Tunnels run throughout Guelph’s underground, connecting downtown, throughout the ward, used for smuggling bootleg alcohol and a clever escape route for mobsters like Al Capone.
These are some of the stories Susan Ratcliffe has been told, and rumours many Guelphites have likely heard over the years. But are all of them true?
Ratcliffe is a local heritage advocate and has been providing historical walking tours for the Guelph Arts Council since 1987. Thursday evening she spoke to a packed crowd at the main branch of the Guelph Public Library to straighten out the facts when it comes to Guelph’s underground tunnels.
In her walking tours, one of the most common questions is “can we see the tunnels?”
“It’s a very odd question given that Guelph is built on bedrock,” she said. “Until there’s a new library, we have no underground parking because of that.”
The most notorious of the rumours would be that the Sleeman brothers smuggled beer from the Albion to the Basilica during Prohibition using underground tunnels.
Ratcliffe saw the tunnel on a tour of the Albion in 2015. It does exist – but it’s only a water pipe about the size of a dinner plate.
Beer was made in the basement of the Albion from spring water starting in 1856. The water came from a spring under the Basilica of Our Lady, and the tunnel connecting them is at the bottom of the stairs inside the Albion. It’s since been cemented shut.
There were, however, bootlegging tunnels running from the Silver Creek Brewery, started by John H. Sleeman in 1851, to just outside the Manor.
“Beer was carried in unlabelled bottles and farmer's wagons and smuggled,” she said. “When they got to the other side, the beer was added, or the beer was sold as medicine.”
Other rumours include tunnels running under Heritage Hall connected to the Underground Railroad (there aren’t), tunnels running under the Ignatius Centre to hide draft dodgers.
In the early 1918, the Ignatius grounds were used to train Roman Catholic priests. Those men were excused from conscription, and at the time, people believed they were hiding draft dodgers in tunnels underneath the grounds. But Ratcliffe said there were no tunnels, nor draft dodgers.
There were, however, some tunnels that were lost over time.
There were stories of tunnels running through the Ward used for bootlegging in the 1930s, and in 1936 the police raided a large still (a huge vat that could produce whisky).
The five tanks sitting outside the Spring Mill Distillery used to be underground, she said.
Years ago, the manager of the Sleeman museum noticed a bump in the floor, and picked up the carpet to find a doorway to an underground tunnel where they found the tanks, though they may have just been used for lacquer for the tractors rather than alcohol during Prohibition.
What about rumours of escape routes? There is some truth to them, according to Ratcliffe.
The Paradise Gardens that later became the Desert Inn was owned by the Guelph mafia, she said. There was an escape tunnel from there that led to the mausoleum at the Woodlawn Cemetery.
Author Jerry Prager writes in one of his books of a tunnel mafia members used to escape from the Desert Inn to the Mausoleum, where escapees could climb into a double layered casket and “live again” in another place.
These caskets were invented by Buffalo mob boss Stafano ‘The Undertaker’ Magaddino. While there’s no record of Al Capone using the tunnels (or even being in Guelph), it is believed the caskets played a role in the disappearance of gangster and whisky bootlegger Rocco Perri, who often gets confused for Capone.
“And then there were tunnels from Imperial Tobacco next door to the Desert Inn so they could smuggle out cigarettes,” she said. When it was being demolished, those tunnels were found.
There were horse tunnels near the Guelph Farmers’ Market as well, the entrance of which would be behind the butterfly mural off Gordon Street. It went all the way up from Woodlawn to the U of G, and was used to bring horses and cattle into the showroom for exhibitions at the Winter Fair, a big event held from 1889 to 1922.
“It’s all gone now,” she said. Ratcliffe said when a new city hall was being built, Counc. Leanne Caron asked if they could clear out the tunnel and let people use them, but contractors said it was too much of a liability, so they were filled in.
During excavation for the new library, tunnels were also found under the Baker Street parking lot. The tunnels had a kind of conveyor belt and were used to move items between factories like Raymond Sewing and the Guelph Creamery. They weren’t big enough for people to walk through, though.
The tunnels were taken out during excavation.
It was also a former burying ground from 1827 to 1854. When it closed, bodies were moved to the Woodlawn cemetery, though some were still found on the Baker Street site during excavation. Ratcliffe noted the bodies were from the burial grounds, not the tunnels.
Do we have any tunnels that haven’t been sealed off?
We do, at the Ontario Reformatory.
There is a tunnel underground from the administrative building to the mechanical building, used for storage, meal delivery and more. It’s about a kilometre long, with different kinds of work areas within. It also provided access to the prison, and guards would use the vertical exits to move around and to come out “any place there was trouble.”
There are also tunnels for underground streams like Pond Creek and a Silvercreek (a portion of which was buried in the 1950s), and wind testing tunnels at RWDI on Southgate Drive.
Ratcliffe’s talk was part of the Guelph Public Library’s History Lives Here speaker series. The next one will be held on Nov. 12.
