A few pages into Alistair MacLeod’s 1976 short story The Closing Down of Summer there’s a brief description of moonshine the main characters were drinking on a beach on the west coast of Cape Breton:

It is the purest of moonshine made by our relatives back in the hills and is impossible to buy. It comes to us only as a gift or in exchange for long-past favours: bringing home of bodies, small loans of forgotten dollars, kindnesses to now-dead grandmothers. It is as clear as water, and a teaspoonful of it when touched by a match will burn with the low blue flame of a votive candle until it is completely consumed, leaving the teaspoon hot and totally dry.

Knowing that much of what Alistair MacLeod writes about is based on his life and his people, it’s not much of a stretch to think that those moonshine-making “relatives back in the hills” were his distant cousins in Glencoe/Upper Southwest Mabou, who also bore the name MacLeod. Alistair MacLeod is a descendant of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Duncan MacLeod, whom I wrote about last May. One of Duncan’s sons, Donald, was Alistair’s ancestor; another, John, was my great-great-great-great-grandfather. As mentioned in another post, John’s son Duncan migrated to Cape Breton in 1843; Duncan’s son Angus, my great-great-grandfather, became the patriarch of a large family in Glencoe/Upper Southwest Mabou after his father’s death.

But why would I assume the relatives mentioned in Alistair MacLeod’s story were my relatives? Well, because my MacLeod relatives weren’t just Alistair MacLeod’s kin. They also happened to be the makers of some of the finest moonshine on that side of the island.

Angus MacLeod’s sons would go into the woods at a certain time every year to make their moonshine. They had quite an operation going, and were able to keep it safe from the long arm of the law year after year.There was one year, however, in which a close call almost ended not only in the discovery of their still, but also could have ended in tragedy.

One year — I don’t know exactly when — the RCMP came dangerously close to finding the MacLeod boys’ moonshine operation in the woods. According to my grandfather, an RCMP officer named Malcolm MacLean was chasing my great-granduncle Alec MacLeod somewhere in the woods when Alec, who always carried a pistol, turned to fire a warning shot. Instead his bullet hit MacLean in the neck, seriously wounding him. MacLean survived but was left with a permanent disability, which earned him the nickname Crooked-Neck MacLean. Worse still, he never got a look at the face of the man he’d been chasing, so he could never pin the shooting on Alec, even though everyone in the area knew it was Alec who’d done it. Alec spent the rest of his life feeling guilty over what he’d done, but also relieved that he hadn’t killed MacLean. He also felt quite relieved, as did the rest of the family, that the MacLeods’ moonshine operation could carry on for a little while longer. Alec died in 1977.

My grandfather told me quite a bit about his relatives from up in those hills. But those are stories for another day.