I enjoyed the short article in Friday’s paper (The Way it Was) about a 1950 trial where it stated RCMP Constable Fred Sontag slapped an inebriated Jack Roth twice while depositing him in a cell in Kimberley. I remember when Jack Kirkup, of the BC Police Force, capably policed Kimberley as a one man police force, and driving the car home, on the non-busy roads, after a few brews in one of the busy pubs, was not then a concern. But in the 1950s and the new RCMP policing on us — drinking and driving became a serious issue. Prosecutions and fines increased intensely, led by an ambitious Constable Sontag. He was very busy, and became very unpopular. I worked as an underground mine surveyor at the time, and the Monday lunch room gossip was always the actions of Fred Sontag on the weekend. The Friday article mentions some people wanting to expel him from Kimberley.
Here is the true end of this story. Sontag was renting a house on Spokane Street, near my home, just down from the present library, with his small Volkswagon car in the back yard. After a very loud early morning explosion, likely using dynamite from the Sullivan Mine, the car was destroyed, being blown up. After an investigation, finding nothing, Constable Sontag was removed from Kimberley.
Milton ‘Red’ Mellor
Kimberley
