze Can is not connected to an unlicenced after-hours club that Joseph Morneau, an Iqaluit elementary school teacher and businessman, ran out of the same place in the late 1990s.

In 1997 Morneau, who lived in building 2017, declared his home an independent country called “Arctica.” He created a social organization called the “The Explorers Club,” and furnished a space inside with bar stools, lounge chairs, a billiards table, and a ceiling festooned with painted images of nude women.

Morneau’s scheme was known locally as either the “Booze Can,” or the “Red Door.”

All that came to an end in April of 1999, when police raided Morneau’s club and charged him with selling liquor without a licence. Morneau eventually left Iqaluit, and an arrest warrant was issued for him when he failed to show up for a trial on Jan. 22, 2001.

In the meantime, the building eventually ended up in the hands of family members, who rented it out to someone else.

“They rented out the building as an apartment, and it just so happened that the fellow that rented it sort of got the idea. It just happened to be set up as a bar with a pool table… It just happened to be a crime of opportunity, because of where he lived,” Const. Tindall said.

Tindall said bootlegging in Iqaluit “takes many forms,” but police are relieved to see the demise of an unlicenced, unsupervised drinking establishment.

“The postive effect is that it’s one less place for people to go and get intoxicated without supervision. Even in April we have lots of cold nights, and the last thing we want to do is get a call about somebody passed out in a snow bank,” Tindall said.

Stephen Mulcahy, an unemployed Iqaluit resident, faces various Liquor Act charges, and will appear in court some time in June.

Tindall said at least one of the charges laid last weekend carries a minimum fine of $5,000 and a maximum fine of $10,000.