In the early 1930s, several of Montreal’s most prominent professional gamblers were involved in the international narcotics trade¹.  Harry ‘Edgeman’ Davis is then Montreal’s undisputed boss of all vice in the city. Davis acts as the edge, an intermediary between the city’s organized crime and corrupt city officials².  On April 9, after almost three years of smuggling drugs hidden on ships leaving from Europe, the gangster is finally arrested while picking up his latest load of narcotics at the port³.

Acting on a tip from hoodlum ‘Fat Charlie’ Feigenbaum⁴, police converge on Hangar 16, where the drugs are found hidden amongst rolls of Japanese silk². Davis and his gangsters are caught red-handed on the scene with 852 kilos of heroin and other drugs⁴. Two longshoremen are also arrested during the raid for loading the silk rolls on the mobsters’ truck. Davis will be charged with bribing customs officers and with drug smuggling and trafficking³.

Feigenbaum, who had been picking up the narcotics with Davis to send them to the United States, cuts a deal with the police in exchange for testifying against his boss³. Davis would later make him pay with his life for his treachery⁵. For his part, the drug lord will be found guilty of five separate counts of importing drugs and of corrupting law enforcement officers. He’s condemned to receive ten lashes and to serve a fourteen-year prison sentence at St-Vincent-de-Paul Penitentiary³.

The innocence of the two unwitting longshoremen arrested during the raid soon becomes evident. They were after all just doing their job. On their release, their pals from Hangar 16 cheer them and commemorate the event by displaying, in the hangar office, a silk roll left behind from the raid. That Japanese silk roll is still a treasure of the longshoremen.