Susan Goldenberg - Snatched! - The Peculiar Kidnapping of Beer Tycoon John Labatt

SNATCHED!

Steinwayfrom Glory to Controversy: The Family, the Business, the Piano Troubled Skies: Crisis, Competition and Control in Canadas Airline Industry Global Pursuit: Canadian Business Strategies for Winning in the Borderless World Hands across the Ocean: Managing Joint Ventures (With a Spotlight on China and Japan)

Trading: Inside the Worlds Leading Stock Exchanges

The Thomson Empire

Canadian Pacific: Portrait of Power

Men of Property: The Canadian Developers Who Are Buying America

The Peculiar Kidnapping of Beer Tycoon John Labatt

BY SUSAN GOLDENBERG

Copyright Susan Goldenberg, 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Copy-Editor: Lloyd Davis
Design: Andrew Roberts
Printer: Transcontinental

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Goldenberg, Susan, 1944
Snatched! : the peculiar kidnapping of beer tycoon John
Labatt / Susan Goldenberg.

Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-55002-539-2

1. Labatt, John Sackville, 1880-1952--Kidnapping, 1934. 2. Kidnapping--Canada--History. 3. Kidnapping victims--Canada--Biography. I. Title.

1 2 3 4 5 08 07 06 05 04

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada
Printed on recycled paper

www.dundurn.com

Dundurn Press
8 Market Street
Suite 200
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5E 1M6

Gazelle Book Services Limited
White Cross Mills
Hightown, Lancaster, England
LA1 4X5

Dundurn Press
2250 Military Road
Tonawanda NY
U.S.A. 14150

To My Parents

On the morning of Tuesday, August 14, 1934, John Sackville Labatt, the millionaire president of John Labatt Ltd., one of Canadas biggest companies, took a little-used shortcut on his way to the office, a choice that was highly unusual for him. What resulted was a very peculiar kidnapping.

The police had warned him as far back as 1930 to beware of potential kidnappers, and just the previous summer he had narrowly escaped being abducted, daringly outwitting would-be kidnappers while vacationing at Corunna, on the St. Clair River south of Sarnia, Ontario. As he and his children, five-year-old Jack and three-year-old Mary, enjoyed their customary evening boat ride on the river, a high-powered boat of the type used by rum-runners darted out from the Michigan shoreline on the American side of the river and headed straight for his launch.

There were conflicting reports as to what happened next. The London Free Press reported that the manoeuvre was so suggestive of trouble that Labatt raced for the Canadian side and by a narrow margin reached a place where there were too many people for the [apparent] kidnappers nerve. The Toronto Daily Star wrote that to evade his pursuers he was compelled to run to the United States instead of the Canadian shore. After a time he obtained protection and returned to his summer home. Whether these would-be kidnappers were the same gang as those who snatched him a year later was never determined, although the second group insisted that the first mob went cold on the idea of snatching Labatt and dropped out after their attempt failed.

The scare caused Labatt to rent a summer house at a different location in 1934. He still wanted a place near enough for him to commute easily to and from his office in London, Ontario, and decided upon Brights Grove, on the shores of Lake Huron about ten miles east of Sarnia. There he rented the Holland property, a beautiful brick mansion. Labatt believed Brights Grove a safer location than the previous years because it was not as near the border. He was particularly concerned for his childrens safety because of the 1932 kidnap-murder of Charles Lindberghs baby son, and he had hired guards to protect them.

Why, after all these precautions, did he then take a chance on an isolated route on the morning of August 14, 1934? He had been late leaving Brights Grove, and his pressing concern became making up the lost time in order to be punctual for a 10:30 a.m. appointment at John Labatts London headquarters. There he was to meet his brother Hugh, who was three years his junior and served as vice-president and secretary-treasurer of John Labatt Ltd., and Major General Sidney Chilton Mewburn of Hamilton, Ontario, an uncle by marriage and a director of the company. Mewburn had phoned Hugh early that morning, requesting a meeting with him and John to discuss, among other matters, Johns trip to Detroit the preceding Saturday. Hugh had called John to ask if he could arrive in time, and John had said yes.

As the drive from Brights Grove to London took a little over an hour, John should have left around 9:15, but he was slightly delayed. He never explained why publicly. Perhaps he was concerned about his wife Bessie, still recuperating from the birth of their third child, Arthur, born just over three months earlier on May 11.

Despite his frightening escape from the would-be abductors in 1933, Labatt was, as usual, travelling alone, even though he could easily have afforded to be chauffeured and/or been accompanied by a bodyguard. His mother-in-law had frequently implored him and her daughter to be careful, because you are very well off. But they always laughed at her fears. Labatt had also ignored threatening letters he had received, dismissing them as the work of cranks.

Labatt foolhardily placed punctuality before safety. Instead of taking his usual route along the heavily travelled county road that ran directly south from Brights Grove to join the main SarniaLondon route, Provincial Highway 22, he chose to save a few miles by taking the isolated shortcut. After driving east along the beach resort road that skirts Lake Huron for about twelve miles, he branched off at the village of Camlachie onto Egremont Road, a little-used, heavily forested, narrow dirt road, as a diagonal shortcut to the highway. Egremont joined Highway 22 at Warwick, a distance of about twelve miles from Camlachie. Since there was never much traffic on Egremont, Labatt calculated that he could travel at a high speed and make up for his delayed departure.