Every few months, I provide a column on characters from Canadian legal history. This week’s version involves a man some thought of as a hero, some as a rogue; a man who managed to tread on both sides of the law and who travelled the globe in an age where few could do so.
I speak of Morris Two-Gun Cohen. Some of the facts related to Cohen are unclear, shrouded in the mists of time and in a legend that Cohen had a hand in fashioning.
Read Also
Saskatchewan RM declines feedlot application, cites bylaws
Already facing some community pushback, a proposed 2,000-head cattle feedlot south of Swift Current, Sask., has been rejected for a municipal permit, partly over zoning concerns about the minimum distance from a residence.
He was of Jewish ancestry, with his parents coming from Poland, although it is unclear whether he was born there or in England around 1887.
It is clear that Cohen found himself on the wrong side of the law as a young boy. Records show the young Cohen was involved in thievery and pickpocketing in Victorian London and was arrested.
He was also a boxer in matches that were not sanctioned and whose legality was questionable.
Around the age of 12, he was sent to a reform school, because his conduct was not improving. He spent five years there, after which his parents decided to get him out of London and all the temptations it offered.
The young man was shipped to work with relatives near Wapella, Sask.
However, it was hard to stay on the farm when he’d already seen the big city lights, so Cohen got out of farming and headed to larger centres.
He was involved in real estate in Edmonton. He used his old skills to be a pickpocket and run scams on people.
He worked in carnivals as a sideshow barker, played cards and may even have plied his trade as a pimp in Moose Jaw, Sask. He was arrested numerous times and ended up in jail on more than one occasion.
Cohen fought in the First World War with a railway division, supervised numerous Chinese labourers and became interested in Chinese culture.
After the war, he came to Saskatoon, where he was a frequent visitor at houses of gambling and ill repute. He met Mah Sam, owner of the Alberta Restaurant, and supporter of Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen.
Cohen stopped a robbery at his restaurant, after which he and Sam became friends. Cohen earned the nickname Two-Gun by wearing both a shoulder and belt holster.
In the early 1920s, Cohen travelled to China, met Yat-sen and became his bodyguard. He eventually taught troops self-defence and firearms training and was a gun runner and officer in the Chinese army.
When Japan invaded in 1937, that business increased and he actively led the resistance for the Chinese republic while spying for the British.
He was captured when Japanese troops attacked Hong Kong, having travelled there to rescue the widow of Sun Yat-sen.
The Japanese overran the British colony, and Cohen was put into a concentration camp until 1943, when he was released in a prisoner exchange and returned to Canada.
The late 1940s found him in Palestine as an arms dealer, aiding the Jewish nationalists who were forming the fledgling state of Israel.
Returning to Montreal, he married an exotic socialite and garment dealer, but that marriage ended. He returned to England in the 1950s and died there in 1970.
His story is interesting enough to be the topic of an upcoming Hollywood film.
Rick Danyliuk is a lawyer with McDougall Gauley LLP in Saskatoon. Contact him by e-mail at rdanyliuk@producer.com.
