Reporter Christian Smith Jr. went undercover in the 1924 Saskatoon drug scene. His series published in the Saskatoon Daily Star revealed a hidden world of ‘snow sniffers,’ ‘hop heads’ and opium smokers.
Reporter Christian Smith Jr. went undercover in the 1924 Saskatoon drug scene. Submitted by Julian Smith.
It was just before Christmas 1923 and police reporter Christian Smith Jr. had a “premonition” that Saskatoon’s cops would be cracking down on the drug trade before the end of the year.
Sources were suggesting that police would be going after cocaine dealers in the city’s Chinatown district. It wasn’t the first time police had targeted the warren of buildings overlooking the South Saskatchewan River.
The 24-year-old reporter knew police chief George Donald and detective-inspector Albert Laver well enough from working the beat to get the inside scoop.
It proved to be a curious meeting.
“Laver has a cute way of saying much and telling nothing,” Smith Jr. later wrote in one of his articles about the affair.
But the chief confirmed that police would be taking a run at drug dealers working from restaurants and opium dens in Chinatown, notably the New York Chop Suey House on First Avenue and 19th Street.
“Chief Donald instructed Laver to take me into his confidence and approved my accompanying his police agents,” Smith Jr. wrote.
Police agreed to let Smith Jr. work undercover and arrange drug buys.
On Jan. 3, 1924, armed and backed by police, Smith Jr. went into Chinatown looking for a mysterious drug kingpin who ran the cocaine trade in the city. For three weeks, the young reporter posed as a cocaine addict, “living amongst the flotsam and jetsam of Saskatoon’s underworld.”
The Daily Star published his three-part series in February 1924.
“Chinatown. Chop suey. A twanging guitar. Scuttling, furtive figures. Cocaine!” one of the stories proclaimed in a subheading.
Smith’s family had moved to Canada from Amsterdam in 1910, when he was 10 years old. They initially struggled in the new country, but Christian’s son Julian Smith says his dad had a facility for language, a love of reading and a strong sense of grammar.
Christian Smith Jr. wrote under the byline “C. Smith Jr.” to avoid confusion because his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were also named Christian. Julian’s proper name is Christian Julian Smith, but he goes by Julian for the same reason.
Now 97 and living in London, Ont., Julian said his Dad’s career as a newspaperman began when a weasel ran into a barbershop.
“One day in Saskatoon he was between several small jobs and he saw this weasel run into a barbershop and it created quite a commotion. So, he decided to write a story about it and he took it over to The Star and they liked it and took it,” Julian said in an interview with CBC.
“They said, ‘If you get more stories like this, we’d be interested.’ So, he came up with a few more over the next couple of weeks. And then they offered him a job.”
When asked what he wanted to do, he simply answered “police reporter.”
A century later, Smith Jr.'s son Julian chuckles at the deal his dad made with police to go undercover.
“So he became a drug addict, sort of,” he said.
“They gave him a policeman for a bodyguard. And they gave my dad a gun.”
WATCH | Saskatoon police gave this reporter a gun and sent him undercover in 1924. He got quite a story:
Reporter Christian Smith Jr. went undercover in the 1924 Saskatoon drug scene. His series published in the Saskatoon Daily Star revealed a hidden world of ‘snow sniffers,’ ‘hop heads’ and opium smokers. CBC Saskatchewan's Dan Zakreski shares the incredible story.
Echoes of the past
The population of Saskatoon in 1924 was about 30,000. The city was growing fast, its rapid expansion reflecting the economic and industrial development that followed the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the growth of agriculture in the surrounding region.
There were two newspapers, the Saskatoon Daily Star and the Daily Phoenix, and the headlines of the day show how many of the topics from a century ago mirror what we still see today.
There was a tax revolt brewing in the Nutana neighbourhood – “Mayor Says Southside is Right in Opposing Rosary Hall No Tax Plea.” Immigration was also a hot topic —a story titled “Scandinavian Women Coming” detailed a proposal to bring a large number to work as domestic servants.
And there were concerns about drugs in the downtown.
In the first instalment, headlined “Reporter Poses As Cocaine Addict In City’s Underworld,” Smith Jr. described the addicts he encountered.
“I see them passing before me, tired, hollow-cheeked, wan-faced men and women, human forms who have tasted the dregs of utter misery and degradation,” he wrote.
Peter Butt, a retired clinical associate professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, said he is not surprised that issues of addiction, trauma, race and policing from a century ago still echo in the city today.
“Those are common themes and risk factors, if you will,” Butt said in an interview.
“We know that more marginalized communities have a greater risk of having mental health and addiction problems.”
‘Peddlers and addicts’
Christian Smith Jr. was a man of his time, and the language in his news stories reflects the casual racism of the 1920s. The modifiers used to describe the men and women he encountered are race-based and make for uncomfortable reading in 2025.
See past the loaded language, though, and a compelling portrait of the city and its characters emerges. Smith Jr. proved to have a gifted eye for detail.
On Jan. 3, Smith Jr. and his handler, a man identified as Bert with knowledge of the underworld players, headed to the New York Chop Suey House on First Avenue.
They asked for a dealer known as “Mah” and “slapped $2 on the counter.”
A man took the money and went out the front door with a woman, returning in a few moments and handing cocaine packets to Bert.
Smith Jr. and Bert then crossed over to the CNR yards across First Avenue and gave the drugs to officers monitoring the buy.
They then went to the home of Thomas Simmonds at 444 Avenue C South, again to buy $2 packets of cocaine.
Simmonds, according to Smith Jr., was “sanctimonious and smooth-tongued.”
“His voice was soft, with the musical drawl of the South. Only after Bert had given him an inkling of our desires did his language change from carefully phrased words to the vernacular and profanity of ‘the jungle.’“
Smith Jr. described how Simmonds had biblical quotations scrawled on the walls of the house.
“The amazing paradox of the biblical quotations held my attention for a moment,” he wrote.
“Within my range of vision there were 28 beautifully embossed texts. One, I remember, was, ‘Stand Fast in the Faith.’ Another, ‘Christ is the Light of the World.’ There were more, I saw, in the bedroom.”
In an interesting tactic, the men decided Bert should introduce Smith Jr. by his proper name — and as a reporter for The Star — and depict him as a secret cocaine user. Smith Jr. wrote that it took half an hour to raise the subject of “C.”
“[Bert] mentioned peddlers and addicts well known in the underworld and displayed familiarity with their peculiarities and their nicknames. There was ‘Nervy Red.’ There was ‘The Runner.’”
The subject turned to police and Simmonds noted that he knew Det. Insp. Laver “and admitted the detective was clever but boasted of having outwitted him completely.”
Bert then steered the conversation to George How, “a Chinese dope peddler.” Simmonds became angry, saying How had ripped him off in a cocaine deal.
Bert then told Simmonds in a half-whisper that Smith Jr., “used to get a little from me,” the reporter wrote.
“With a frightened movement, I turned in my chair. ‘For God’s sakes,’ I said to Simmonds, ‘don’t let anyone know.’”
Simmonds produced two packets of cocaine from his pocket.
“Can I come again?” Smith Jr. asked the peddler.
“Sure,” he smiled. “You can always get me here or at the pool room.”
‘Never call at Wing Wing again’
Two days later, on Saturday night, Bert and Smith Jr. went into Chinatown to seek out Ethel Davis, the wife of drug dealer Charlie “Low Sing” Lee. The pair lived at 412 First Avenue S. in a house with a sign out front: Wing Wing Co.
“The girl, I had been told by police, was a ‘hop head.’ She had a police record and was believed to be dealing in drugs, particularly when Lee was absent,” Smith Jr. wrote.
They went to the house but it was never clear whether they were able to buy drugs there.
They then returned to the shack on Avenue C and bought more cocaine from Thomas Simmonds.
Then they returned to the New York Chop Suey House, to try again to find Mah Yin Wee. Instead, they encountered coke dealer Charlie Lee and were given a blunt warning.
“He accosted us, and called us down for visiting his home, once more impressing on us the need for utmost caution,” Smith Jr. wrote.
“Never call at Wing Wing again!” threatened Charlie, as he walked away. Smith Jr. noted that Lee had two gold teeth on the left side of his jaw.
Smith Jr. and Bert continued through mid-January to buy drugs for the police and search for Mah Yin Wee, “the mystery man of Chinatown.”
The reporter’s narrative of his forays into Chinatown is a kaleidoscope of action, lurid detail and colourful characters. A century later, they are well worth a trip to the city archives on Fourth Avenue to read in their original broadsheet glory.
On the afternoon of Jan. 18, Smith Jr. and Bert met and arranged to go back to Chinatown and the New York Chop Suey House “to trail Mah to his lair that evening.”
“At 8:30 I met Bert at a Second Avenue poolroom, where he was watching a game of Kelly pool, and we headed for Chinatown.”
They encountered cocaine dealers Charlie Lee and George How; a limping waiter nicknamed “Springhalt”; the addict Bobbie Jennison and girlfriend Marie, “attired in a tiny pink kimona”; and Stormer McLaughlin and his 14-year-bride. Smith Jr. described police raids at the Wing Wing, where “opium smoking was indulged in nightly, after midnight.”
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In the end, though, Smith Jr. never did track down Mah Yin Wee.
“Mysterious ‘Mah’ Is Once More Quarry In Cocaine Enquiry,” was the headline in his final instalment.
“Unsuccessful in search for kingpin of drug traffic, reporter tells of sales made by Chinese peddler and pretty girl.”
The undercover series and drug buys ultimately led to the arrest and conviction of five men and a woman.
The march of progress
Six years after Smith Jr.'s series ran city workers "invaded Saskatoon's squalid little Chinatown" on the orders of mayor and council.
"The first steps in its obliteration were the removal of two frame buildings, an ancient blacksmith shop and a two storey dwelling," said a Star-Phoenix story on Dec. 17, 1930.
"The blacksmith shop was moved first, and then hands of wreckers and movers started on the first Chinese residence. All over the little quarter Orientals are preparing for a general exodus.
"Hoy Luk, Nineteenth Street Merchant, stirring in a chow yok pan where an abalone was busy broiling, found time to observe that this was the way of the Occident."
Chinatown was cleared to provide a central site for the Technical Collegiate, a new Legion building and later an arena. Today, the area is the home of River Landing.
The gun in the newsroom
Julian said his Dad kept the gun police gave him for the undercover investigation on his desk in the newsroom.
“One day at the StarPhoenix (the competing papers were bought by the Sifton family and joined into one) another peer came up and said, ‘Is this real?’ Then he aimed it at the ceiling and pulled the trigger and shot in the ceiling.”
Another time, “my dad was dancing with my mother and he had worn a hole in his pocket and the gun fell on the floor and everybody skirted to the sidewalls.”
Julian said his dad’s experience working undercover in the Saskatoon drug world informed the rest of his life.
“He was a social justice person and he got interested in health,” he said.
After two decades working at the StarPhoenix, Smith Jr. shifted gears and began a career in public health. The Canadian Journal of Public Health profiled him in 1966.
“In 1944, he accepted the post of Director of Health Education in the Department of Public Health. During the early years of World War II, he was engaged in the first venereal disease education program of its kind in Canada.
He gave his time to the John Howard Society and in 1946, became secretary of a Saskatchewan-appointed Royal Commission to investigate correctional practice,” the profile said.
“In 1952, Mr. Smith set up the first comprehensive accident prevention program conducted by any public agency in Canada.”
Addictions expert and university professor Peter Butt is not surprised by the arc of Smith’s career.
“I think that people who are working in the field quickly come to realize that we need a better system of care,” he said.
“These are complex issues, complicated concurrent issues that require some unravelling. A blunt, simplistic response doesn’t work.”
Christian Smith Jr. died in 1977.