Demon Rum or Easy Money: Government Control of Liquor in British Columbia from Prohibition to Privatization 9780773573727

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Demon Rum or Easy Money: Government Control of Liquor in British Columbia from Prohibition to Privatization

The Carleton Library Series A series of original works, new collections and reprints of source material relating to Canada, issued under the supervision of the Editorial Board, Carleton Library Series, Carleton University Press Inc., Ottawa, Canada. General Editor

Michael Gnarowski

Editorial Board

Valda Blundell (Anthropology) Irwin Gillespie (Economics) Naomi Griffiths (History) Robert J . Jackson (Political Science) David B. Knight (Geography) Michael MacNeil (Law) Stephen Richer (Sociology)

Demon Rum or Easy Money: Government Control of Liquor in British Columbia from Prohibition to Privatization

by Robert A. Campbell

Carleton University Press Ottawa, Canada

1991

@Carleton University Press Inc. 1991 ISBN 0-88629-152-6 (paperback) ISBN 0-88629- 150-X (casebound) Printed and bound in Canada Carleton Library Series 169 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Campbell, Robert A., 1952Demon rum or easy money: government control of liquor in British Columbia from Prohibition to privatization '

ISBN 0-88629-152-6 (paperback) ISBN 0-88629-150-X , (casebound)

1. Drinking of alcoholic beverages-Government policy-British ColumbiaHistory-20th century. 2. Alcohol-Law and legislation-British ColumbiaHistory-20th century. 3. British Columbia-Politics and government20th century. I. Title. 11. Series.

Distributed by Oxford University Press Canada, 70 Wynford Drive, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada. M3C 139 (416) 441-2941 Cover design:

Y Graphic Design

Acknowledgements Carleton University Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

To my parents and the memory of Elizabeth Lees

Contents Acknowledgements Preface

One: From No Control to Government Control, 1800-1921 TWO: Liquor and Liberals Three: The Profitable Status Quo FOUr: Wacky Liquor Laws

Five: Liberalization versus Moderation

Six: Conclusion: Control and Consumerism Appendix: Tables

Table 1: Alcohol Real Price Index (Canada) Table 2: Beer Real Price Index (British Columbia) Table 3: Apparent Consumption of Absolute Alcohol (Canada and British Columbia) Table 4: British Columbia Liquor Revenue as a Percentage of Provincial Revenue

Acknowledgements

Some authors, aware of the debts they have incurred, choose not to thank specific individuals lest they forget someone, who, unacknowledged, may seethe no matter how silently. I accept that risk, and I admit I can not thank everyone who has helped me. But I have been at this project for over seven years, and many people have guided me along the way. At Capilano College, it was Paul Mier who originally forced me to take a notion and turn it into an idea. Nigel Amon helped me with the tables, not all of which made it into the final draft. In 1984 I wrote the first two pages on my typewriter. Steve Gallagher intervened and introduced me to computers, and I soon gave away the typewriter. Laraine Hamilton assisted me tremendously with the flurry of correspondence that this book has generated. In the library, James Kwok cheerfully handled my continual requests for loans from libraries across North America. Stan Persky showed me some of the ropes in the business of dealing with publishers, but I still nearly managed to hang myself. With the assistance of a Canadian Studies Writing Award from the Secretary of State, I was able to obtain some research help. Karen Gram was the first researcher, but she soon went on to bigger things. Quite simply, if it had not been for Elizabeth Lees, I would probably still be in the library. Unfortunately, she died in 1990, but, knowing Elizabeth, I am sure that, if she doesn't approve of the final product, I will hear from her. Unpaid but not unsung, Joan Mitchell dug up unusual and valuable sources. My research was also assisted by the cooperation and

material I received from the Association of Canadian Distillers and the Brewers Association of Canada. In the early days of the project Jo-Anne Ray proved a valuable critic and sounding board. Ingrid Gutzmann gave a continuing supply of good cheer. Both Donna McMahon and Janet Souther carefully read versions of the manuscript from cover to cover. Janet's best advice, however, was to stop writing and go skiing. My editorial thanks also go to "reader B," picked by the Social Science Federation of Canada, and to Gerry Hallowell, who also gave much needed support at the right time. Many people at Carleton University Press have helped me, including a sharp-eyed copy editor, but I particularly want t o thank former Associate Editor David Knight. Fellow historians Randall Garrison, Bob McDonald, Marlene LeGates and Andrea Smith were generous with books, ideas and constructive criticism. Indiana Matters is also a historian, but as an archivist she went out of her way to guide me to new sources. She also directed me to the cooperative people a t the Records Management Branch and to Allan Gould, then general manager of the Liquor Control and Licensing Branch in Victoria. Allan and his friendly staff let me rummage through the entire office for weeks, and Allan in particular always found time in his hectic schedule to answer my questions. Finally, this book is dedicated to the late Elizabeth Lees. It is also dedicated to Dorothy and Darrell Campbell, my mother and father. To my parents I offer a simple toast: "Thanks, folks."

Preface

In October 1920, a few months after the Volstead Act legally dried up the United States, the voters of British Columbia, for the first time including women in their number, abandoned prohibition for the regulated sale of liquor in government stores. The Government Liquor Act went into effect in June 1921, just six weeks after the province of Quebec opened its liquor stores. While North Americans might dismiss French and Catholic Quebec as a quaint aberration, the same could not be said for the Pacific province and its "noble experiment ." This book is the first systematic examination of the British Columbia experience with government control. In fact, it is the first of its kind in Canada. Unlike their colleagues in the United States, few Canadian historians have been attracted to alcohol studies, and what little work has been done has concentrated on the ever-alluring prohibition movement. Other than the books of James Gray, onetime journalist, temperance enthusiast and prairie historian, I found little published material on government contro1.l The structure of this book is that of a typical analytical narrative. Less explicit is the central theme. To understand the evolution of government control, one has to examine the notion of "control" from a variety of viewpoints: as a set of legal limits placed on access to alcohol, as authority over the liquor traffic, as political power, and as part of the moral issue of liquor. Take the first aspect: "control" refers to the legal limits placed on access to alcohol. Monopoly sale was a response to the perceived failure of prohibition after World War One. Not only was prohibition difficult and expensive to enforce, it failed to eliminate liquor as a divisive and dangerous political issue. If anything, it intensified the fight. Control represented the attempt to find a workable compromise between the wet

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and dry positions. At the core of that compromise was the removal of liquor from market influences. Through highly-regulated stores operated by the appointed Liquor Control Board (LCB), the government made some liquor available for those responsible adults who wanted it (futile attempts were made to fix purchase limits). Most drys came to tolerate government stores because, supposedly, the destructive profit motive had been eliminated from liquor distribution. And wets could again buy bottled liquor. But the province did not sell liquor at cost; price too was a method of limiting access t o alcohol. The official view was that it would be irresponsible for the government to peddle cheap booze, as that would encourage consumption. Yet, if prices were too high, consumers would, and did, turn to home production and illegal liquor. Thus, excessively high prices could result in fewer sales, less revenue and a loss of control over the product the government had a mandate to regulate. While extracting revenue from liquor was not the initial priority of the political leaders, the government soon became dependent on i t as a reliable source of income. The evident tension between regulation and revenue continued, as no perfect balance existed. Access to alcohol had yet another dimension-licensed public drinking. Prohibitionists had gained much popularity among middle class people with their articulate attacks on the alleged sins of working class saloons: poverty, prostitution and disease. Even many wets did not want to see the return of the old-time saloon. Consequently, the liquor act initially banned all unlicensed public drinking. On the other hand, the sale of beer by the glass was strongly promoted by the brewers, hotel owners and veterans' groups. The result, in the early years of control, was a proliferation of illegal drinking clubs, many located in former hotel saloons. Again the government sought a compromise. In 1925 it began to license hotel beer parlours. No statute or regulation confined parlours to hotels but the government, through the Liquor Control Board, developed an understanding with the hotels' association. As long as they obeyed strict regulations, the hotels enjoyed a near monopoly. For the next fifty years they dominated the business of licensed public drinking in British Columbia. The drys criticized this return of a small amount of private enterprise to liquor distribution, and they warned that the seedy saloon would soon reappear. To placate parlour opponents, the government limited the number of beer licences. As well, communities could prohibit beer parlours with local-option votes. Finally, the LCB for years tolerated no saloon trappings in the beer parlours. Only beer, still regarded by

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many as a drink of moderation, could be sold. No stand-up bar was permitted; patrons sat a t tables and were served by waiters. Neither food nor entertainment was allowed. At first women were banned, allegedly to curb prostitution, and were later confined to areas separated from single men. In short, the only thing one could do in a beer parlour was drink. The second aspect of control is the exercise of authority over the liquor traffic. By the 1920s decades of court decisions had left formal authority divided in Canada. The provinces regulated retail sale, but with regard to liquor exports, interprovincial trade, and producer licensing, they had to defer to the federal government. With its various taxes and duties on liquor, the federal government also influenced prices charged in British Columbia liquor stores. To combat bootleggers and rumrunners during American prohibition, British Columbia and the other control provinces demanded more liquor authority from Ottawa. In time they were successful, but the federal government never abandoned the field completely. 0t tawa currently retains its fiscal powers over liquor and some influence over advertising, and it can still use its trade authority with effect. In 1986, for example, British Columbia was one of the few provinces that refused to ban South African products from its liquor stores. The federal government wanted the ban, and it disallowed import permits for South African liquor. In addition, the federal government negotiated a free trade agreement with the United States that has profound implications for provincial liquor juri~diction.~ Particularly in the early years of government control, authority over the liquor traffic was compromised by the battles between the province and its illegal competitors. Despite the law, the breweries continued to sell bottled beer outside liquor stores, and they supplied the illegal beer clubs with draft beer. Because of its incomplete legal authority, the province could not eliminate these opponents, and in the end it made deals with them. The brewers formed a provincially sanctioned cartel that guaranteed them sales in government stores and virtually eliminated any future competition. The hotels, of course, were allowed their beer parlours. These compromises with private enterprise became popular across the country and influenced Canadian drinking habits for decades. A third type of control is political control, and here patronage politics have been dominant. Government control not only provided needed dollars for general revenue budgets, it expanded patronage opportunities for the party in power. Through the Liquor Control Board, the government determined the location of liquor stores, the hiring of staff, and the suppliers of liquor. More important in the longer term was the

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return of licensed public drinking. The LCB, usually in concert with the government, decided who would get the licences. Since they were given for only a year at a time, licensees essentially became dependent on the party in power. Little evidence exists of a united "liquor interest'' in British Columbia. Those who had liquor privileges, particularly the hotels, used all their influence with politicians and regulatory authorities to protect their interests. As we shall see, for a variety of reasons the hotels' preeminent position was not successfully challenged until the 1970s. Regulation, monopoly, jurisdictional disputes and patronage: these phenomena suggest some comments on the role of the state in economic life. Particularly in the last two decades historians have been examining the complexities (and contradictions) of state promotion and regulation of economic activities in Canada. They have paid special attention to mining, forestry, and the broadly defined utilities: transportation, communications and power. We now have a good general sense of the intellectual, economic and political foundations of state activity in certain industries. Diverse and provocative conclusions have been reached about the nature and purpose of regulation and about those who advocated it and who benefited from it. The two dominant interpretations regard the state either as a broker among interest groups or as being "captured" by one or more 10bbies.~ Reality was more complex, a t least for liquor. Historians interested in regulation have been almost completely silent about their neighbourhood liquor stores and beer parlours or taverns. That silence has been unfortunate, for government control reveals much about the intricacies of the state and economic life, particularly the apparent contradiction between revenue, or promotion, and control, or regulation. Ian Drummond's comments on reform and prohibition in Ontario have broader application: "government policy mattered much more for the drink trades than for most other economic activities in the province." Government control, if not uniquely Canadian, was peculiarly so. Certainly it was much more than what Christopher Armstrong and H.V.Nelles call our "mid-Atlantic" approach to regulation (a position somewhere between those of Britain and the United States). Moreover, once implemented, control, especially the operation of stores, was broadly similar across the nation. The other provinces adopted the models developed in Quebec and British Columbia. While the regulation of liquor was similar to other economic activities, there are some significant differences, par ticularly the moral residue that remained part of government control.* In fact, the fourth and final aspect of control is liquor as a moral issue. Government-controlled liquor was a response t o prohibition, but prohibition itself was a product of the social dislocation caused by Canada's

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transformation into an urban, industrial nation. Dry supporters considered alcohol abuse primarily in moral and not in physical terms, and they saw their movement as the precursor of a redeemed world. Even with the demise of prohibition, liquor remained an emotional public issue. Attitudes toward liquor changed only slowly, but change they did. Prohibition became "temperance" again, and its popularity and influence continued to decline. Besides the perceived failure of prohibition, the most influential factor on attitudes toward alcohol was consumerism. Particularly after World War Two, attitudes toward liquor were notice ably more liberal, and some argued that liquor should be treated like any other consumer product in the market place. While most British Columbians apparently did not want liquor marketed like toothpaste, they wanted easier access, increased private sales and fewer moral constraints on drinking. The ultimate outcome of these attitudes has been the government's commitment to deregulation and privatization. Nevertheless, liberalization also provoked another reaction, par ticularly in light of increased consumption and the associated problems of alcohol abuse. A new, diverse temperance movement developed in the 1970s. This movement was a loose coalition of interest groups that preached moderation and defended government control of liquor against privatization. Although not religious in orientation, new temperance still had a strong moral tone, which was most perceptible in the campaign against drinking and driving. One of the many things this book is not is a social history of alcohol. For Canada that remains to be written. At the same time, this work offers some significant glimpses into drinking patterns and attitudes toward alcohol, especially those pertaining to women and liquor. Quite deliberately, it includes few tales of the rumrunners from Canada to the United States during American prohibition. Instead it focuses on the conditions that allowed the runners to prosper. It also barely touches on the fascinating complexities of the relationship between native people and liquor. A proper re-evaluation of the stereotypical views of native drinking would fill another volume. A final comment: "British Columbia'' often means in reality Greater Vancouver and Victoria. While numerous examples from non-metropolitan areas are cited, the two large urban areas dominate the book because they drove the making of liquor policy in the province. Not only did the first government stores open in Vancouver, the "experiments" of beer parlours, segregated seating and venereal disease monitoring began in that city. Beer parlour opponents in the 1920s targeted Vancouver because they knew that if they killed the parlours there, they would be victorious across the province. The temperance league also had its

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headquarters in Vancouver. In addition, the patronage machine was centred in the city, and the hotels' association began as an alliance of Vancouver hotels. Its political clout in part explains why the status quo prevailed so long after public attitudes appeared to have changed. The brewery cartel was an alliance of breweries located predominantly in Vancouver and on lower Vancouver Island. It should also be remembered that the offices of the Liquor Control Board were in Victoria, just a short walk from the legislative buildings. One does not have to be a geographical determinist to appreciate the influence of propinquity. On a more personal note: what sparked the writing of this book was my return to Canada in 1976 after having been raised primarily in California. There liquor is treated like almost any other consumer product, and the consumer can buy Canadian whisky in supermarkets until 2:00 a.m. every day. The sight of government liquor stores, real focal points of every Vancouver neighbourhood, was both amusing and bemusing. Here was one of the striking differences between life on the opposite sides of the border. In addition, it was impossible to understand why almost all "bars" (although no facility could legally use that word) were in hotels. What began as a personal interest became a professional one after some research questions had been formulated. What follows are some answers, many of them tentative, that may surprise the reader; they surprised me, too.

NOTES

1 See also, David C. Corbett, "Liquor Control Administration in British Columbia" Canadian Public Administration 2 (March 1959): 19-37. 2 On South African sanctions see Vancouver Sun, 2 July 1986, p. A3, and 26 September 1986, p. A7. 3 Some of the works that inform this book are, H.V. Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines and Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849-1 941 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1974, paperback ed. 1975); Tom Traves, The State and Enterprise: Canadian Manufacturers and the Federal Government, 191 7-1 931 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979); Paul Craven, 'An Impartial Umpire': Industrial Relations and the Canadian State, 1900-1911 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980); Christopher Armstrong, The Politics of Federalism: Ontario's Relations with the Federal Government, 1867-1942 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981); Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles,'Monopoly's Moment: The Organization and Regulation of Canadian Utilities, 1830-1 930 (Philadel-

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phia: Temple University Press, 1986); Doug Owram, The Government Generation: Canadian Intellectuals and the State, 1900-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986). 4 Ian Drummond, et. al., Progress without Planning: The Economic History of Ontario from Confederation to the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 293; Armstrong and Nelles, Monopoly's Moment, 322.

From N o Control t o Government Control,

1800-1 921

In the late eighteenth century, off the coast of what would become British Columbia, European fur traders introduced liquor to native Indians, who a t first showed little interest in it. But by 1800 they had acquired a taste for rum, which became a major article in the maritime fur trade. Landbased traders, however, especially the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) , condemned liquor's destabilizing and destructive influence and tried to limit its use in business with natives. Yet, until the HBC could subdue the intense competition from American traders, who promoted liquor in the fur trade, the British company was forced to exchange gallons for pelts. By the late 1830s American competition had been significantly reduced, and the HBC began to withdraw rum. In 1841 the British traders and their Russian counterparts agreed to a complete ban on liquor in the fur trade, which had at least limited success.l The prohibition against liquor did not apply to the traders themselves or to the residents of Fort Victoria, the main HBC trading post and, after 1849, capital of the Colony of Vancouver Island. HBC Chief Factor James Douglas, who became governor of the new colony in 1851, served "the very best" wine to his dinner guests. At nearby Craigflower farm, colonist Robert Melrose confided to his diary in the early 1850s that "it would almost take a line of packet ships, running regular between here, and San Francisco to supply this Island with grog, so great a thirst prevails amongst its inhabitants." When the Craigflower school was built in 1854, Melrose noted that the workers were "in general notoriously drunk." In his diary he often kept track of those, including himself, he believed were 9 / 2 drunk," "3/4 drunk," or even "whole drunk."2 The popularity of liquor on Vancouver Island inspired Governor Douglas to persuade his council to license wholesale and retail outlets in 1853. Liquor licences provided the cash-strapped government with a

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steady source of revenue to meet its expenses. Yet, like future government leaders, Douglas emphasized that his interest in liquor licences was more for control of consumption. He told the council that licences were the "best means of restraining the abuse, and excessive importation of spirituous liquors into this Colony." He informed his superiors in London that liquor licences were: fiercely opposed by the whole body of publicans and other blood suckers, who are preying upon the vitals of the Colony, exhausting its wealth and making a return of poisonous drinks, ruinous to the morals of the people, and the prolific source of poverty and crime.3

Yet, despite Douglas's apparent concern, there was nothing unusual about the popularity of liquor on Vancouver Island. Particularly in the early nineteenth century, liquor was a part of daily life for most North Americans, including children. Adults drank at home, at work and at play, usually every day and often all day. Drinking cut across all social lines and liquor was prominent at all social functions. No wedding, wake, holiday or election was complete without it. Travellers regularly stopped to quench their thirst. For example, in the early 1800s, on the 40-mile route between Hamilton and York (later Toronto), one could rest a t twenty different taverns and consume "atrocious brandy," beer, cider, and the ever-present whisky, which was sometimes made of "frosty potatoes, hemlock, pumpkins and black, mouldy ryeT4 Until well into the nineteenth century most people, including doctors, considered alcohol nutritious and healthful. Water had the opposite reputation, which in cities was often deserved. One American wag said the only benefit of water was that "it's very good for navigation." On the other hand, spirits were "aqua vitae"-the water of life. Moreover, hard liquor was cheap and readily available, unlike milk, coffee and tea. In rural areas, distilled grain reduced transportation costs and served as a substitute for cash. A bushel yielded over three gallons of whisky and sold for less than three shillings. Liquor was a useful pain killer in an age when pain was regarded as a disease rather than a symptom, but it also eased psychological stress and offered a diversion from a hard, monotonous life.5 While abstainers were rare, by the 1820s many Canadians began to call for reduced liquor consumption or temperance. As an organized movement, temperance appeared in British North America, Britain and the United States at about the same time, although the Americans were the leaders. Temperance was a response to the real problems associated with high levels of consumption. The problems were exacerbated by the complexities of nineteenth century life as it became more commercial and urban. For the ambitious, individual success and society's protection re-

From No Control to Government Control / 11

quired order and self-discipline, not the reckless chaos caused by alcohol abuse. Temperance also had a strong moral component instilled by the emotional preaching of the protestant evangelical movement. Methodist circuit riders came up from the states to inspire Canadians to live a moral life. Many preached that liquor abuse led to a sinful life, and they regarded spirits as "demon rum" that made potential converts too confused to receive God's message. By the early 18309, one hundred temperance societies claimed 10,000 members and published twelve newspapers in British North A m e r i ~ a . ~ With meetings, pledge cards, songs and sermons, early temperance societies urged people to moderate their use of distilled spirits. A few even served beer or wine at their meetings, while others began to condemn any use of alcohol. Following an American lead, some temperance groups transformed themselves into total abstinence societies, whose members proudly called themselves "teetotallers." Total abstinence marked the first split in the temperance movement, as both the Catholic church and the Church of England condoned the moderate use of alcohol. In both churches wine consumption was part of the communion ritual. Moreover, both churches were wary of the growing popularity of the dry

denomination^.^ Another split appeared in the 1850s with the birth of the Canadian Temperance League and its call for the prohibition of all liquor sales. To prohibitionists, moral persuasion and self-discipline were no longer enough t o protect society. They wanted the power of the state to ban liquor, although often they continued to call their organizations "temperance" groups. For many prohibitionists their inspiration was the success of Neal Dow, who was mayor of Portland, Maine, and the force behind Maine's prohibition law of 1851. By 1855, thirteen states had Maine laws that banned the retail sale of alcohol. Caught up in the enthusiasm, New Brunswick passed a Maine law but repealed it almost as soon as it went into effect in 1856.~ At first temperance and early prohibition had little impact on the northwest Pacific coast. In 1858, however, the non-native population leaped from a few hundred t o over 25,000, as fortune hunters, mainly American men, arrived to try their luck in the Fraser River gold rush. In response to the descent of this human deluge on the mainland, the Crown created the colony of British Columbia and appointed James Douglas as its non-resident governor. In 1859 the Sons of Temperance, an American prohibition society, opened a chapter in Victoria. But in the capital city, as well as the isolated mining camps on the mainland, liquor consumption remained a popular activity. One English writer feared for the "young and inexperienced" colonists, who were "certain to be hit

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by the arrow of temptation" and perhaps "doomed to the drunkard's grave."g He should have saved some of his concern for F'rederick Seymour. In 1866 the Crown joined the colony of Vancouver Island to the mainland and appointed Seymour governor. On 10 June 1869 Seymour died on his ship a t Bella Coola, after consuming an entire bottle of brandy for which the ship's doctor reported Seymour had "an inordinate craving." Two years after Seymour's death, British Columbia became Canada's sixth pr0vince.l At the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, prohibition was still a minor movement. Confederation actually hindered the prohibitionists, since both the federal government and the provinces claimed jurisdiction over the liquor traffic. Section 92 of the British North America Act gave the provinces the power to license taverns and saloons to raise revenue. But the BNA Act did not mention which level of government controlled the manufacture, sale and transport ation of liquor. In 1878, under intense pressure from the new Dominion Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquor Traffic, the federal government passed a temperance law, commonly called the Scott Act. It gave cities or counties the local option to prohibit the retail sale of liquor, upon petition of 25% of the electors and if voted in favour by a majority. In 1882 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) in England ruled the Scott Act was within federal jurisdiction under the peace, order and good government clause of Section 91.I1 In Ottawa neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives showed much interest in prohibition before the turn of the century, as the issue divided both parties. While briefly in power, the Liberals had passed the Scott Act to redirect the debate to the local level. On the Tory side, John A. Macdonald's main political concerns were the dominance of federal government over the provinces and the protection of federal liquor tax revenue and patronage, the glue that kept the Tories together. Under the guise of temperance concern, Macdonald's government tried to wrest control over retail liquor licensing from the provinces, but the premiers, particularly Oliver Mowat of Ontario, fought back. In 1883 Ontario won a major victory when the JCPC ruled its liquor licensing law was within provincial jurisdiction. Hodge vs. the Queen laid the constitutional foundation for provincial rights and the doctrine of co-ordinate powers. The federal government shifted to stalling the prohibitionists, among whom were many M P ~ with , House debates and a long royal commission, in the 18909, that reported against prohibition.12 In 1898 the new Liberal government of Wilfrid Laurier made good an earlier campaign promise and held a national plebiscite on prohibi-

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13

tion. To persuade the voters, the Dominion Alliance printed nearly nine million anti-drink leaflets, 40,000 cartoons and 10,000 posters. On 29 September 1898, over 500,000 Canadians (all men) voted on this question: "Are you in favour of passing an act prohibiting the importation, manufacture or sale of spirits, wine, ale, cider and all other alcoholic liquors for use as a beverage?" The total vote in favour was 278,380, against 264,693. The plebiscite carried in every province but Quebec, where it was defeated 28,436 to 122,760. Nearly half the votes against the plebiscite came from Quebec. There, the influential Catholic church supported moderation rather than prohibition.13 Despite the majority in favour, the government did nothing, in part because the Liberals did not want to upset a province that sent so many Liberals to Ottawa. But Laurier argued that the plebiscite was not an accurate expression of public opinion, as less than 45% of men on the voters list had cast their ballots. Therefore, only a quarter of those on the list had chosen prohibition. In March 1899 Laurier told Francis Spence of the Dominion Alliance, that "the expression of public opinion recorded a t the polls in favour of prohibition did not justify the introduction by the Government of a prohibitory measure."14 After 1898 the prohibitionists curtailed their national efforts. In 1901 the JCPC ruled that prohibition was primarily a provincial concern after all, although the provinces could not interfere with valid federal legislation such as the Scott Act. In addition, the federal government retained control over manufacture and interprovincial trade in liquor. The English judges concluded the entire matter was "better fitted for the consideration of the officers of the crown than a court of law." They acknowledged what Canadian politicians already knew; liquor was more a political than a legal issue.15 Despite the government's refusal to act, the 1898 plebiscite had demonstrated the increasing popularity of prohibition. By the early years of the twentieth century it became one of the most popular movements in Canadian history. In 1901 Prince Edward Island led the way by adopting prohibition; it remained dry for nearly 50 years. Before the end of World War One, every province and the federal government was to institute some form of prohibition.16 By the turn of the century the tactics of the prohibitionists had become more sophisticated. Economic analysis and sociological observations supplanted dull sermons, but the message remained the same. Even with more knowledge about the health problems associated with excessive consumption, liquor abuse was primarily a moral rather than a physical problem, and its elimination required the efforts of society as

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a whole, not just the self-discipline of individuals. Ultimately, however, the success of prohibition was the result of changes in Canadian society.

The Rise of Reform The phrase "a nation transformed" has been used to describe the effect of industrialization, urbanization and immigration upon Canada between 1890 and 1920. Between 1901 and 1921 Canada's population increased 63%, from 5.4 million to 8.8 million. The bulk of that growth came from government-encouraged immigration. Of the two million people who entered Canada between 1896 and 1914, most were British or American, but over half a million were were viewed as exotic by native-born Canadians: Ukrainians, Poles, Italians, Japanese, and East Indians. Either by choice or circumstances many immigrants settled in the expanding cities. By 1921, the census revealed that nearly 50% of all Canadian residents lived in urban areas, compared to 30% in 1891.17 This transformation was not an easy one. Cities were not prepared for the hordes of immigrants, particularly the thousands of poverty-stricken Europeans who were ignorant of Canadian ways. The economic gains associated with growth were not equitably distributed. Immigrants, often crowded in ethnic ghettos, were desperate for work, and employers often took advantage of their desperation. Class barriers as well as ethnic divisions also became more pronounced in industrializing Canada. The early twentieth century witnessed violent conflicts between capit a1 and labour, which culminated in the general strikes of 1919. Although the nation grew richer, its prosperity was marred by poverty, urban decay and corruption, disease, and a stagnant standard of living for many working people.18 These conditions sparked a number of movements for reform. Some proposals were truly radical, but more popular were the efforts of middle class Canadians to "save Canada" from the worst excesses of change. Generally these self-appointed saviours were educated, professional men and women who were not opposed to the changes in Canadian society, but wanted to have control over them. For the reformers, order, efficiency, scientific management and expertise represented progress. Their vision of progress also protected, instead of threatened, traditional values of home, family and religion. Reform still emphasized morality as it championed efficiency.lg The reformers were highly influenced by the social gospel movement and the campaign for woman suffrage. At the core of the social gospel movement was the idea of collective salvation, or the saving of society, and not just individuals. This provided the link between the protestant churches and reform; gospel advocates attempted to mould both

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religious and social attitudes. Religious leaders could no longer hide in their churches, but were expected to help alleviate the acute problems of Canadian life, such as poverty, disease and exploitation. While some radical church leaders, like J .S. Woodsworth, eventually saw economic inequality as the source of the worst problems, more conservative reformers, such as Francis Spence of the Dominion Alliance, blamed liquor for the ills of a morally deficient nation. For most church activists, prohibition, with its unusual emphasis on state action, became the favoured reforme20 By 1920 the federal government and all the provinces except Quebec had granted women the vote, and the campaign for woman suffrage had also become entwined with reform. The success of this movement was largely a result of its conservative cast, for few Canadian suffragists were equal rights feminists who demanded the vote on the basis of justice and equality between men and women. While some suffragists wanted to break out of stereotyped roles, the majority accepted, even promoted, the separate worlds, or spheres, of men and women. They sought to enhance the traditional concerns of women-home and family, religion and morality-that appeared to be threatened by the changes the nation was experiencing. Thus, suffragists sought more than the vote. These largely middle class women felt they had the moral mission to protect and improve Canadian life.21 Most Canadians assumed that if women won the franchise, they would vote for prohibition. Although prohibition and suffrage were separate movements, their memberships overlapped considerably, and for many women prohibition was one of the most popular routes to social action. The classic example is, of course, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU),an American organization that came to Canada in 1874 and British Columbia in 1882. By the early twentieth century the WCTU boasted 10,000 members in Canada. Since the WCTU could not persuade men to institute prohibition, its members adopted a suffrage platform to achieve their main goal, a righteous society, created in part by the elimination of alcohol .22 In many ways women paid the price of alcohol abuse-it was they who suffered from the loss of income consumed in saloons, and from domestic violence and the general neglect of home and family. Moreover, both men and women regarded alcohol abuse as a male vice; women did drink a t home, but they drank liquor disguised as patent medicine, which contained up to 65% alcohol. Until the twentieth century, most men drank in saloons, where they might consort with another threat to family and purity-prostitutes. Prostitutes were associated with venereal disease, which had become a serious problem in Canada. By 1900

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syphilis and gonorrhea had reached "staggering proportions," and doctors had come to believe syphilis was linked to disease in the unborn, insanity and sterility. Because of the threat to progeny, not only the family was endangered, but also the entire race. The moral mission of women was therefore seen as even more imperative. They had to abolish the sexual double standard that tolerated male deviance. With the vote they could help achieve prohibition and eliminate the saloon as a breeding ground of societal decay.23 In British Columbia the desire for reform in general, and prohibition sentiment in particular, was weaker than in the rest of the nation. The last province in English Canada to adopt prohibition, British Columbia was also the first to abandon it in favour of government control. Both economic and social factors hindered prohibition in the Pacific province. While the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 had helped to diversify economic activities, they remained tied to the extraction of primary resources. Mining, fishing and logging offered seasonal employment in isolated areas to transient males. In 1901 British Columbia had 177 men for every 100 women, while the national average was 105 to 100. For young men in bleak, often temporary, company towns, liquor was good cheer, and few were prepared to worry about the evil liquor traffic or its threat to their communities. In addition, as wage labourers in an unstable economy, the workers had no reason to adopt the thrift and self-discipline of budding entrepreneurs. For them, drinking was often one of the few forms of recreation available. As one English traveller observed in 1887: "A saloon seems to be the very first need of any civilized community out West; in fact we passed one place which consisted entirely of a saloon, the rest being left to the imagination. . . . It is at such places that most of the rows commence which occasionally chase away the ennui of a backwoods life."24 Like the rest of Canada, British Columbia experienced rapid growth in the early twentieth century. Between 1901 and 1921 the province nearly tripled its population to 524,582. By 1911 it was Canada's most urbanized province, with nearly a third of its population in Vancouver, which had replaced Victoria as the leading city. But rapid growth did not seem particularly threatening to British Columbians, as few of the immigrants were poor Europeans. In 1901 about 75% of Vancouver's residents named British as their ethnic origin. That figure had increased to 77% in 1921. The most significant foreign-born group was Asian, primarily Chinese and Japanese; however, white British Columbians never considered Asians as part of society. Their goal was to exclude Asians, not to assimilate them.25

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Religious beliefs also tended to dampen reform sentiments. The Church of England favoured moderation, not prohibition, and it remained the most popular faith in British Columbia. Methodists and Baptists, the most enthusiastic prohibitionists, were not, even when taken together, as numerous as Anglicans. Moreover, the social gospel remained relatively weak in British Columbia; one historian has characterized it as "rhetoric without result."26 Although temperance societies had existed in the province since the gold rush, anti-liquor sentiment was insignificant until the turn of the century. One church representative described temperance work before the 1898 federal plebiscite as "masterly inactivity." Certainly, British Columbians had voted in favour of prohibition in 1898. But less than a third of the eligible voters bothered with ballots, and the plebiscite passed by the smallest majority in Canada, fewer than 1000 votes. A place like Chilliwack, in the Fraser Valley, was the exception that proved the rule about liquor and reform in British Columbia. Chilliwack had a stable social and economic structure, and the Methodist church was firmly entrenched in the community. The community displayed temperance enthusiasm almost from its inception, and Chilliwack voters cast 331 ballots for prohibition and 107 against in 1898.~' British Columbians, however, did not live in isolation from the rest of Canada. Many of the reform leaders in the province came from elsewhere and brought their ideas with them. By the 1890s some British Columbians, particularly middle class reformers in Victoria and Vancouver, began to express concern about the proliferation of saloons.28 Across the continent, in the late nineteenth century, improved brewing techniques and rapid rail service prompted the expansion of breweries and increased pressure to find outlets for their products. With cheap beer, prizes and takeovers, the breweries encouraged the expansion of saloons. In fact, the word itself, taken from the French "salon," was coined in the United States to enhance the image of the ubiquitous institution. Following the British tradition according to which inns and taverns provided food and shelter as well as liquor, most provinces, including British Columbia, began to force saloons into hotels. High capital costs were meant to restrict the number of saloon hotels. Of course, some hotels were that in name only. In 1882, Winnipeg, a city of 16,000, had 86 licensed hotels, or one for every 200 residents. As well, most cities and towns also had their share of unlicensed, illegal saloons.2g Whether confined to a hotel or run as a separate business, the saloon constituted what Perry Duis has called a "semi-public" place. Although privately owned, they allowed public access almost without restriction, much as shopping malls do today. In urban working class neighbour-

18 / Demon Rum or Easy Money

hoods especially, the saloon was an important feature of daily life. Men went there to drink beer, which was the cheapest and most readily available liquor by the late nineteenth century, but a saloon was more than a place to drink. In poor neighbourhoods it often had the only available toilet and telephone. The saloon was not just a drinking hole; it served as information centre, employment office, union hall and polling place, where politicians liberally "treated" the electors to win their votes.30 For prohibitionists, however, saloons represented all that was evil. Saloons were often the centres of crime, drugs and prostitution, and as they became more associated with the poor and immigrants, middle class people tended to limit their drinking to the privacy of their homes. Prohibitionists condemned saloons for the sizeable increase in convictions for drunkenness and deaths from alcoholism in the early twentieth century. For middle class men and women prohibition became one of the most popular progressive reforms, because public drinking by the lower orders seemed to be at the heart of Canada's social problems. All that was wrong with Canadian society was symbolized by the drunken immigrant staggering out of a dingy dive, his pay cheque consumed, his wife and children neglected at home. James Gray, a prairie historian, claimed that "Banish the Bar" was the battle cry of the prohibitionists throughout the Canadian west .31 In British Columbia, where liquor consumption was nearly double the national average in the 1890s, saloons never shut their doors. Until 1900 they were open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They were part of social life throughout the province, not just in isolated mining and logging towns. Vancouver actually developed around a saloon. In 1867 "Gassy Jack" Deighton had opened a "hotel" saloon to quench the thirst of the workers a t nearby Stamp's mill, and Gastown formed the nucleus of the new city. New Westminster, longer established, had a licensed outlet for every 13 people in the 1890s. In 1895 Lord and Lady Aberdeen spent a night in a Royal City hotel and Lady Aberdeen complained to her diary of the continual noise from the bar below. At 8:00 a.m. the following morning the festivities finally ended with God Save The Queen. The capital city, Victoria, had over 100 licensed premises (saloons, hotels, grocery stores) in 1900. One traveller reported: "On waking in the morning I presented myself at the bar, and received the customary 'cocktail'. . . . The average Victorian's sense of bliss apparently consists of the largest possible number of drinks in the shortest possible time. . . .n32 The first expression of organized anti-liquor sentiment in British Ce lumbia was the drive for a local option law to allow communities to ban the retail sale of liqu'or. By the early 1900s all provinces except British Columbia already had such laws. Local option allowed provincial leaders

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to foist a hot political issue on to local governments, while appealing to democratic platitudes about letting the people decide. Local option entailed neither the expense of enforcing prohibition, nor the complete loss of licence revenue. Some ardent prohibitionists never totally accepted local option, as it was easy to evade and did not deal with the basic issue that liquor was a societal problem. Yet, for most drys, this message was a step in the right direction.33 In British Columbia the local option campaign was led initially by the provincial WCTU. In 1907, with the support of other temperance groups and the evangelical protestant churches, the WCTU began to pressure the government for a local option law. The next year the WCTU helped create the Local Option League. Headed by E.B.Morgan, a Vancouver businessman and prominent Methodist, the League demanded that citizens be able to vote on the existence of saloons in their communities. By 1909 the League had 50 branches, and it presented an anti-liquor petition with over 9000 signatures to the provincial g ~ v e r n m e n t . ~ ~ The foes of liquor, however, faced an indifferent, if not hostile, provincial government. In 1903 Richard McBride had formed the first party government in the province, and his Tories were far more interested in railways and development than in the divisive issue of liquor. Besides, liquor licensing was a patronage plum. Revenue from the licences went to municipalities, but the provincial government assumed responsibility for appointing the board of licence commissioners, which held the power to grant or rescind licences. In addition, liquor industry representatives were influential in some Tory riding e ~ e c u t i v e s . ~ ~ Preoccupied with the Canadian Northern Railway, McBride told the League in 1909 he had no mandate to legislate local option. Instead, he promised a plebiscite in the upcoming general election. The League had requested a plebiscite on a specific local option law, but the ballot asked voter opinion on local option in general, a proposal that was less acceptable, as it sounded too much like prohibition. In addition, the government required that the plebiscite proposal pass by a majority of those who voted in the election, not just a majority of those who voted for or against in the plebiscite. The government released the text of the plebiscite less than two weeks before the election. That, and the voters' overriding concern with the railway policy, made the League's quiet, Vancouver- based campaign all the more difficult.36 McBride's government easily won re-election in November 1909, but it withheld the plebiscite results until January 1910, and it never released official figures. Although local option won the majority of those who voted on it, the results were about 500 votes short of a majority of those who voted in the general election. The League later learned

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that the government had printed an insufficent number of ballots, so the plebiscite never really had a chance. Claiming that local option did not have enough votes, the government refused to introduce the necessary legi~lation.~~ Although it was opposed to local option, McBride's government restricted the activities of the increasingly unpopular saloons with new regulations that tightened up the Sunday closing law. Sunday closing had formally existed since 1891, but in its original form the law exempted travellers, and a journey of three miles or more was enough to warrant a drink. The government took a more important step in 1911, when it gave saloon owners three years in which to convert their premises to hotels.38 As in other provinces, the anti-liquor campaign in British Columbia overlapped with other drives for reform, especially woman suffrage. In 1910 a group of educated, affluent women (and a few men) formed the Political Equality League (PEL)to win women the vote. It never officially endorsed prohibition, but many of the PEL leaders came from the WCTU, and the League always sympathized with the drys who dominated the Local Option League. Since the Tories opposed both woman suffrage and local option, the PEL pressured the opposition Liberals. Almost unrepresented in the legislature, the Liberals had little to lose, and in the 1912 election they spoke in favour of local option and suffrage. The Liberals suffered a humiliating defeat that year.39 The Conservatives' popularity had been more the byproduct of continued prosperity than of their position on reform. As the province slid into a depression in 1913 that popularity shifted to the Liberals. Under the leadership of Harlan Brewster, a Baptist and founder of the PEL,the Liberals expanded their reform platform to include full support for prohibition, and in 1916 both the Liberals and prohibition were to emerge victorio~s.~~ Prohibition's brief triumph in British Columbia owed more to World War One than anything else. From 1914 on the prohibitionists directed powerful moral and economic arguments a t the liquor traffic. Grain made into liquor reduced precious food stocks and lowered the efficiency of war workers. The liquor traffic also consumed labour and capital that was needed for the war effort. While the "boys over there" risked their lives, the least that safe civilians could do was to sacrifice liquor to help the cause. Many reformers saw the war to end all wars as an opportunity for purification and rebirth. As prairie suffragist and prohibitionist Nellie McClung said, the war was useful because "without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin." A new society would be born after the war, one that did not need the evil of alcohol.41

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21

In the spring of 1915 the British Columbia Social Service Commission, a body bringing together the protestant churches and various reform groups, lobbied the McBride government for wartime prohibition. The Commission had the support of many business leaders and professionals. At a prohibition banquet in May over 500 prominent people unanimously endorsed prohibition. John Nelson, Methodist owner and editor of the Vancouver World, emphasized in a front-page editorial in August the economic need for prohibition: "no country that is at war has any business permitting the continuance of a trade which imposes unnecessary burdens on industry and commerce and entails worse ravages than war itself."42 McBride was unconvinced, and he offered another non-binding plebiscite, like the vote on local option. But the prohibitionists wanted much more and they now had the necessary support to back their demands. They asked the government to pass a prohibition act and submit it to the people by means of a referendum. If approved, prohibition would become law. To secure the referendum, the drys, in 1915, organized the People's Prohibition Association; the leaders were primarily Vancouver businessmen. Jonathan Rogers was president of both the PPA and the Vancouver Board of Trade; E.B. Morgan, former local option leader, was treasurer and president of Northwest Trust, and John Nelson of the World later became president of the PPA. Rogers and Nelson were both

methodist^.^^ With the resignation of McBride in December 1915 and the defeat of the Tories in two important by-elections early in 1916, the new Conservative Premier, William Bowser, abandoned the plebiscite idea and promised a binding referendum on prohibition, based on the recent Manitoba legislation. The bill introduced in May 1916 outlawed the sale of liquor except for medicinal, sacramental and industrial purposes. It passed second reading with only five dissenting votes, all Conservative. Bowser then called an election for September 1916, to be accompanied by referenda on prohibition and woman suffrage.44 The Liberals' campaign emphasized the opportunity for reform, as contrasted with the "corruption" of the Tories. They promoted the two referenda and modestly announced that their party would institute a new era of progress, morality and efficiency. The divided Tories could not decide what to do and made the weak claim that suffrage and prohibition were not "party issues," and therefore they would take no position on them.45 It was the Merchants' Protective Association (MPA) that led the real battle against both the Liberals and prohibition. Composed primarily of liquor industry people, the MPA said prohibition meant economic disaster

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for the province and that it violated British notions of fair play. But the voters paid no heed to these cries. On 14 September they chose woman suffrage and a new Liberal government. To the question, "Are you in favour of bringing the B.C. Prohibition Act into force?," 36,490 replied in the affirmative as against 27,217 opposed. The main battleground had been Vancouver and Victoria, but the drys claimed to have prohibition committees in all but two electoral districts. Only Alberni, Lillooet and Fernie voted against in the r e f e r e n d ~ m . ~ ~ To ensure that overseas soldiers could cast their ballots, voting continued until December 1916. The initial soldier vote went overwhelmingly against prohibition, so much so that the referendum appeared to be defeated. Harlan Brewster, the new premier, appointed a royal commission to analyze the soldiers' results and check for such irregularities as double voting. In the end, the commission disallowed over half of the soldiers' ballots cast after September, and prohibition took effect on 1 October 1917. By then every province except Quebec had approved prohibition. Early in the next year the Quebec government passed a prohibition law which would come into force in May 1 9 1 9 . ~ ~ But the prohibitionists had not completely won the war against liquor. Provincial prohibition outlawing retail sales had no effect on the manufacture or interprovincial trade of liquor, a s these were federal concerns. Since no prohibition statute outlawed personal possession or consumption, distillers and brewers could still ship their products to other provinces. In response to pressure from the provinces and the prohibitionists, and to the perceived need to enhance the war effort, the federal government plugged more of the liquor loopholes. In March 1918 the federal cabinet, under the authority of the War Measures Act, banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of any "intoxicating liquor" stronger than 2.5% proof spirits (about 1.5% alcohol per volume) in provinces which had prohibition. Exceptions existed for the medicinal, sacramental and industrial use of liquor.48 The federal order brought Canada the closest it ever came to complete prohibition. Quebec, however, never banned all liquor. In April 1919 its voters (all men! approved the sale of beer and wine by the glass and bottle, despite the Prohibition Act that became law the next month. Still the prohibitionists could be proud. Eight provinces, two territories, and British Newfoundland had gone dry. Canada led the dominions and the Empire with its liquor laws. For once, Canada was even ahead of the United States, the true home of the prohibition movement .49

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The Problems of Prohibition In British Columbia, as in all the provinces, those who could afford to stock up beforehand weathered the dry years with little discomfort. What was more important was that people could still buy liquor, although prohibition nearly eliminated its legal private sale. To fill the void left by private enterprise, druggists, physicians, dentists, and veterinarians purchased liquor from government vendors for use in their businesses. While veterinarians served only "dumb animals," a physican's prescription allowed any adult to buy liquor from a druggist or government vendor. Although the government price list clearly warned purchasers that "the sale of liquor as a beverage is prohibited," the list included champagne, gin and five-gallon "jars" of beer for medicinal relief.50 Moreover, prohibition did not eliminate the saloons. As in other provinces, many of British Columbia's hotel bars survived by selling "near-beer," which was less than 2.5% proof spirits and was not liquor according to the law. Regular beer contained 10% proof spirits, or about 5.7% alcohol by volume. On the first day of prohibition in 1917, 60 of Vancouver's 69 hotel bars opened for business. Unfortunately for the hotels, since near-beer was not considered liquor, no restrictions existed as to who could sell it. Numerous "jitney bars" opened in competition with the hotels. These unlicensed bars were named after the automobiles that appeared on Vancouver streets in 1915, to compete with the British Columbia Electric Railway. Like the transit authorities, the hotel owners complained about unfair, unregulated competition.51 Because of the influence of American media, many Canadians believe that prohibition begat a drunken decade of violent crime and racketeering. Even for the United States, this image is a distortion of the past; for Canada it has little relevance. In British Columbia, and across the country, the overall crime rate and convictions for drunkenness remained well below their pre-prohibition records. With some playful exaggeration, James Gray suggested, "in Western Canada nobody even punched anybody else in the nosey' during prohibition.52 But prohibition also created problems, as many people refused to obey the law. Illegal sales, or bootlegging, flourished once people found legal liquor difficult to buy. Bootleggers both competed with the hotels and supplied them with illegal liquor. Many hotel bars sold real beer and whisky, kept in pitchers for ready disposal if an inspector arrived. Breweries also made real bottled beer with no labels, which made it almost impossible to trace.53 In 1920, "Agent X," a secret provincial liquor inspector in Fernie, claimed that he had found seven hotels that openly sold hard liquor

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and two "soft-drink" stores, one next door to a temperance hotel, that sold unlabelled beer. He also claimed that the Fernie brewery had never made any near-beer. Moreover, Agent X had "learned" that Tom Uphill, former mayor of Fernie and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from 1920-1960, had become "a wealthy man" by "shipping whisky into Montana from Fernie buried in coal cars." Agent X had high hopes for his undercover operation, but he cut short his Fernie visit after Tom Uphill and the former chief of police took to following him around town.54 Enforcement of prohibition was difficult from the beginning. The act gave municipalities the primary responsibility for enforcement, but the province did not compensate local governments for revenue lost from now non-existent liquor licences. For large cities like Vancouver, which had a dry squad, prohibition was a painful financial burden. In outlying areas 175 provincial police administered the law, often without much local cooperation. According to Attorney General John W. Farris, the real problem was the lack of enthusiasm for enforcement: "the Vancouver police have as many or more men than we have in the whole Province, and if Vancouver cannot police itself it is time people looked the situation fairly in the face."55 To improve enforcement, the government, in 1918, created the post of Prohibition Commissioner and appointed W.C. Findlay, a prominent member of the People's Prohibition Association. Unfortunately, after only a few months in office, the temptation of bootlegging got the better of Findlay. He refused to answer any questions in court, and eventually he was fined $1,000 and spent two years in jail. Other "prominent citizens" were implicated in the case, as were the Vancouver police.56 Across the country no problem proved more intractable than the abuse of medical prescriptions. In British Columbia a $2.00 prescription allowed one to buy liquor at a drugstore or government vendor. One doctor wrote 4000 in 30 days. During 1919 British Columbia doctors signed about 181,000 prescriptions, and in one month, January 1920, they wrote over 27,000 prescriptions for medicinal liquor. Part of this upsurge was due to the great flu epidemic, but for most people a note from the doctor was simply the easiest way to get a bottle. As a secretary t o the premier observed: Toward Christmas especially it looked as if an epidemic of colds and colics had struck the country like a plague. In Vancouver 'queues a quarter of a mile long could be seen waiting their turn to enter the liquor stores to get prescriptions filled. Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese varied the lines of the afflicted of many races. It was a kaleidoscopic procession waiting in the rain for a replenishment that would drive the chills away; and it was

From No Control to Government Control / 25 alleged that several doctors needed a little alcoholic liniment to soothe the writer's cramp caused by inditing their signatures at two dollars per line.

In 1920 the Vancouver Medical Association asked the government to relieve it "of the responsibility of dispensing liquor" as the practice had become "an intolerable nuisance to the medical profession." 57 Enforcement also involved federal-provincial difficulties. While bootlegging was a provincial matter, manufacturing, including illegal stills, was a federal responsibility. In the spring of 1919, for instance, federal inspectors discovered an eighty-gallon still hidden in the attic of a Vancouver home in a quiet neighbourhood. The owners had reinforced the floor to carry the excess weight and covered it with zinc to prevent leakage. To enter their factory, the men climbed up through a hole in the clothes closet .58 The expiration of federal prohibition in 1919 also hindered enforcement. The House of Commons voted to entrench the war regulations in the Canada Temperance Act-the Scott Act-but the Senate, apparently pressured by Quebec, refused t o accept the amendments. As a compromise, both chambers agreed to ban importation of liquor into any prohibition province, provided the voters, who now included returned soldiers, accepted the idea. But until a province held a plebiscite, residents could import liquor for personal consumption. On 1January 1920, the day after federal prohibition lapsed, Canadians across the country began to order liquor legally from outside their own provinces. In British Columbia the bootleggers brought in quantities to satisfy both local needs and the now thirsty Americans, who adopted national prohibition in January 1920.59 By this time many British Columbians were thoroughly disillusioned with prohibition. The reform rhetoric of the war years had proved hollow; neither the war nor prohibition created a new era. Instead, residents endured a post-war recession. Most returned soldiers were not happy about job prospects or the lack of beer. Ordinary citizens complained about prohibition because it made criminals out of otherwise respectable people who wanted to drink, and because defiance of prohibition encouraged disrespect for the law in general. To many, prohibition not only violated British notions of justice and liberty in theory, but had proved itself a dismal failure in practice.60 The Liberal government had also grown disenchanted with prohibition. In 1918 Premier Harlan Brewster died, and he was replaced by John Oliver, a Delta farmer who personally supported prohibition but now questioned its effectiveness. Oliver also inherited a government with a provincial debt of $21 million and railway bond guarantees of $64 mil-

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lion. In addition, the City of Vancouver was nearly broke. While the provincial government tried to enforce an act that seemed unenforceable, thousands of American tourists flocked to Montreal to enjoy beer and wine in cafes. Moreover, an unforseen consequence of prohibition had been to put the government in the liquor business. In 1919 government sales for industrial, sacramental and medicinal liquor totalled over $1.5 million. Expansion of liquor business could provide much needed revenue, increase employment, and reduce a monstrous political headache.61 Liquor had long been a hot political issue, but near-beer, the prescription fiasco, the conviction of Commissioner Findlay, and the end of federal liquor restrictions were fuelling the fires of division in the legislature. Government members could not maintain any consensus on prohibition. J.S. Cowper of Vancouver claimed "the Prohibition Law today is more in disrepute than any other law on the statute books of this province." He suggested that "honest Government sale and control was the only feasible solution." He added that government control would promote tourism. That idea provoked George Bell, Liberal member for Victoria, to reply: "I hope the people will never come to the place where they would stoop so low." To Bell the "hope of the country. . .lay in the strict enforcement of prohibition."62 In March 1920 the new Prohibition Commissioner stressed in his first report that liquor, legal and otherwise, was more popular than ever. The report provided much ammunition for William Bowser, leader of the opposition, who accused the government of corruption and mismanagement in its administration of the Prohibition Act. To appease the people who believed that the problems of prohibition were those of lax enforcement, the Liberals introduced amendments that restricted prescriptions and regulated near-beer saleseB3 While the Attorney General defended the new restrictions, he also favoured an early test of public sentiment on prohibition. Because of "loose voting methods,'' Farris questioned the validity of the 1916 vote. Moreover, he argued that many people accepted prohibition only as a temporary war measure or as a way to ban the bars, but they did not necessarily want to eliminate liquor permanently. i~ the drys who claimed the new restrictions would make prohibition more popular, Farris replied that they "had the cart before the horse. The greatest need today. . .is not more law but a stronger and more vigorous public sentiment behind the law."64 Never a dry enthusiast, Farris did not favour an immediate vote to ban private importation. For him, and many of his colleagues, the real issue was whether prohibition should be continued:

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27

To my mind there is no middle course. You have got to embark on a policy of exterminating alcohol, root and branch, or the alternative system of sale under stricter regulation. Prohibition which does not prohibit is worse than useless and contempt for law, persisted in openly, will undermine a people's morals just as surely as will alcohol or any other pernicious drugs. Early in April 1920, after much cabinet debate, Farris announced that the people, including for the first time women, would vote on a novel alternative: Which do you prefer? 1. The present Prohibition Act? 2. An act to provide for the government

control and sale in sealed packages of spirituous and malt liquors?65 Neither party took an official stand on this plebiscite as both were torn by dissent. For the Liberals, however, Farris's announcement meant a withdrawal of their support for prohibition. The Attorney General suggested the issue was "moral," not political; the government was "asking for a straight opinion of the people on the facts before them on this moral issue." The Premier refused to give his personal opinion "because it would look as if I spoke for the Government and the Government is chiefly anxious to have the unassisted view of the people on this matter." Although the Liberals had been in power since 1916, the government did not call an election when it announced that the plebiscite would be held on 20 October 1920. The Liberals had changed their stand since the previous election; they wanted to place as much distance as possible between liquor and their party.66 The political winds did not blow in any clear direction, but the government had subtly stacked the deck against the prohibitionists. Although the plebiscite was non-binding and vague, the Liberals made it clear that the saloon would not return if prohibition were ended. Further, if prohibition were sustained, the voters would be subjected to yet another ballot, the federal vote on importation. But with their own ranks divided and the strong, though waning, influence of the drys still present, the Liberals could not risk a complete break with the prohibitionists. Neutrality was safer.67 The proposed plebiscite disappointed most prohibitionists. Vancouver lawyer William Savage, president of the Prohibition Association, told the Attorney General to wait until the new restrictions had proved their value. In his view, if any vote were to be taken it should be the federal one on importation, since the federal government would pay the cost and, if it resulted in a ban, the province would have more power over liquor. In the legislature, Liberal George Bell pushed for the federal vote, but

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to little avail. One prohibition supporter who favoured the provincial plebiscite was Mary Ellen Smith, the first woman member of the British Columbia legislature. She said the plebiscite would put the matter in the "common people's court ."68 The anti-prohibitionists, led by the Moderation League, were not completely happy with the plebiscite either. The League had been formed in 1919 by business leaders who had grown disenchanted with prohibition. Its members included president Henry 0. Bell-Irving, wealthy fish canner, Charles Wilson, a Vancouver lawyer, and Walter Scott, former Liberal premier of Saskatchewan. Some labour groups and returned soldiers' organizations were also active in the League. Although it accepted donations from anyone, the League barred the liquor industry from membership. It advocated the sale of liquor under government control with no return of the saloon. But the League also wanted some public drinking. The executive lobbied the government to let the voters decide on beer and wine with meals in restaurant^.^^ Attorney General Farris refused the request. He said he wanted "to keep the issue unclouded." In the House, George Bell countered that the request would have strengthened the cause of the drys, since it would have given them a strong "talking point" in the campaign. He believed the voters would not tolerate ice-cream parlours with "box-stalls" serving beer and wine to young people. He asked rhetorically if "any honorable member on the floor of this House wish[ed] to see his daughter frequent such a place under those condition^?"^^ Although the plebiscite campaign was most visible in Vancouver and Victoria, both sides hired organizers to tour the province months before the vote. William Savage went as far as Fernie, where he pounded the wets with "hammer and tongues [sic]." The drys also relied on decentralized fund raising. Local committees were assessed specific amounts to raise in their communities. Vancouver was assessed $16,000, while Nanaimo had to raise only $650 and Penticton $600. Overall the drys spent $30,000, which was $7,000 to $9,000 more than they collected. The prohibitionists later asked the Premier for a donation to help retire their debt, but Oliver declined, partly because bad weather had destroyed any prospects of revenue from his farm that year.71 In Vancouver both sides adopted similar tactics and limited their public efforts until the final two weeks. They held meetings, distributed pamphlets and advertised heavily in the daily press. Each sought support from church groups, returned soldiers, members of the legislature, leading business people, labour and, of course, women. Prohibition had the official support of the Provincial Council of Women and the Nurses' Federation, while no women's group spoke in favour of government con-

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trol. The Attorney General said in a letter to Reverend A.E. Cooke, a Congregationalist minister and leading prohibitionist, that "four years ago it [prohibition] carried by the mens' [sic] vote alone. Now, with the whole weight of the womens' [sic] vote thrown into the scale, what thing possible can make the issue even in doubt?"72 But the prohibitionists took no chances. They brought in prairie suffragist Nellie McClung to speak a t the Orpheum theatre. She stressed that "government control would be practically as bad as the days of the open bar." At another rally the drys held a ballot-marking demonstration for women. Prohibition also had the backing of the wife of the Attorney General. At a meeting sponsored by the Local Council of Women, Evelyn Farris said that prohibition was a success by all measures and should be continued.73 Advertisements favouring prohibition stressed its popularity in the community, the decline in crime and the increase in health since British Columbia had gone dry. One advertisement warned of "Government Boozoriums" next to businesses, schools, churches and homes; another advised the people to: vote for Prohibition and follow your conscience. If you vote for Government Sale the chances are that you are dictating to your conscience. Don't let your brain become clouded with argument when experience has taught you that your conscience is always right.74

The moderationists countered such idealism with one main theme: prohibition was unenforceable. They portrayed it as the cause of rampant crime and increased drunkenness and drug use. One advertisement proclaimed "Back to Law and Order," which for the League meant "inculcation of true temperance principles consistent with personal liberty." At a meeting at Florence Nightingale School, Captain Ian Mackenzie, president of the Vancouver branch of the Great War Veterans Association, said that 80% of returned soldiers would vote for moderation. They had battled tyranny in Europe and would fight it again a t home. At the same meeting a Mrs. Harris of Victoria questioned the belief that women supported prohibition. She referred to a repeal petition that had the signatures of 8000 women.75 Both the prohibitionists and the moderationists made broad appeals to labour. The drys even hired an organizer to visit logging, fishing and mining towns. On the surface he did not seem to have much success. In 1916 the Trades and Labour Councils of Victoria, Vancouver, Prince Rupert and New Westminster had all unanimously opposed the Prohibition Act. They claimed the worker had lost his five-cent glass of beer, but the rich could still bring in whisky from outside the province. Prohibition was also un-British, as it allowed police to search a home

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without a warrant. Many labour leaders believed it would increase unemployment and lower wages. Once prohibition had removed liquor from workers' budgets, bosses would reduce wages by a similar amount. Both J.H.McVety, president of the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council, and the B. C. Federationist suggested that the government take over the manufacture and sale of liquor on a non-profit basis.76 But labour's apparent unity hid much internal disagreement over prohibition. Some workers favoured a "bone-dry" law, or total abolition, since prohibition left too many loopholes, especially for the rich. One Federationist article of 1916 foreshadowed another theme of the debate in 1920. I t said a sober worker: is far more apt to be a thinking one and such men are dangerous. He who formerly spent some of his wages for booze, might in case of the victory of prohibition, turn. .to the purchase of socialist literature for instance, and then the employers' interest would be threatened by a far greater danger than ever lurked behind a liquor befuddled brain.

.

Instead of oppressing the workers, prohibition could release them from the tyranny of alcohol imposed by the bosses as a form of social control.77 By the end of World War One, some leaders were attributing labour's new-found militancy to the success of prohibition. Both R.P.Pettipiece, noted socialist, and V.R. Midgley, General Secretary of the One Big Union, did an about-face over prohibition. Neither supported it in 1916; both supported it in 1920. According to Pettipiece:

.

Drink will break a strike sooner than anything else except hunger. . . The wage slave that tries to drown the misery of daily toil and poverty in 'booze' is hopeless. He can be neither organized or educated and it will require a sober, organized and educated working class to emancipate itself from wage slavery.

Speaking before the Royal Commission on Industrial Relations in 1919, John Brodie, a lifelong teetotaller and labour activist, said: "I am very proud of the fact that prohibition has come to Canada, because we have men who were slaves to drink and who were strong factors in the power of labour organizations; today their brain has got clear. . . ."78 Some labour leaders also questioned the motives of the moderationists. In the volatile atmosphere that prevailed after World War One, both the prohibitionists and the moderationists blamed each other for labour's militancy and radicalism. At a moderation rally, a Commander Reid remarked that, because of prohibition, "'Reds' and revolutionaries were being made of formerly quiet workers who now found time to dwell upon troubles, real and imaginary, and who were becoming sulky and grouchy." The prohibitionists reprinted the comment in a Federationist

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advertisement under the heading: "Keep the Worker Soused. SOME Compliment to Labour! VOTE FOR PROHIBITION." In addition, the leadership of the moderationists annoyed the Federationist editors, as it included some of the province's leading capitalists and Captain Ian Mackenzie, who was "a leading spirit in the so-called Citizens League [an anti-worker group] during a recent strike." On the other hand, prohibition leadership contained many "active supporters of Labour aspirations." 7Q During the plebiscite campaign prominent labour leaders stood on the platforms of both sides, and organized labour never took a unified position. J.H. Hawthornthwaite, labour MLA for Newcastle, symbolized the dilemma. He considered liquor a poison that should be eliminated from society. But the solution was not prohibition as that only led to worse problems. Instead he suggested: "If I were the Premier of this Province I would abolish the present prohibition law. . .and recommend to the Government as a whole that it take over the sale of liquor in British C o l ~ r n b i a . " ~ ~ In the final week of the campaign the prohibitionists held 100 meetings, distributed 85,000 copies of the Prohibition Bulletin and made an extensive door-to-door canvass. But on 20 October government control was victorious over prohibition by 92,095 votes to 55,448. Only Chilliwack and Richmond voted in favour of prohibition, although the vote was close in Grand Forks, Nelson, South Okanagan and in Slocan, which approved control by one ballot. Victoria and Vancouver preferred control by margins of nearly two to one. W.G.Fortune, financial secretary of the prohibitionists, blamed the loss on the "immaturity of girl voters without sufficient age and experience to judge the problems of life and because of apathy on the part of a great number of persons. . . .* But Fortune was optimistic that the voters would see the error of their ways: "The electors have created a stew in which they must sizzle for a time."81 With the victory of government control, the Liberals hoped they had defused an explosive political issue in advance of the election that the government would soon have to call. Instead of submitting a liquor bill to the legislature to show the people what the Liberals meant by government control, Oliver called an election three days after the plebiscite. During the campaign the Premier made only vague references to government control: "I consider the vote as one that liquor shall be on sale in reasonable quantities a t a reasonable price, and not be abused. I have no conscientious scruples about making all I can out of the business." He also said the plebiscite was a vote against near-beer bars. Since the opposition now supported government control, liquor was not a big issue

32 / Demon Rum or Easy Money in the campaign. In the December election the Liberals retained power, but with a thin majority of the 47 seats.82 British Columbia was the only province in Canada to vote for government-controlled liquor sales in 1920. On 25 October 1920 the three prairie provinces and Nova Scotia all voted to ban the importation of liquor into their provinces in order to strengthen prohibition. New Brunswick and Ontario soon followed suit. In 1921, however, Quebec and the Yukon both adopted government control. The Quebec government implemented it without a vote, while in the Yukon a plebiscite in July 1921 made government control effective that September.83 On the Pacific coast liquor appeared with the Europeans, and their government-Governor Douglas and his council-began to regulate its use, for both revenue and control purposes. Liquor only became a major social issue, however, with the rise of prohibition in the late nineteenth century. As a reform, prohibition was both familiar and unusual. Reform in Canada had traditionally been moral, and the drys continued that emphasis. Tradition, however, also regarded reform as an internal matter, an individual act of will. Prohibition was controversial, partly because it relied on the coercive power of the state to alter individual behaviour. But then Canada had never committed itself to be a laissezfaire state. In one sense the drys simply acted to broaden familiar state intervention to include the creation of the moral society as well as the promotion of economic growth.84 The liquor industry, of course, did not support prohibition. The battle against the drys provided one of the few occasions on which one could probably identify a united interest of liquor producers and retailers. But two points need to be emphasized. First, business in general was not of one mind on liquor. Many business leaders saw much good in prohibition and actively promoted the state's authority to eliminate liquor. In typically Canadian fashion, both wet and dry business leaders used Canada's fractured federalism to play one level of government against the other to secure their interests, particularly in the immediate postwar years. Second, the perceived failure of prohibition persuaded many business people, some wet, some dry, that the better alternative was a monopoly of sales, or government-regulated liquor d i s t r i b u t i ~ n . ~ ~ As Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles have emphasized, regulation in Canada operated on a continuum extending from none to public ownership. Moreover, regulation served a variety of purposes, not all of them consistent; for example, the state both promoted rapid economic growth and, in the twentieth century, attempted to conserve the resource base. Business leaders accepted-even advocated-regulation that en-

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33

hanced their interests and resisted or broke the rules that hindered them. Historians now believe that regulation, even when it went as far as public ownership, was not necessarily repugnant to private enterprise and its values. In Ontario, for example, public hydro-electric power evolved as a "progressive businessman's crusade" conducted by local, small business against national financial interests.86 The acceptance of regulation was more situational than ideological. Liquor producers and retailers would have preferred to have no control a t all, except as a means to eliminate competition; in any case, regulation was better than prohibition. Government control was attainable; the open market was no longer a political option. Later, as we shall see, many of those whose activities were regulated came to appreciate the opportunities offered by regulation. Moreover, those business leaders of the Moderation League who had originally supported prohibition also opted for monopoly sales for pragmatic reasons. Prohibition appeared doomed, and government control was better than no control a t all. For British Columbians, then, prohibition had been an experience full of ironies. Its brief success was largely the result of the wartime campaign against public drinking. But prohibition did not close the hotel bars or resolve the divisive issue of access to alcohol. Moreover, prohibition put the government into the profitable liquor business and helped lay the foundation for government control. Certainly the Liberals were aware of its revenue potential, but by 1920 liquor had become the loose cannon on the Liberals' deck. They hoped government control would tie it down, now that a middle way had been defined between the wet and dry positions.

NOTES

1 F.W. Howay, "The Introduction of Intoxicating Liquors Amongst the Indians of the Northwest Coast," in Historical Essays on British Columbia, eds. J . Friesen and H.K. Ralston (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976), passim.; Hubert H. Bancroft, History of the Northwest Coast, (New York: The Bancroft Company, 1884), 2: 692-694; G.P.V. Akrigg and Helen B. Akrigg, British Columbia Chronicle 1778-1 846: Adventurers By Sea and Land (Vancouver: Discovery Press, 1975), 90, 335, 348; Robin Fisher, Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia, 1774-1890 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1977), 33-34; Harold T. Allen, Forty Years' Journey: The Temperance Movement in British Columbia to 1900 (Victoria: n.p., 1981), 3-5; Michael Bliss,

34

2

3

4

5

6

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Demon Rum or Easy Money

Northern Enterprise: Five Centuries of Canadian Business (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987), 196-197. Margaret Ormsby, British Columbia: a History (Macmillan of Canada, 1958; reprint ed., 1971), 117 (1st quote); W. Kaye Lamb, "The Diary of Robert Melrose," The British Columbia Historical Quarterly 7 (1943): 199, 206-207. While it does not completely replace Ormsby's book, one should consult the new general history of British Columbia. See Jean Barman, The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). E.O.S. Scholefield, British Columbia: From the Earliest Times to the Present, 4 vols. (S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1914) 1: 531-532; James Hendrickson, ed., The Journals of the Colonial Legislatures of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, 1851-1871, Vol. 1: Journals of the Council, Executive Council, and Legislative Council of Vancouver Island, 1851-1866 (Victoria: Provincial Archives of British Columbia, 1980), 8 (1st quote); Lamb, "Robert Melrose," 120-121 (2nd quote). W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979; paperback ed., 1981), 7-21; M.A. Garland and J. J. Talman, "Pioneer Drinking Habits and the Rise of Temperance Agitation in Upper Canada Prior t o 1840," Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records 27 (1931): 8 (quotes); see also, Mark Lender and James Martin, Drinking in America: A History (New York: The Free Press, 1982), 46-63; Jed Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder: Tempemnce Reform in Cincinnati from the Washington Revival to the WCTU (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 1-3; Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815-1872 (University of Pittsburg Press, 1971), 47-55; Bryan Palmer, Working-Class Experience: The Rise and Reconstitution of Canadian Labour, 1800-1980 (Toronto: Butterworths, 1983)' 85; Jack S. Blocker, Jr., American Tempemnce Movements: Cycles of Reform (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989), 1-1 1. Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 97 (quote), 95-105; Lender and Martin, Drinking in America, 6; Garland, "Pioneer Drinking," 5; Harrison, Drink and the Victorians,41-42. Graeme Decarie, Prohibition in Canada, Vol. 29, Canada's Visual H i s tory (Ottawa: NFB and the National Museum of Man, n.d.), 1-2; Ruth Spence, Prohibition in Canada (Toronto: Ontario Branch of the Dominion Alliance, 1919), 38-40; J.R. Burnet, "The Urban Community and Chang. ing Moral Standards," in Studies in Canadian Social History, e d ~ Michiel Horn and Ronald Sabaurin (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974), 298302; Garland, "Pioneer Drinking," 11-15 (figures); see also, Janet Noel, "Temperance Evangelism: Drink, Religion and Reform in the Province of Canada, 1840-1854" (M.A. thesis, University of Ottawa, 1978); Janet Noel, "Booze-Bane of Red River?: The Role of Drink in Metis Culture, 18401875," paper presented at the Canadian Historical Association Conference, Winnipeg, June 1986, 5-8; Gilbert Stelter, "The City Building Process in

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Canada," in Shaping the Urban Landscape, eds. Gilbert Stelter and Alan F. J. Artibise (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1982), 11-13; Harrison, Drink and the Victorians, 101-102; Lender and Martin, Drinking in America, 66-74; Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 187-190; Norman Clark, Deliver Us From Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976), 30-34; Blocker, American Tempemnce Movements, 8-17. 7 Garland, "Pioneer Drinking," 15; Decarie, Prohibition, 3, 7; R. Spence, Prohibition, 38-44; Burnet, "The Urban Community," 304-305; Lender and Martin, Drinking in America, 70-71. 8 R. Spence, Prohibition, 78-81, 87; F.S. Spence, The Facts of the Case (Toronto: Newton & Treloar, 1896; facsimile ed., Toronto: Coles Publishing, 1973), 90, 221-242; Robert McLean, "A Most Effective Remedy: Temperance and Prohibition in Alberta, 1875-1 915" (M.A.thesis, University of Calgary, 1969), 3; Lender and Martin, Drinking in America, 42-46; Clark, Deliver Us, 46; Harrison, Drink and the Victorians, 196-197. 9 S.D. Clark, The Social Development of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1942), 338 (quote), 343. 10 G.P.V. Akrigg and Helen Akrigg, British Columbia Chronicle, 1847-1871: Gold and Colonists (Vancouver: Discovery Press, 1977), 375-376. 11 R. Spence, Prohibition, 122-123; F. Spence, Facts of the Case, 92-93, 158; R. J. Van Loon and M.S. Whittington, The Canadian Political System, 3rd ed. (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1981), 248; see also W.E.Raney, "Another Question of Dominion Jurisdiction Emerges," Canadian Bar Review 3 (December 1924): 614. 12 McLean, "A Most Effective Remedy," 6-8; R. Spence, Prohibition, 112-1 14; F. Spence, Facts of the Case, 269-270, 295-296, 153. On patronage and federal-provincial liquor battles see Gordon Stewart, The Origins of Canadian Politics: A Comparative Approach (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986), 52-53, 67-90; Peter Waite, Canada 1874-1896: Arduous Destiny (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971), 90; Edgar McInnis, Canada: A Political and Social History, 4th ed. (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), 417-420; Gerald Hallowell, Prohibition in Ontario 1919-1 923 (Ottawa: Ontario Historical Society, 1972), 35; W.E. Raney, "Another Question," passim. 13 R. Spence, Prohibition, 244, 247-248; Carol Lee Bacchi, Liberation Deferred?: The Ideas of the English Canadian Suflragists, 1877-1 918 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983), 73. 14 R. Spence, Prohibition, 248-252 (quote). 15 Hallowell, Prohibition in Ontario, 35; R. Spence, Prohibition, 206-207, 219-220 (quote), 268, 581-583. 16 Decarie, Prohibition in Canada, 5. 17 R.C. Brown and Ramsey Cook, Canada 1896-1921: A Nation Transformed (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974), 98-99. 18 J.L. Granatstein et al., Twentieth Century Canada, 2nd ed. (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1986), 51-55.

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19 For good overviews of the reform movement see Brown and Cook, A Nation Transformed, 188-198, 294-305; the "Introduction" in Saving the City: The First Phase, 1880-1912, ed. Paul Rutherford (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974). John Weaver has written a number of articles on the complex motives and behaviour of civic reformers. In particular see " 'Tomorrow's Metropolis' Revisited: A Critical Assessment of Urban Reform in Canada, 1890-1920," in The Canadian City: Essays in Urban and Social History, eds. Gilbert A. Stelter and Alan F.J. Artibise, revised ed. (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1984), 456-477; and Weaver, "Elitism and the Corporate Ideal: Businessmen and Boosters in Canadian Civic Reform, 1890-1920," in The Consolidation of Capitalism, 1896-1929, eds. Michael Cross and Gregory Kealey (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1983), 143-166. Here Weaver argues that, a t the municipal level a t least, reform did not always eliminate waste and corruption. See 160; see also, Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles, Monopoly's Moment: The Organization and Regulation of Canadian Utilities, 1830-1 930 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 149-151; Doug Owram, The Government Generation: Canadian Intellectuals and the State, 1900-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 53-61. 20 Richard Allen, The Social Passion: Religion and Reform in Canada, 19141928 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 2-17,264-265; E. Forbes, "Prohibition and Social Gospel in Nova Scotia," in Prophecy and Protest: Social Movements in Twentieth Century Canada, eds. S.D. Clark et al. (Toronto: Gage, 1975), 62-65; Owram, The Government Generation, 4-5, 23-24. 21 Bacchi, Liberation Deferred, 3-12, 149. 22 Bacchi, Liberation Deferred, 77-79, 83-85; see also, R. Spence, Prohibition, 61-67; Wendy Mitchinson, "The WCTU: 'For God, Home and Native Land': A Study in Nineteenth-Century Feminism," in A Not Unreasonable Claim: Women and Reform in Canada, 1880s-192Os, ed. Linda Kealey (Toronto: Women's Educational Press, 1979), 151-168; Jack Blocker, "Separate Paths: Suffragists and the Women's Temperance Crusade," Signs 10 (Spring 1985): 460-476. 23 Decarie, Prohibition in Canada, 3-4; Bacchi, Liberation Deferred, 111 (quote)-116; Albert John Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia" (M.A. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1969), 88; James Gray, Red Lights on the Prairies (Toronto: Macmillan, 1971; Signet Books, 1973), 15-34; James Gray, Booze: The Impact of Whisky on the Prairie West (Toronto: Macmillan, 1972), 70-73. For the American context see Perry Duis, The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston 1880-1920 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 249-254; Norman Clark, The Dry Years: Prohibition and Social Change in Washington (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965), 55-59; Norman Clark, Deliver Us From Evil, 72-74; J.C.Burnham, "New Perspectives on the Prohibition 'Experiment' of the 1920s," Journal of Social History 2 (1968): 53-54. 24 Robert A.J. McDonald, "Victoria, Vancouver, and the Economic Devel-

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25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

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opment of British Columbia, 1886-1914," in British Columbia: Historical Readings, eds. W. Peter Ward and Robert A.J. McDonald (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1981), 370-371; Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 5, 34 (figures); Audrey Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites and Referendums By the Province of British Columbia" (M. A. thesis, University of British Columbia, 1958), 221 (quote). Patricia Roy, Vancouver: An nlustrated History (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1980), 168 (table IIa), 170 (table IX); on Asians see W. Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Toward Orientals in British Columbia (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1978), 167169 and Patricia Roy, A White Man's Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989). Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 6, 20; Roy, Vancouver, 170 (table X); Sheila Mosher, "The Social Gospel in British Columbia: Social Reform a s a Dimension of Religion, 1900-1929" (M.A. thesis, University of Victoria, 1974), 87 (quote). Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 29-31, 40 (quote) -41; R. Spence, Prohibition, 248; Robert Smith, "Bibles and Booze: Prohibition in Chilliwack in the Late 1800s," unpublished paper in the author's possession. Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 16-17; Linda Hale, "Appendix: Votes For Women: Profiles of Prominent British Columbia Suffragists and Social Reformers," in In Her Own Right: Selected Essays on Women's History in B. C., ed. Barbara Latham and Cathy Kess (Victoria: Camosun College, 1980), 287-302. Duis, The Saloon, 43-45; Clark, The Dry Years, 56-59; Lender and Martin, Drinking in America, 99 (salon); Michael A. Goldberg with Catherine C. Eckel, Price Competition in the British Columbia Brewing Industry: Present Status and Future Prospects (Vancouver: Faculty of Commerce, University of British Columbia, n.d. [1982]; Victoria: Queen's Printer, n.d.), 9-11; Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 17; Gray, Booze, 6 (Winnipeg). On English inns and alehouses see Peter Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200-1830 (New York, Longman, 1983), 2-15. Duis, The Saloon, 3, 110-113, 141-142; Peter DeLottinville, "Joe Beef of Montreal: Working Class Culture and the Tavern, 1869-1889," LabourlLe Trauailleur 8 and 9 (Autumn/Spring, 1981-1982): 9-40; Waite, Arduous Destiny, 24; see also, David Brundage, "The Producing Classes and the Saloon: Denver in the 1880s," Labor History 26 (Winter 1985): 30-33. Duis, The Saloon, 274-280; Decarie, Prohibition in Canada, 4; Gray, Booze, 70. For figures on convictions for drunkenness and deaths attributed to alcoholism see R. E. Popham and Wolfgang Schmidt, Statistics of Alcohol Use and Alcoholism in Canada, 1871-1 956 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 54, 98. Popham and Schmidt, Statistics of Alcohol Use, 22-23 (B.C. consumption); Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 10-16; Akrigg, Gold and

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Colonists, 353; Betty Keller, On the Shady Side: Vancouver 1886-1914 (Ganges, B.C.: Horsdall & Schubart Publishers, 1986), 1-10; Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 221 (quote). 33 Graeme Decarie, "Something Old, Something New: Aspects of Prohibitionism in the 1890s," in Oliver Mowat's Ontario, ed. Donald Swainson (Toronto: Macmillan, 1972), 162; Decarie, Prohibition in Canada, 5. 34 Michael Cramer, "Public and Political: Documents of the Woman's Suffrage Campaign in British Columbia, 1871-1917: The View from Victoria," in I n Her Own Right, 80; Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 41-50; Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 23-24; R. Spence, Prohibition, 461-462. 35 Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 44-46, 52-53; F. Spence, Facts of the Case, 101-102; R. Spence, Prohibition, 459; see also, Patricia Roy, "Progress, Prosperity and Politics: The Railway Policies of Richard McBride," BC Studies 47 (Autumn 1980). 36 Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 29-34. 37 Ibid., 34-40, 151-152. 38 Ibid., 59-60; Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 17. 39 Linda L. Hale, "The British Columbia Woman Suffrage Movement 18901917" (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia, 1977), 57, 63, 111-112; Cramer, "Public and Political," 84-85; Diane Crossley, "The B.C. Liberal Party and Women's Reforms, 1916-1928," in In Her Own Right, 238. 40 Crossley, "The B.C. Liberal Party and Women's Reforms," 232; Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 72; Robert Burkinshaw, "Conservative Protestantism and the Modernist Challenge in Vancouver, 1917-1927," BC Studies 85 (Spring 1990): 32. 41 Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 63-65; John H. Thompson, The Harvests of War: The Prairie West, 1914-1918 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1978), 97 (quote) -101. As Doug Owram has shown, in the Canadian reform movement efficiency was a means to a more moral society. See The Government Generation, 90-100. 42 Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 66-67 (quote). 43 Adarns, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 3-4: Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 69-71; R. Spence, Prohibition, 467-468. Michael Bliss has noted that "prominent businessmen were often pillars of their local churches, intensely dedicated Christians who moved easily from board meetings to prayer meetings, eschewed drinking, gambling, dancing and other frivolities. See Northern Enterprise, 346. 44 Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 52-53, 66-67. 45 Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 80-82; Adarns, "A Study of . the Use of Plebiscites," 72. 46 Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 76-78, 88; Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 72 (results); A.J. Hiebert, "Prohibition Comes to the Okanagan," (unpublished paper in author's possession), 21, 26 (prohi bi tion commit tees). 47 Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 73-74; R. Spence, Prohibition,

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472-474; Canadian Annual Review of Public Aflairs (CAR) 1919: 686. On the adoption of prohibition in some of the other provinces see Gray, Booze, 70-88 (the Prairies); Robert McLean, "A Most Effective Remedy: Temperance and Prohibition in Alberta, 1875-1915,"; Donald Mac McLeod, "The History of Liquor Legislation in Saskatchewann (M. A. thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1948), 80-119; John H. Thompson, "The Prohibition Question in Manitoba" (M.A. thesis, University of Manitoba, 1969); Hallotvell, Prohibition in Ontario; Forbes, "Prohibition and the Social Gospel in Nova Scotia," 73-75. R. Spence, Prohibition, 487-489, 609-612. CAR 1919, 686-689; Spence, Prohibition, 497. British Columbia, Statutes, 1916, c. 49 ("British Columbia Prohibition Act"), ss. 7, 11, 12, 14; "Price List of Liquors," April 1, 1919, British Columbia Archives and Record Service (BC ARS) GR1323, B2198. Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 101-103. On jitneys in Vancouver, see Armstrong and Nelles, Monopoly's Moment, 254-255. Popham and Schmidt, Statistics of Alcohol Use, 54, 70; Gray quote in John H. Thompson with Allen Seager, Canada 1922-1939: Decades of Discord (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985; paperback ed., 1986), 65; see also James Gray, The Roar of the Twenties (Toronto: Macmillan, 1975), 142. Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 109-111. "Re Fernie B.C." [May 1920?], BCARS, GR1323, B2167. Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 109-110; Attorney General to Cooke, 26 July 1920, BCARS, GR.1323, B2167 (quote); Gray, Roar of the Twenties, 143; Allen, The Social Passion, 270. Hiebert, uProhibition in British Columbia," 114; British Columbia, Statutes, 1918, c.68 ("British Columbia Prohibition Act Amendment Act") s.4a. Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 110-1 11 (first quote); Commissioner to Attorney General, 19 February 1920, BCARS, GR1323, B2167 (2nd quote). Vancouver Daily Province, 19 May 1919, p. 24; Gray, Roar of the Twenties, 143; Allen, The Social Passion, 270. Hallowell, Prohibition in Ontario, 75-76; Gray, Roar of the Twenties, 135136; Peter Newman, Bronfman Dynasty: The Rothschilds of the New World (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1978; Seal Books, 1979), 84; Canada, Statutes, 1919, c. 8 ("An Act to amend the Canada Temperance Actn), s. 1. Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 103-104; Thompson with Seager, Decades of Discord, 63-66; Allen, The Social Passion, 269-270; Owram, The Government Generation, 111-120. Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 107-108; CAR, 1920, 829. British Columbia Legislative Assembly Sessional Clipping Book (LA CB), 6 February 1920 (1st quote), 17 February 1920 (2nd quote). LACB, 8 April 1920, 17 March 1920, 29 March 1920; Statutes, 1920, c. 72 ("British Columbia Prohibition Act Amendment Act"), ss. 8, 11, 26. LACB, 29 March 1920. LACB, 29 March 1920 (1st quote); Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Colum-

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bia," 122 (2nd quote). 66 Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 82. 67 Ibid., 146-147. 68 Savage to Premier and Attorney General, 15 April 1920, BCARS, GR441, Vol. 209, File 92; LACB, 12 April 1920, 14 April 1920 (Smith). 69 Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 123-126. 70 LACB, 12 April 1920. 71 Hiebert, "Prohibition in British Columbia," 127-128 (quote); Oliver to Fortune, 12 November 1920, BCARS, GR441, Vol. 209, File 10. 72 Farris to Cook [sic], 26 July 1920, BCARS, GR441, Vol. 209, File 92; Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 88-89. 73 The Vancouver Sun, 11 October 1920, p. 3 (McClung), 14 October 1920, p. 7 (ballot), 15 October 1920, p. 2. (Farris). 74 Sun, 18 October 1920, p. 14, 12 October 1920, p. 5 (boozoriums); Province, 20 October 1920, p. 11 (quote). 75 Sun, 20 October 1920, p. 12 (1st quote); British Columbia Federationist, 8 October 1920, p. 5 (2nd quote); Sun, 16 October 1920, p. 10, 12 October 1920, p. 3 (Mackenzie). 76 Hiebert, "Prohibition," 127; Federationist, 21 July 1916, p. 1, 11 August 1916, pp. 1-2, 1 September 1916, p. 1, 8 September 1916, p. 8, 25 August 1916, p. 4. 77 Federationist, 11 August 1916, p. 1. 78 Federationist, 15 October 1920, p. 6; Canada. Royal Commission on Industrial Relations, Minutes of Evidence, Vol. 1, 450. 79 Federationist, 15 October 1920, p. 6 (advertisement and editorial). 80 LACB, 23 February 1920, 14 April 1920 (quote); Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 86. 81 Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 85; Sun, 21 October 1921, p. 3 (Fortune). Results: Prohibition Control Chilliwack 1,742 1,377 4,025 3,901 Richmond 373 Grand Forks 334 Nelson 971 1,004 S. Okanagan 1,526 1,613 Slocan 643 644 Victoria 5,103 9,555 Vancouver 14.277 24,716

Source: The British Columbia Gazette, 23 December 1920, p. 4899. 82 CAR, 1920, 830-831 (quote); Martin Robin, The Rush for Spoils: The Company Province, 1871-1933 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972), 181-185; Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 90-92.

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83 Reginald Hose, Prohibition or Control?: Canada's Experience with the Liquor Question, 1921-1 927 (Longmans, Green and Co., 1928), 108; Forbes, "Prohibition and the SociaI Gospel in Nova Scotia," 76; Newman, Bronfman, 84; Gray, Roar of the Twenties, 164-165. 84 Owram, The Government Generation, 4-7, 29-30; Paul Craven, 'An Impartial Umpire ': Industrial Relations and the Canadian State, 1900-1911 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980)) 360-361; see also, H.G. J. Aitken, "Defensive Expansionism: The State and Economic Growth in Canada," in W.T. Easterbrook and M.H.Watkins, eds. Approaches to Canadian Economic History (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967), 183-221. 85 On the ability of groups to take advantage of regulation by playing one level of government against another, see Christopher Armstrong, The Politics of Federalism: Ontario's Relations with the Federal Government, 18671942 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 5, 65, 112; Armstrong and H.V. Nelles, "Private Property in Peril: Ontario's Businessmen and the Federal System, 1888-1911," in Glenn Porter and Robert Cuff, eds. Enterprise and National Development (Toronto: Hakkert, 1972), 22-23; 33. 86 Armstrong and Nelles, Monopoly's Moment, ch. 9; H.V. Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines and Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario 1849-1941 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1974, paperback ed. 1975), 155, 304 (quote); see also, Armstrong and Nelles, "Private Property in Peril," 38; Tom Traves, The State and Enterprise: Canadian Manufacturers and the Federal Government, 1917-1 931 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 155-159; Paul Craven, 'An Impartial Umpire', 357.

Liquor and Liberals

When the legislature reconvened in February 1921, the province was mired in an intense post-war depression. John Oliver had to contend with poor provincial finances, a populace weary and wary of reform rhetoric, a less than united party and a determined opposition. To add to the problems, the Liberals still had to define what they meant by government control of liquor. Fortunately for them, they could look to some precedents. Sweden had had a form of state control since the midnineteenth century. Closer to home, South Carolina had experimented with government dispensaries from 1893 to 1907, and on the Prairies, Saskatchewan briefly tried government liquor stores before it adopted prohibition in World War One. The Liberals also received copies of Quebec's new Alcollolic Liquor Act that went into effect in May 1921.' From opening day, liquor dominated the legislature through volatile, partisan political clashes. To minimize rancor, the government sought all-party support for its liquor bill. But opposition leader William Bowser strenuously resisted, charging that the Liberals were "trying to shoulder on to the whole House an obligation which the government alone should discharge." On 23 February the Attorney General introduced the Government Liquor Act, which the Liberals promoted as the Moderation Act. Government stores were to sell liquor in "sealed packages" of undefined size. Spirits or hard liquor would be sold at a uniform price across the province. To obtain liquor legally, a prospective customer would first have to buy a single-purchase or $5.00 annual liquor permit, and the cost of the latter nearly equalled a day's wages for the average worker. Druggists, doctors, dentists and veterinarians would require special permits to dispense medicinal alcohol. The Liberal member for Fort George suggested dentists needed no liquor because they "administer so much

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cocaine when a person goes into a dentist's chair that I don't think he will suffer." Most of the bill dealt with enforcement. The drinking age was set at twenty-one. If drinkers endangered themselves, family or society, any one of numerous public officials could place them under "interdiction." An interdicted person could not purchase liquor "until further order." Provincial inspectors had the right to search premises without a warrant and seize liquor they believed to be illegally possessed. The penalty for a first conviction for bootlegging was "imprisonment, with hard labour, for not less than six months. . . ," with no option of a fine. To encourage local cooperation, the government offered half the liquor profits to municipalities, provided they vigorously upheld the lawB4 The Comptroller General recommended that the government employ two officials to administer the act-a "general manager," responsible for sales and the Prohibition Commissioner, responsible for enforcement. He argued that with two officials "the duties assigned to [them] would not conflict. . . ." Instead, the Liberals proposed a single three-member Liquor Control Board (LCB).The government gave the LCB broad jurisdiction to make regulations and initiate policy. None of its decisions was open to review, except by cabinet. Even the courts were excluded. One of the LCB'S first regulations was to the effect that no employee "shall at any time or under any circumstances become intoxicated or conduct himself in an unseemly manner." Breach of the rule would result in instant dismissal. The legislature passed the Liquor Act at the end of March, and the first government liquor stores opened in heavily populated areas on 15 June 1921; on the same day the Prohibition Act was repealed. Within a week 17 stores were open, and by March 1922 there was at least one store in 32 of the province's 39 electoral district^.^

Revenue or Control Nothing represented the compromise involved in government control better than the liquor store, where the LCB sold the product but did not promote it. Only a small sign identified the store's purpose, and dark green windows and curtains hid the interior. The starkness of the interior discouraged lingering; the atmosphere was reminiscent of a bank, with the assets stored safely behind a formidable counter. In larger stores, customers first lined up to have their liquor permits approved, although this requirement was often ignored in practice. With another clerk they placed their written orders and paid for purchases in cash. From a third clerk customers received their goods. All the staff, and usually the customers, were men; few women and no children entered a liquor storee6

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While the Board only briefly experimented with formal purchase limits, vendors had the authority to limit the quantity any person could buy. On the other hand, most people could not afford to buy much. In 1921 an imperial quart of good rye cost at least $5.00, and beer cost $3.50 for a dozen quarts. Even for the relatively well-paid vendors a quart of rye and a dozen beers consumed over a day's wages. Did the government set prices to maximize revenue or limit consumption? Actually, it tried to do both, but learned that these two sides of the liquor coin were difficult to separate.' To the new Attorney General, revenue was secondary to control. In 1922 the House Speaker and MLA for Omineca, Alex Manson, replaced Farris and assumed responsibility for the LCB. Farris resigned from cabinet, to concentrate, he said, on his law practice. Manson had a dislike for the liquor industry not shared by his predecessor. His appointment pleased Reverend A.E. Cooke of the Prohibition Association: Indeed, I personally feel assured that had the country had the good fortune to have had you in your present office from 1917 onwards, we would . But thanks to the utter failure of your still be under Prohibition. predecessor to do his duty the Government. . . is now entangled in a situation degrading to itself and destructive to the whole community over which it presides.8

..

In his lively correspondence with the prohibitionists, Manson made his views quite clear: "I have no hesitation in publicly and emphatically saying that so long as I am Attorney General charged with the administration of the Act the moral issue will be the first issue. The revenue will be an incident only." He assured Cooke that: "I am doing my utmost through our Vendors to see that the amount of liquor consumed by the individual is curtailed so that the least possible harm can come to the individual drinker and his family from the use of liquor." But Manson understood the links between control and revenue. He acknowledged that the government would profit from liquor sales, but he told the prohibitionists that to sell liquor at cost would be "immoral" as "the conditions that would ensue would be far from good." Cheap liquor, he argued, would promote excessive consumptionP Even though Manson had once told him, "the Government's need of revenue should [not] be mentioned in the same breath with the Liquor Act," Premier Oliver was inclined to seek profit from liquor. Like Manson, Oliver knew profit and control were difficult to separate: I am of the opinion that the Government is entitled to take a very substantial profit from this business, not only because they require a revenue, but also because the high price of liquor tends to limit the consumption thereof.

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But in 1922 Oliver was more concerned that a proposed price cut of 10% would actually reduce profits by 50%, and he cautioned the Attorney General to "make careful calculations as to the effect which proposed change in prices will have on the Revenue." As the provincial debt stood at $54 million and $18 million had been floated in new loans for the still unfinished provincial railway, Oliver's concern was understandable. By 1923 liquor revenue accounted for over 15% of the provincial government's income.lo Yet the dilemma presented by the choice between revenue and control involved more than the search for a mythical "fair price" that would maximize revenue but minimize consumption. If people did not like the government's prices, they might go elsewhere. And they did. Manson implemented price reductions in an attempt to stamp out bootleggers, who were regularly underselling the government .I1 These bootleggers who flouted government control had become entrenched during prohibition; people had become used to them, and they even acquired a certain respectability. On the day the new act took effect a self-confessed bootlegger anonymously wrote to the Attorney General: "we are already underselling your prices." According to "A. Non," Canadians did not want "any fake Yankee laws in Canada, but so long as Canada is cursed with a horde of puritan fanatics and joy-killers, so long will such freak legislation be foisted upon our people."12 Bootleggers prospered, not only because of underselling, but also because the government did not have complete control over the liquor traffic. For example, consumers were free to order liquor from other provinces. From its Vancouver office on Cambie Street, the Calgary Export Company underpriced the LCB. An imperial quart of good rye ordered from Alberta cost only $3.25, including express charges. In addition, the purchaser did not need a British Columbia liquor permit. By March 1922, British Columbians had imported over 360,000 gallons of beer and nearly 60,000 gallons of spirits and wine. Petty bootleggers received volume discounts and still made a small profit while offering the convenience of home delivery.13 The obvious conclusion would seem to be that the LCB charged too much and suffered the penalty of lost revenue. But the problem was complex and not a mere matter of possible price-gouging. Not only could individuals import for personal use, companies could bring in liquor for export to foreign nations. A more important aspect was the exemption of export companies that sold outside of Canada from the federal excise tax of $9.00 per gallon, which the LCB had to pay. With the advent of government control in Quebec and British Columbia the federal government more than tripled customs and excise duties to enhance its

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revenue. The Dominion also imposed a five per cent sales tax on liquor. Those levies directly affected the price charged by the LCB as it passed the taxes on to the consumer.14 Exporters conducted a lucrative business in British Columbia, and most of i t violated either American or Canadian law. From British Columbia t hey smuggled liquor to bootleggers in prohi bit ion provinces. The exporters were also the leaders in rumrunning to the United States, an activity that broke American but not Canadian law. Ships laden with liquor and supposedly bound for Mexico often did not get beyond San Francisco or even the Puget Sound. Lastly, the export warehouses provided for the big bootleggers. Much liquor consigned for export (and thus exempt from excise) either never left the province or was smuggled back in. As if all of this were not enough, bootleggers and rumrunners benefited from the greater availability of automobiles and improved public roads, in part financed by government liquor revenue. The place where the twenties really roared in British Columbia was the Crows Nest Pass, as McLaughlin Six Specials-the "whiskey sixes9'-raced from Fernie to Alberta and the United States.l Since British Columbia had no control over interprovincial or foreign trade, the province could do little. Prohibition provinces could end importation with a plebiscite, but government control provinces did not have that option. Instead, the British Columbia government imposed a heavy tax on privately imported liquor. Although the government eventually won the court battles over its right to impose the tax, collecting it proved to be almost impossible.16 Both Oliver and Manson pressured the federal government for the right to restrict imports. By 1926 the matter had come before Parliament three times. The Commons supported British Columbia, as did Quebec, but the Senate balked each time. Part of the problem was that the Liberals controlled Quebec, British Columbia and the Commons, but the Tories dominated the Senate. Moreover, liquor interests and the Moderation League lobbied the Senate to uphold the individual's right to import liquor. The Moderation League had supported government control, but its main interest was maximizing the individual's access to alcohol. When expanded provincial regulation threatened that access, the league played the province against the federal government. l7 For different reasons the prohibitionists too initially opposed ending private importation. Former Prohibition Association president William Savage told Manson that prohibition provinces had ended importation to help eliminate "evil" liquor as a beverage. But he claimed that British Columbia had wanted the power only to legitimize government control and "the principle that liquor is good for beverage purposes."18

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The province also had little luck with the export houses. Foreign trade was a Dominion responsibility, so British Columbia could not get rid of these businesses. Instead, Manson raised their annual provincial licence from $3,000 to $10,000. While the higher fees gave the government more licence revenue and forced consolidation of the warehouses, the measure did not put them out of business. Warehouses remained open in Victoria, Vancouver, Grand Forks, Fernie, Prince Rupert and Greenwood. Jurisdictional disputes with the federal government continued to hamper the province's battle with the bootleggers. More obvious to most people, however, was the province's unsuccessful war against public drinking.lg With regard to the contentious problem of public drinking, the government took a hard line. Before prohibition, drunkenness in public was an offence under the federal Criminal Code. The Government Liquor Act created the provincial crime of drinking in public. Unless licensed by the LCB,all drinking had to take place in private homes, and even there drunkenness was forbidden. In addition, the act specifically banned near-beer. Even the words "bar," "bar-room," "saloon," and "tavern" were banned from public display.2o In the House, public drinking provoked a torrent of debate that crossed party lines. The main promoters of beer were new MLAS, Captain Ian Mackenzie, a Liberal lawyer and veterans' representative from Vancouver, and Tom Uphill, independent member for Fernie and a champion of the coal miners of his riding. Both men wanted beer sold by the glass in hotels and private clubs, especially veterans' clubs. Uphill damned the new Liquor Act as "class legislation of the worst kind. The man who has the spondulix has either a cellar where he can keep his beer or an auto in which he can take it to his home fresh, but the poor man has neither. . . ." But many Liberals opposed beer, including the Premier and Mary Ellen Smith, the only woman MLA, who said, "the plebiscite vote was not an expressed desire for the return of the bar." In addition, the Prohibition Association, the Moderation League and various veterans' groups lobbied the members with their views. "Comrade Clark," an ex-soldier told the cabinet: "Drinking is a social custom of man, just as tea drinking is a social custom of women. We don't interfere with their custom, so don't let them interfere with ours."21 Beer caused so much argument in the legislature in 1921 that Oliver had to allow free votes on it because he could not hold his party together. One resolution that called for a referendum on beer passed the legislature, but Manson, who was still Speaker, ruled it out of order. All of the other beer motions failed. For the moment, the government stood by its ban on public drinking.22

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Nevertheless, a group of veterans' clubs announced in July 1921 that they would continue to sell beer to bona fide members. The clubs argued that they really were not selling the beer, which members usually kept in personal lockers; they merely distributed it and charged a service fee. Not persuaded, the Attorney General ordered government agents to raid the clubs. The raids began a two and a half year conflict that the province ultimately lost ,23 Early court decisions favoured the beer clubs. In the first major decision, in September 1921, a judge ruled that a veterans' club was not a "person" under the act and could not be prosecuted. In another case the judge declared that beer was not liquor because the LCB did not place a seal on each bottle. In consequence, clubs that illegally sold beer escaped the stringent penalities for illegal sale of liquor, and were usually fined only $100.00. The same judge, H.S. Caley, ruled in 1923 that clubs which "distributed" beer owned by members, in exchange for a service fee, could not be convicted of illegal sale. Although appeals and later amendments strengthened the government's position somewhat, the damage was done. In 1922 the cabinet admitted that government control applied to only half the liquor consumed in the province. The rest was sold by bootleggers and a variety of beer "clubs" that "distributed" beer to members.24 Many Vancouver hotels opened private clubs with very low membership fees. Some had hundreds of members. One Vancouver liquor inspector said the Castle Hotel on Granville was "brazenly selling beer" for 20 to 25 cents per bottle. Worse still, according to the inspector, beer clubs were "endorsed by the Municipal Police."25 Although the government had created a liquor "secret service," it expected municipalities to enforce the law in order to receive their share of the liquor profits. But Manson was forced to admit that "in some municipalities there has been rather flagrant non-observance of the liquor law. . . " The real problem, according to the Attorney General, was that "the public generally do not look upon the breach of [the] liquor law as so serious a matter as the breach of other laws." Municipal governments, particularly in Vancouver, enforced the law with as much, or little, enthusiasm as the voters in their areas wanted.26 Manson blamed the Mayor of Vancouver, the former Tory MLA Charles Tisdall, for lack of enforcement in his city. The "secret service" conducted hundreds of raids, and the government deducted the costs from the city's share of liquor profits. The Mayor resented the loss of revenue and the accusation that the city did nothing to %tamp out what you [Manson] term this illicit trade." He claimed that from January to June 1922, 679 cases had been brought before the city's police court.

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The Mayor's argument seemed weaker, however, when the city began to license clubs. Technically the licence had nothing to do with liquor, but it was common knowledge that the licensed clubs, numbering over 100, and half of them located in hotels, existed primarily to serve beer.27 Not surprisingly, beer clubs had the assistance of the province's breweries, which Manson damned as some of the biggest bootleggers. He accused them of employing "every manner of deceit and trick" to sell their wares, including financing beer clubs and supplying them with bootleg beer. Yet, as much as he said he loathed them, Manson had to endure the breweries since he could not cancel their federal licences.28 Taking an alternative approach, he offered the breweries a deal to win their support for government control. He proposed a brewers' cartel that would guarantee each member a portion of the government's business. After much negotiation, five Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island breweries organized the Amalgamated Brewers Agency (ABA) in 1923. From then on the government bought the bulk of its beer from member breweries. Only one interior brewery joined the cartel, but the others agreed to keep their beer away from the coast, provided the ABA gave them reciprocal treatment. This alliance with the government virtually eliminated brewery competition and seriously hindered attempts to open new breweries. Manson never learned to love the brewers, but the arrangement reduced brewery bootlegging and, with some modifications, lasted for decades.29 The brewery cartel did little to alleviate the beer club problem. Clubs did not need bootleg beer, as they could order their supplies by the barrel from the LCB. When the Board banned deliveries to known clubs, the owners simply had it delivered somewhere else. The government was caught between those who saw clubs as ill-disguised saloons, and the workers, war veterans and businessmen who liked to socialize with their peers, preferably over liquor. In the end the Liberals decided that what the government could not eliminate, it could license. In 1923 the government created the club licence. For a $100 annual fee, members could keep liquor for personal consumption on club premises. Clubs could not sell liquor; they held it in lockers for members and were allowed to charge a minimal fee for storage. All clubs not licensed by the LCB were declared public places, and there liquor was forbidden. Early in 1924 the LCB issued the first licences, and the vast majority went to veterans' clubs.30 But the government did even more about public drinking. Although the Liberals were hardly united on the issue, the legislature managed to pass a bill that called for a plebiscite on the sale of beer by the glass "without a bar."

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Beer by the Glass The defenders of beer had refused t o let their issue die. The Moderation League, and the Liberty League, its counterpart in Victoria, besieged the government with visits, resolutions and letters in support of licensed public drinking. They argued that the existence of so many beer clubs proved the majority of people wanted beer, and they claimed the support of labour organizations, veterans' groups, and the fledgling British Columbia Hotels' Association (BCHA), a group of Vancouver hotels that organized to win the right to serve beer by the glass.31 The hotel industry, particularly the newly-organized Vancouver contingent, asked for permission to sell beer, justifying their request by economic necessity.. Government control had eliminated the near-beer bars, which had carried many hotels through the dog days of prohibition. In addition, the hotels had endured increased taxes and declining revenues in the post-war depression. By late 1922 Vancouver hotels were operating at 50% occupancy. Their occupied rooms were often filled with drinkers, as the law allowed guests to drink personal liquor in their rooms. One Fernie operator complained that "the best rooms in the house') had broken plaster, soiled carpets, and walls "stained by vomit as high up as six feet."32 The hotel owners offered a simple solution to their plight. They would sell beer under strict government regulation with no return of the saloon. Licensed drinking would curtail, they asserted, bootlegging, increase respect for the law, and reduce the costs of enforcement. Moreover, as in Quebec, beer by the glass in British Columbia would attract much needed tourist revenue from thirsty A m e r i ~ a n s . ~ ~ Inside the legislature, beer dominated debate and continued to jeopardize Liberal unity. Each session Mackenzie and Uphill introduced beer bills that the government managed to defeat on procedural grounds, but the pressure was growing. Major R.J. Burde, independent for Alberni, spoke in favour of beer because "one-half of the city of Vancouver was bootlegging to the other 50% . . . ." J.W. Farris, the powerful former Attorney General, added his support to beer. In his view, "this thing [the beer issue] has got to where there ought to be a showdown." He called upon the government to accept its responsibility and deal with beer .34 Continually needled by the Tories, who were nearly as divided on beer as the Liberals, Manson decided the government had to do something before the party devoured itself. Although personally opposed to beer, he introduced, with cabinet approval, a bill that called for a plebiscite on beer by the glass. After much bitter debate, it passed in late December 1923. Manson envisioned the plebiscite as a kind of local option vote,

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following which those districts that gave majority approval to beer would be allowed to sell it. Unfortunately the plebiscite did not state whether the vote bound the whole province or only each electoral district. It simply read, "Do you approve of the sale of beer by the glass in licensed premises without a bar under Government control and regulation?,'' almost the exact wording proposed by the Moderation League two months previously.35 At first Manson hoped the plebiscite could be kept separate from the pending provincial election, so candidates would not be pressured by the two sides. But "in favour'of economy" the government decided to hold an election and a plebiscite on the same day, 20 June 1924. To promote party unity, Oliver ordered the Liberals to maintain that beer was a moral issue rather than a political one and therefore not part of the campaign. Instead they emphasized prosperity and their continual battle with the federal government over freight rates. Neither the Conservatives nor the new Provincial Party (a temporary alliance of farmers and "reform" Conservatives) took a stand on the plebiscite. The Tories railed against Liberal corruption and praised Conservative efficiency, while the Provincial Party condemned the alleged corruption of both Oliver and Bowser. Specifically, the new party accused the Liberals of arranging a kickback scheme with the brewers, but at a later date a royal commission (see below) exonerated the government .36 The prohibitionists were the most determined opponents of beer by the glass. The 1920 plebiscite defeat had temporarily demoralized the People's Prohibition Association, but the next year it re-emerged as the British Columbia Prohibition Association, hired a provincial organizer, and, led by the outspoken Reverend A.E. Cooke, launched its campaign against government control. The drys turned familiar arguments against the wets. They pointed to the problems of enforcement and to the activities of bootleggers as proof that government control had failed. Beer by the glass meant the return of saloons and their concomitant evils, in a province that Cooke described as being already "the moral sinkhole of the Dominion." The only solution was complete prohibition, effectively enforced.37 As in 1920, both sides fought the beer plebiscite with advertising and public meetings. The Prohibition Association found wide support in the quarters where it might be expected. The WCTU, the Methodist Conference, the Federation of Nurses, the Women's Missionary Society, and fifty-four societies affiliated to the Local Council of Women all opposed beer by the glass. Dry advertisements emphasized that beer by the glass reintroduced the notion of private gain in retail sales and that the ultimate result would be the return of the saloon. The prohibitionists urged

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the voters to defend the ('boys and girls and the homes of B.C.''38 On the other side, the moderationists claimed the hotel industry and virtually all of the veterans' organizations as supporters. The liquor industry did not openly help the League, but prohibitionists maintained that the brewers financed their expensive advertising campaign. Wet advertisements portrayed beer as a food and a temperance drink. With beer by the glass, people would drink less, since someone who wanted a beer would not have to go to the liquor store and buy a dozen. The League directed many advertisements at labour. A vote for beer meant cheaper beer "at a palatable temperature'' and more jobs for British Col~mbians.~~ Generally speaking, organized labour favoured beer by the glass. Even more than prohibition, government control was regarded by the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council (VTLC) as class legislation. During prohibition one could still go to the bar, drink near-beer and add to it the contents of one's hip flask. Government control made beer available only by the warm dozen at government liquor stores. A cold nickel glass had been replaced by the $3.50 case. Since April 1921, the VTLC had demanded a government plebiscite on beer, and many other unions echoed the call.40 Even so, the labour press on the whole paid little attention to the plebiscite. The event coincided with the founding of the Canadian Labour Party, and neither the party's Vancouver candidates nor its paper, The Labour Statesman, took an official stand. The B.C. Federationist carried advertisements, but little debate. A Federationist editorial said the plebiscite was "a mere detail." Capitalism was the real cause of liquor abuse and "alcoholism could only disappear with the disappearance of the system which created it and reproduced it." This view was strongly supported by Labour candidate J.H. Hawthornthwaite, who was not returned to the L e g i ~ l a t u r e . ~ ~ Labour's relative lack of interest was understandable. Since World War One, organized labour had suffered continual external or internal attacks. The collapse of the One Big Union, almost as soon as it began, left many unionists demoralized. Many workers were more concerned about jobs and the government's railway policies than they were about beer. All in all, the plebiscite results seemed to be a foregone conclusion; it would pass handsomely across the province, and those districts that gave majority approval would get beer by the glass. The government had already amended the Liquor Act to allow for beer by the glass in areas where the voters approved.42 The results surprised most people. Although one voter wrote "by the bucketfull" on the ballot, the majority of the voters cast against beer,

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73,853 to 72,214. Even in the large cities, beer met opposition. Victoria defeated it by nearly 2,000 votes, while Vancouver approved it by 78 votes and Burnaby by a single ballot. The press claimed that women and businessmen had defeated beer because they feared the return of the saloon. Certainly, the fear of the saloon had been continually reinforced by the prohibitionists during the plebiscite campaign, and urban hotels had been some of the strongest supporters of beer. Less than a generation before, saloons had operated with little restraint, and government control had been unable to control beer clubs. Many voters questioned the government's ability to regulate expanded public drinking, especially in cities with large concentrations of hotels.43 On the other hand, 23 of the 40 electoral districts in British Columbia approved beer. Beer was most popular in the non-metropolitan ridings of Fernie (78% in favour), Lillooet (71%), Mackenzie (70%) and Cariboo (69%). According to the Liquor Act amendments, those ridings that had approved beer could apply for beer licences. Nevertheless, both sides acted as if beer had lost. The Moderation League called for a recount and the prohibitionists celebrated their "victory." The press did not help, publishing such headlines as, "Beer Plebiscite Goes to Defeat." In one article the Sun admitted the plebiscite had been a local option vote, but, in a classic understatement, added: "this was not understood as well as it might have been." A few days later, under another Sun headline, ('Beer By Glass Not Dead," the paper printed a confusing quote from the Attorney General: "On the face of it the province seems to have gone strongly against beer generally and whether those places which voted for should be granted the privilege. . .has yet to be decided." The Liberals had expected the plebiscite to pass with a majority. When it did not, they hesitated to allow beer in those ridings that had approved it.44 Still more confusing was the fate of the Liberal Party, which had won most, but not a majority, of the seats in the legislature. Bowser, Farris and Oliver lost their seats, although a by-election soon returned the Premier to the House. To command a majority, the Liberals needed the support of R.J. Burde and Tom Uphill, independents who favoured beer by the glass.45 When the legislature reconvened in November 1924, it seemed as if the plebiscite had never occurred. Both the moderationists and the prohibitionists sent their forces to the capital. Inside the House, Liberals fought Liberals. Ian Mackenzie continued to push beer while his new colleagues, storeowner Charles Woodward and General Victor Odlum, spoke against it. During the war Odlum had been the only Canadian commander t o cut off the rum ration, a most unpopular decision with his troops. Fernie's Tom Uphill put the matter simply: "if Vancouver

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wants to drink fizz, all right, but my constituents voted four to one for beer and I want to see something done and done quickly."46 In the view of Attorney General Manson, the vote had been indecisive, so he advised the members to wait and see how the new beer-by-theglass scheme worked in Alberta. Nonetheless, in a final December vote, Premier Oliver, with great reluctance, cast for beer. As tears ran down his cheeks, he said he had never voted for liquor in his life, but he "must abide by the local option principle." He, and twenty-seven of his colleagues on both sides of the house, finally decided that British Columbians deserved beer by the glass. Manson voted against beer.47 In theory one question remained: who would receive the beer licences? Nothing in the act or regulations confined beer licences to hotels, but the BCHA requested that "licences be granted to standard hotels only." Hotels had the facilities, the economic need and the tradition of licensed public drinking. The government's main concern was to minimize the debate on that topic, so there soon evolved an informal alliance between the BCHA and the government. In return for beer licences, the hotel industry agreed to follow strict, frequently conflicting and sometimes ludicrous regulations. The first hotel beer parlours opened in March 1925.48 Beer parlours were a strange solution to an odd problem. The government had the mandate to reinstitute public drinking, but not the saloon. Accordingly, the LCB banned all of its features except for beer. No bar was permitted; patrons could not stand and drink. They sat at tables where waiters served them draft or bottled beer. For nearly thirty years, parlour operators sold only beer; they could not stock soft drinks, food or cigarettes. Moreover, the Board allowed a parlour to sell only one brand of draft at a time, but the one it sold could not be advertised, as the LCB prohibited all advertising in parlours. The Board permitted no entertainment of any kind, and parlour signs warned: "Regulation Number 28 forbids singing or the playing of any musical instrument in any beer parlour." All games were banned, even checkers. Unlike Prairie parlours, where windows were forbidden, British Columbia parlours had to be on ground level with a clear view of the interior from the street. But rules requiring the curtains to b:: open or closed alternated over the years. In British Columbia beer parlours about all one could do was drink. As a former parlour worker explained, customers were to "sit down, shut up and drink your beer." At ten cents a glass (the fixed price), waiters emptied barrels of beer into bored drinkers.49 From the beginning the press referred to parlours as "workingmen's clubs," and for all their drawbacks, they were popular with workers. The beer was cheap, and unless one belonged to a real club, the only alter-

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native was to buy a case and take it home. Workers who had finished their shifts on the Vancouver docks preferred to head to the Princeton on Powell Street, where they sat in groups and took turns buying rounds of beer. Those who did not want to drink too much bought their round early so that they could leave. Public drinking had always been predominately a male activity, but when the parlours opened in 1925, the waiters encountered a few women who wanted to drink.50

Beer Parlours: Men Only In the nineteenth century some jurisdictions had banned women from saloons, but social pressure provided the more effective prohibition, particularly when saloons became less popular with the middle class. Such restrictions supposedly protected women from the corrupting influence of liquor, at least in public, and saved men weakened by drink from the temptations of prostitutes. In fact, most men had simply not wanted women in the saloons, although they might have made an exception for prostitutes. Of course, few women had pounded at the doors, and many had spent their time trying to get rid of the saloons.51 By the 1920s the situation was no longer so simple. Women now had the vote, which offered at least the illusion of equality. As a result of the reform movement and World War One, women were more prominent in public life, although not in any way that threatened to break down traditional barriers. Some people believed the presence of women in beer parlours would curtail the public excesses of male camaraderie. But many hotel owners feared that prostitutes would frequent the parlours and endanger their existence.52 When the parlours opened, the LCB allowed women t o enter, mainly as an experiment. The 1925 regulations only prohibited a woman from serving beer, unless she held the licence. According to one newspaper, the LCB chairman said that to ban women "appeared unreasonable and ungallant to the fair sex." But parlours seemed to have no immediate appeal for the "fair sex," and considering traditional attitudes about public drinking, it was hardly surprising that women stayed away. Yet as early as May 1925 Vancouver hotels and the LCB discussed banning women. By then a few hotels had posted signs that said men only would be served. In the spring of 1926 "108 earnest church workers" from the United Church watched fifty-four Vancouver beer parlours on two weekend evenings. Although the "census takers" expressed concern about the number of women, 80% to 90% of the customers were men.53 What outraged most parlour critics was not really the presence of women, but the sheer number of licensed hotels. Before the end of 1925 the LCB had licensed over sixty parlours in downtown Vancouver. In

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one two-block section of Cordova Street, the core of the skid road district, thirteen parlours competed for dimes. Merchants, church groups, the Vancouver Board of Trade, and even some prominent Liberal politicians, such as Vancouver MLA Charles Woodward, protested against the number of beer licences in the downtown core. They stressed that the large number of parlours promoted drunkenness instead of curbing it, and that cutthroat competition was forcing operators to violate the regulations. The United Church census takers expressed concern about "the number of women patronizing the beer parlours," but most critics barely mentioned women. The Vancouver Council of Women had nothing to say about women in beer parlours. At the time they were more concerned with the sterilization of the "mentally deficient," and with physical and mental tests for immigrant^.^^ In 1926, the issue of women in beer parlours became particularly prominent, because attacks on the parlours themselves had increased throughout the province. In local plebiscites, both New Westminster and Revelstoke reconfirmed their opposition to parlours. Many people were outraged by the decision of LCB to license parlours in previously dry Port Moody. In Vancouver, opponents organized the Anti-Beer League and raised $10,000 to finance the drive to petition for another vote. The Province predicted that, if Vancouver dropped beer parlours, they were doomed everywhere in British C ~ l u m b i a . ~ ~ In late July of 1926 the sixty-two Vancouver members of the BCHA voted unanimously to prohibit women in beer parlours. President J.D. Pearson claimed the experiment had failed, and public opinion, especially prohibitionist opinion, opposed women in the parlours. He added that women had to leave because many male patrons preferred the company of men only. Pearson assured the press that once this "chief cause for criticism" had been removed, then all would be well.56 The day after the announcement, LCB officials admitted they had encouraged the BCHA action because the presence of women "threatened to throw the whole system into disrepute." The Board had considered new regulations to ban women, but the Attorney General's office advised the LCB and the BCHA that they could not legally keep them out. As an alternative, the LCB and the hotels, over the summer of 1926, devised a "gentleman's agreement" to reach the same goal. Though its legal status remained unclear, the agreement formally went into effect in August. It applied only to Vancouver, the centre of parlours and parlour opponents. Some operators proposed separate beer halls for women, but nothing came of the idea at first. Instead, LCB-sanctionedsigns warned women to stay out.57

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In Vancouver, the Province and the Sun approved of the move. Months before the official ban the Province had stated: "Women, of course, under our law, have the same rights as men. . . .But this is a question not of right, but of expediency, and there is no doubt that the presence of women makes it more difficult to conduct beer parlours in a decent and orderly manner." The Sun concurred: "logic or no logic, rights or no rights, there are plenty of sound reasons for keeping women out of beer parlours frequented by men." Neither paper stated what the good reasons were; both made only the vaguest allusions to prostitutes. The tone of each suggested an approval of parlours, but opposition to women drinking in If prostitutes had been the chief problem with parlours, parlour opponents should have applauded the news. But Reverend R.J.McIntyre, of the British Columbia Prohibition Association, condemned the ban as a "deathbed repentance of the brewers." He said that both men and women of poor morals used the parlours, and if morality were the criterion of entrance, profits would suffer. He claimed the parlours banned women simply because they were women; the ban was an insult to the intelligence of women and a violation of the idea of equal rights. If beer parlours were unfit for decent women, then remove the parlours, not women .59 Technically, the gentleman's agreement against women was voluntary, and it worked only as long as BCHA members adhered to it. In May 1927, the Commercial Hotel began to accept women again. The LCB quickly suspended its licence, ostensibly for serving a drunk. Albert Lake, the licence holder, took the LCB to court and argued no statute prevented him from serving women. The court avoided that issue. The judge simply ruled that a beer licence was a privilege, not a right, and the Board could revoke it for any reason whatsoever.60 Within a few days of the decision, the Board returned Lake's licence and he began to serve women again, but in a separate room. Though still opposed to the presence of women, LCB officials admitted they were on weak legal ground, even with the power to suspend a licence for any reason. In July 1927 the LCB and the BCHA announced a new gentleman's agreement. Women could enter beer parlours provided the operators made available a room for men only and a separate room for women, where a man would be allowed if he entered with a woman. Unattached men and women could drink in beer parlours, but not togethersel The primary purpose of the actions taken against women had been to deflect criticism of the parlours at a critical time. The anti-beer forces had launched an intense attack on the parlours and the government that had created them. When it appeared that another Vancouver vote was

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imminent, the Board and the hotels adopted a strong moral stand against prostitutes and in defence of the decency of beer parlours. Critics argued the problem was the parlours, not the women who occasionally used them. But the ban and its later modification seemed to have the desired effect. There were no more ballots on beer by the glass in Vancouver.

Patronage and Government Control of Liquor Bootlegging, clubs and beer parlours attracted much of the public's attention in the 1920s. But government control also added new opportunities for patronage, which remained a significant force in provincial politics. Instead of strengthening party loyalty, however, liquor patronage aggravated divisions among the governing Liberals and contributed to their defeat in 1928. Until the period following World War One liquor was an unrealized opportunity for provincial governments. Privy Council liquor decisions had generally favoured the provinces, but they had left Ottawa with jurisdiction over customs and excise, and the power to license manufacturers and regulate interprovincial trade. Government control represented an assertion of provincial authority, consistent with the trend towards federal decentralization in the 1920s. Liquor profits helped to fund other areas of expanding provincial concern, such as education and road construction. Although the provinces never gained complete authority over the liquor traffic, they were, by the end of the decade, regulating virtually all liquor within their boundaries. In addition, they began in 1930 to license brewers and distillers, on the understanding that the federal government would not grant a federal licence until a manufacturer had provincial approval.G2 The first significant changes began during prohibition, which put provincial governments in the liquor business. In British Columbia prohibition made it necessary to hire vendors, lease warehouses and open dispensaries for the legal, but very limited, distribution of liquor. Under government control liquor distribution became big business. Approximately 5000 people applied for the initial 250 positions. Ostensibly, the LCB hired the staff and chose the sites for liquor stores. But the government could overrule the LCB. During the 1920s) as the system became established, the government played an active role in the affairs of the LCB. Although control was new in British Columbia, the Liberals kept traditional patronage concerns an administrative priority. New patronage opportunities and profit from sales to the dry U.S.had made meddling almost i r r e ~ i s t i b l e . ~ ~ From the outset of government control the Vancouver Liberal machine sought to use it as a means of extending its influence. Important

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positions, such as that of sheriff, already were handed out on the recommendation of the "Patronage Committee of Vancouver," a phrase of J.W. Farris, who was very influential on that committee. On his recommendation during his time as Attorney General, and that of A.M. Johnson, just before he became LCB chairman, the LCB took a five-year option to purchase a warehouse for $150,000, although the building had been assessed a t only $58,000. In the legislature in the fall of 1921 Farris defended the contract and the building's owner, Charles Campbell, a prominent Liberal and a good friend of Farris. The government majority easily quashed a motion to appoint a special committee to investigate the LCB. Farris's resignation a few months later probably had more to do with the warehouse controversy than with his alleged desire to concentrate on his law practice.64 Opposition leader William Bowser was unrelenting in his attack on Liberal administration of the Liquor Act. In October 1921 he claimed that illegal beer clubs were not only "running wide open today," but that Vancouver Liberal Ian Mackenzie had opened five clubs with "membership" dues of ten cents. More damning was his charge that a "ring" of Liberals controlled all LCB liquor purchases. According to Bowser, wholesalers who wished to deal with the LCB had to have links with the ring, which included William T. McArthur, hardware merchant and party bagman, H.J.McLatchy, party campaign manager, Wendell Farris, brother of the former Attorney General, Vancouver lawyer Gordon Wismer, and J.H.Falconer, Vancouver member of the LCB.~' From the first the LCB did not function as a unit, even though all the members were loyal Liberals. New Zealand-born A.M. Johnson, a defeated Liberal candidate in the 1916 election and Deputy Attorney General under Farris, was appointed LCB chairman in Victoria. Selected to sit with Johnson in the capital was W.N. Winsby, who already had a patronage appointment as Victoria Inspector of Schools. J.H. Falconer, honourary president of the British Columbia Manufactuers Association, was repaid for his efforts on behalf of Farris in the 1920 election by being appointed as the Vancouver LCB member. Falconer attended the Board meetings irregularly, and tended to conduct operations in Vancouver without consulting his colleagues. Before the Board had completed its first year in office, the Premier was complaining about their activities. But Oliver acted only after the powerful Farris left.66 According to the Victoria Colonist, even before Alex Manson would agree to be Farris's replacement, he made Oliver promise a thorough examination of the LCB. In February 1922 Oliver appointed Colonel Ross Napier, Supervisor of Assessors, to investigate the LCB. The first part of Napier's report, ready by early March, criticized the LCB,especially

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J .H. Falconer. According to Napier, Falconer acted as a one-man board in Vancouver and ignored his colleagues in Victoria. In defiance of the act, he engaged in oral transactions with brewers, and vendors throughout the province complained they received shipments of beer they never ordered. One Quesnel vendor reported in 1921 that he had 163 barrels of beer and no place to store them. He wanted no more beer, but Falconer sent him 150 additional barrels the next month, which resulted in expensive warehouse charges. Napier accused Falconer of using forged letters from vendors to cover his tracks and concluded: Arrangements made with regard to beer supply would appear to have had for their object more the offering of facilities to the Breweries to place their products on the local markets rather than the establishment of control over sale or the meeting of the demands of the public.

Napier's interim recommendations included the stationing of all Board members in Victoria, and he implied that Falconer should not be one of those members. He also suggested that any future transactions with the breweries be conducted in writing. Despite much pressure from the opposition, and from some delegates at the Liberals' 1922 convention, the government refused to make public Napier's findings.67 After Napier's investigation, Manson applied heavy pressure to the Board-in private. In April 1922, he wrote Johnson and ordered the LCB not to "wink at liberties being taken with the Act." He complained the Board conducted its business loosely, kept poor records, and "members of the Board. . .have indulged in the abuse of fellow members, not only to each other but to various members of the public." As the year progressed his frustration with Falconer in particular became more apparent. "I cannot understand," he wrote in December: why you cannot get it clearly into your head once and for all that you are not the Board. . . In no sense are you in charge of the Vancouver Warehouse or the Vancouver stores. You are a member of a Board of three.

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Manson said if things did not improve, he would have to take steps which might be "unpleasant." But nearly two years elapsed before the government fired Falconer and the rest of the Board.68 Most probably the government did not fire Falconer immediately because of his close connections with prominent Liberals. His brother Peter owned shares in the California Wine Company, housed in an old pickle factory on False Creek in Vancouver. The ex-president of the Ward Five Liberal Association also had an interest in the company, as did party bagman William McArthur. J.W. Farris, still a member of the legislature, acted as unofficial lobbyist for the firm.69

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According to an Oliver adviser, Manson refused to buck the machine, and "when he tried t o clean up the province, [he] left Vancouver alone." For example, in March 1922 the LCB voted to fire A.K. Lavan, vendor of the Pender Street liquor store in Vancouver, because of an accumulated shortage of $694.45. Falconer dissented from the firing, and at the request of Manson, Lavan was reappointed vendor in ~ a ~ . Manson also had to contend with the voracious appetites of local party associations, which besieged him with requests for liquor stores in their ridings, although technically it was the LCB that chose store sites. In 1923 Manson found himself caught in the middle of a long dispute between two Liberal groups over the Hope liquor store. The Hope association recommended that the LCB hire a Mr. Dent as vendor, but the nearby Laidlaw organization opposed the recommendation because Dent was already a Justice of the Peace. W.A. Furness of Laidlaw added his complaint that Dent was not a "returned man"-a veteran. Manson told the Hope president that he was "anxious that there should be the greatest coordination and unity in the riding hence my desire that Mr. Dent's appointment be considered by the Laidlaw Association. . . ." The two groups haggled for weeks, and then decided on a veteran-W .A. Furness, Secretary of the Laidlaw Liberal Association. The LCB hired him at a salary of $175.00 per month.71 By 1923 Manson was relying on reports from a paid informant who kept an eye on the LCB. Andy Blygh, a Justice of the Peace, reported that Falconer had been given $15,000 by the British Columbia Distillery Company. According to Blygh he kept $5,000 and passed on the balance to an unknown person. When the story leaked, Falconer pressured two distillery officials to sign affidavits that he had received no money. Blygh concluded that local liquor interests were worried that Falconer would be replaced with someone not "so pliable and so obedient to orders. . . ." Blygh's next report said ordinary Liberals were ready to vote Conservative because the government would not fire men like Falconer. He concluded that the "incompetent and corrupt Liquor Board is not only a stench in the nostrils of decent high minded liberalism but [it is] smudging and smirching the countenance of the Government." Manson immediately wrote to Farris and asked "if there is anything the matter with Falconer I would certainly like to know it. . . ."72 Falconer managed to stay on until October 1924, because the government was at this time involved with the beer plebiscite and the election. When the new session began-which promised more attacks on liquor and Liberals-the three original members of the LCB "retired." Manson told the legislature that they had resigned, but he emphasized that they would have been fired: "Dismissal is not a pleasant task, but when it has

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to be done it must be done." They were replaced by a single member, Hugh Davidson, an executive with the Gregory Tire and Rubber Company in Vancouver. A one-member LCB was not only cheaper, but also easier to control, as the government no longer had to contend with practically separate boards in Victoria and Vancouver; and Davidson was based in Victoria and therefore supposedly removed from the clutches of the Vancouver machine.73 But Davidson inherited a board with even more patronage potential, for beer parlours had turned the LCB into a licensing agency. While local areas decided whether they wanted parlours, the LCB, in concert with the government, determined who would get beer licences. Since licences were given for only one year at a time, licensees became dependent upon the LCB and ultimately the party in power. Before the beer plebiscite, the Province had been prescient when it warned: a liquor-licensing system is the very sort of thing on which machine politics feed. . .There would be trafficking in beer licenses, campaign funds would be raised from the liquor interests, there would be petty graft for ward bosses and graft of another kind for bosses of larger calibre.

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In fact, the paper understated what eventually happened.74 Even before the first anniversary of beer parlours, Conservative members on the public accounts committee were exposing the patronage exploitation of parlour licences. New Victoria MLA H.Despard Twigg, who took over from Bowser as the opposition's liquor firebrand, learned in December 1925 that former LCB member W.N. Winsby had received a beer licence for an Esquimalt hotel whose previous application had been rejected. But potentially more damaging was the testimony of parlour applicants who had run afoul of the Vancouver patronage machine. A disappointed applicant spoke of his visit to W.T. McArthur, whom he referred to as the "big cheese" in Vancouver: I went to see McArthur, and he asked, 'What pull do you think you have to get a licence over me?' I replied that I had the promises of four Cabinet Ministers. McArthur replied, 'I don't give a - for all the Cabinet Ministers in Victoria. I'm running Vancouver and will see who gets licences.

The applicant and his partner also said other Liberals had told them that if they wanted a beer licence, they would have to give a one-third interest in their business to H.P. Jones, former president of the Liberal Progressive Association. When the applicants appealed to Manson, he allegedly said, "I want Jones to be looked after. Of course the past record of Jones won't stand much investigation . . . but he will have to be looked after." Before the committee, McArthur denied everything,

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and no hard evidence existed, but the Tories seemed content to expose possible sins in preference t o substantiating them.75 Ultimately, more damning a charge against the Liberals was the assertion made by the same rejected applicants that the Vancouver patronage committee was closely allied with Henry Reifel, the province's leading brewer, distiller, bootlegger, and rumrunner to the United States. Reifel, a German brewmaster, came to British Columbia in 1888. With his brothers he established British Columbia Breweries, which owned Vancouver Breweries, the dominant partner in the beer cartel. With his sons Harry and George, Reifel bought the British Columbia Distillery Coml ~ controlled pany Ltd. and built a distillery in Ontario. ~ h e ' f a m i also the Joseph Kennedy Export House, and in 1926 they formed Brewers and Distillers of Vancouver, another holding company for their businesses. Although he was already known to the public, Reifel became a real celebrity, and a threat to the Oliver government, when he testified before the federal Royal Commission on Customs and Excise in 1 9 2 6 . ~ ~ At first the federal government had for the most part ignored American complaints that Canadian liquor exports undermined U.S. prohibition. But smuggling was a two-way traffic. Rumrunners returned to Canada with clothing, manufactured goods, and even automobiles. To investigate smuggling into Canada, central Canadian manufacturers organized the Commercial Protective Association, which provided the government with scandalous tales of bribery and corruption in the Customs bureau. But Prime Minister W.L.M. King did little except replace one corrupt minister with another. The manufacturers then gave their files t o Vancouver Tory M.P.H.H. Stevens, who vilified the federal Liberals in a special committee. The Conservative attacks did not win them the controversial King-Byng election in 1926, but they forced the government to appoint a royal commission to investigate the charges.77 From November 1926 to September 1927 the Lemieux-Brown Commission held hearings from Halifax to Vancouver and unearthed layer after layer of suspicious deeds. Whisky destined for "export" sat in warehouses for months until local buyers were found. Liquor for Central America or Mexico often ended up in the United States. Politicians and customs officials were bribed, and company officials disappeared with their books. Consolidated Exporters in Vancouver, an alliance of exporters dominated by the Bronfman brothers, kept records only for the current year; all others were destroyed. The British Columbia Vinegar Company, which leased its premises from Henry Reifel, sold many liquids, none of which was vinegar. Before the Commission could speak to the owners, they skipped town with their records.78 Evidence before the Commission revealed the extent to which liquor

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interests were enmeshed in federal and provincial politics. At the hearings in Vancouver in December 1926, Henry Reifel candidly admitted that he had paid nearly $100,000 in political contributions over the past 18 months. In the books, they were credited as "assurance and protection." At least $7,000, and perhaps as much as $40,000, went to "Billy" McArthur of the Vancouver patronage committee. Reifel regarded the contributions as a business expense, but he wished "the commission would recommend a law against paying campaign funds. You never get any return on your money." Despite the efforts of his lawyer, J.W. Farris, Reifel's testimony sparked a major scandal in British ~ o l u m b i a . ~ ~ In British Columbia the press and the local Tories used Reifel's testimony t o criticize the provincial government. Both wanted the government to launch its own investigation, and in an editorial the Province, no friend of the Liberals, charged: what everybody knows is that disbursements for campaign funds are not entered for nothing under the head of "protection and assurance* by the brewing companies. If money is paid for protection there is protection; and the plain name of this protection is bribery and corruption.80

Manson attempted to block an investigation by attacking the opposition and the press, but he also faced criticism from anti-liquor Liberals in the divided caucus, particularly two new members, Victor Odlum and Charles Woodward. Both were anti-liquor and anti-Farris. Soon after the 1924 election Woodward had told Oliver that "whether you are aware of it or not, the liquor element pretty well controls Vancouver." In the legislature Odlum headed a select committee that probed the allegations raised by the federal Royal Commission. The committee found enough evidence to recommend that Oliver appoint royal commissions to probe further. Early in 1927 the government appointed the first of a series of commissions to examine the charges of bribery and corruption.81 Mr. Justice Denis Murphy was appointed to investigate questionable payments made to LCB employees. Henry Reifel had told the federal Commission that it was sometimes necessary to ('stage a party" or "gin up" a big crowd to get more sales. With J.W. Farris again beside him, Reifel was more circumspect before the Murphy Commission. He said he had employed a man named Wilcox to promote his products. Reifel's son George testified that they never questioned the employee's expense vouchers and did not know what they were for. Two liquor store employees said they had seen Wilcox bribe the vendor of the Pender street liquor store in Vancouver. The Commission wanted to question' Wilcox, but he had left the country to manage a Reifel brewery in Japan. Without Wilcox, Murphy had little solid evidence. His final report concluded that "no satisfactory evidence has been adduced which shows any improper

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payment made or other improper consideration given to any officer or officers, employe or employes [sic] of the British Columbia Liquor Control Board. . . ."82 After reading Murphy's report, Manson probably breathed a sigh of relief, as he knew from his informant the real nature of Wilcox's job: I t was very fortunate, indeed, that Wilcox was not here to give evidence, because his testimony would have shown the grossest kind of fraud in the Government liquor stores. With a big roll of permits-from one to two hundred-in his pocket with which to absorb the big sales to the big bootleggers such as clubs, gambling houses and houses of prostitution, etc., Wilcox's business was to see that the big dealers got their supplies. His pay came from the liquor interests. Counter checks...would have to be endorsed by Mr. Wilcox signing the name of the man whose permit he had used, 90 per cent of whom were fictitious; therefore most of these sales are forgeries with the full knowledge of all concerned a party to the deal.

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To complete the business organization. .the Amalgamated Brewers [the brewers' cartel] have had small motor trucks to deliver this liquor in their own pay because there was so much of this liquor to be delivered. . .83

.

These revelations paled when compared with the allegations considered by the Royal Commission on Campaign Funds, another investigation of the year 1927. To conduct the inquiry, the government appointed Judge Aulay Morrison, former Deputy Attorney General under Farris. The issue Morrison dealt with was deceptively simple. Early in 1924 the Amalgamated Brewers requested a price increase of $2.50 a barrel. After much negotiation with the government, the agency agreed, in May 1924, to an increase of $1.50 a barrel retroactive to 1March 1924. Government opponents charged that the brewers kicked back much of the increase for the 1924 Liberal election campaign." On the first day of testimony, Manson portrayed himself as a public benefactor who had forced the brewers to take a smaller increase. Henry Reifel's testimony was simple; costs had risen, so the price went up, and the increase had nothing to do with election contributions. Further, . Reifel claimed that he donated to all political parties, even Labour, but admitted that the Liberals received the most. When asked if anyone had told him of the pending election, Reifel replied, "Oh, they always let me know when there is an election," amid much laughter in the hearing room. A Conservative representative later testified that he did not solicit such contributions, but he could not remember all the "minor details." Two Canadian Labour Party spokesmen stated their party had received no brewery money.85

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The terms of the inquiry limited its investigation to provincial party funds, which made things easier for the government. When Billy McArthur was asked about the money he had received from Reifel, he said that it was for the federal party. According to McArthur, Reifel's Vancouver Breweries had given only about $2,000 for the provincial campaign, but he said he could not remember the details or produce any records. Yet he was sure "that no promises had been made or undue influences used to obtain money for campaign purposes." In the face of conflicting evidence, Morrison ruled that the 1924 price increase had been justified. He added that no party had promised favours in return for contributions. As for "the question of campaign funds," he said the issue was "almost as thorny a subject as that of liquor," but he completely exonerated the brewers and the government. Until the next election at least, British Columbians were expected to believe that Henry Reifel made contributions as a philanthropist, with no expect ation of influencing the government .86 Morrison's verdict pleased the Attorney General's informant, Andy Blygh. He told Manson that the Commission had planned to call three men to testify about bribery in the acquisition of beer licences. Fortunately, "very good work [was] done in keeping these men away from the commission where they could not be located and ~ u b p o e n a e d . " ~ ~ Judge Morrison chaired two additional commissions in 1927. One dealt with charges made by John Alphonse Gauthier, a Liberal activist, automobile salesman and liquor agent, who wanted to crack the Vancouver whisky ring. He told Morrison that the "Farris Ring" was selling bad whisky at high prices to the LCB. Gauthier claimed that he had offered the LCB a better price, but that Manson and the government purchasing agent had scotched the deal while Gauthier was absent overseas. When Gauthier returned in 1924, McArthur apparently paid him $5,000 but supposedly reneged on an additional $20,000. McArthur admitted he had paid Gauthier because he wanted to avoid any trouble before the election, but he swore that he had used party and not public money, that he had acted on his own initiative and that he had a receipt from Gauthier for full settlement. J .W. Farris, who represented the government, denied the other charges, and Morrison again exonerated all representatives of the crown.88 The other commission examined the charges of Frank Carlow, a disaffected Vancouver Island Liberal organizer who had been a defeated candidate in the 1924 election. Carlow implicated members of the cabinet, including Manson, in a 1922 scheme to make him a liquor agent. His commissions from sales to the LCB were to be divided between the party and himself, but the plan fell through because of the reluctance of

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the government purchasing agent. Carlow also implicated the Minister of Lands, T.D. Pattullo, in a land deal intended to generate revenue for the party coffers. In the end Carlow made little from this deal, and he went with his tale to the opposition and then to Judge Morrison. Once more, J .W. Farris defended the government, and once more Morrison cleared the Liberals of all charges.89 If the opposition was trying to catch the Liberals with dirty hands, the results of these four inquiries must have been disappointing. Virtually all of the evidence was circumstantial and much of it consisted of one person's word against another's. Nevertheless, the investigations had forced the Liberals to defend themselves publicly, while a parade of unsavoury characters spoke of party sins. More significant than the truth, or falsehood, of the charges, were the months of bad publicity for the government. Government control of liquor had enlarged the public trough at which both the sycophants and the disaffected drank. The government and the party reaped the liquor profits-legal and otherwise-but did so at the cost of credibility and political tranquillity. In response to the charges and investigations, the government made some minor changes, but by the late 1920s nothing could save the Liberals. John Oliver had died in August 1927 and had been replaced by the capable, if uncharismatic, J.D.Maclean. What was more important was that the Conservatives seemed to have resolved the internal dissent that had plagued them since McBride's resignation in 1915. Their new leader, Simon Fraser Tolmie, was acceptable to all party factions. When the Liberals called an election for July 1928, the Tories had a good organization and a leader who praised business efficiency, while the Liberals were suffering from infighting, the taint of liquor and other scandals, and an unfinished, expensive, provincial railway that would continue to discredit whichever party happened to be in power. When the results were in, Tolmie and the Tories had won thirty-five of the forty-seven seatsnS0 Now the federal government acted to limit bootlegging and rumrunning, partially in response to provincial requests, but mainly because of the report of the Royal Commission on Customs and Excise and continuing pressure from the United States. Part of this process amounted to giving the provinces more jurisdiction over the liquor traffic. In 1928 Parliament passed the Impor tat ion of Intoxicating Liquors Act, which gave the provinces authority to regulate nearly all liquor entering their territory. The law effectively ended importation for personal use or export. To appease the United States, the government also banned export of liquor to a country under prohibition. In 1930 the British Columbia export houses closed, and towards the end of American prohibition the rumrunners moved their Pacific operations to ~ a h i t i . ~ ~

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The inauspicious beginnings of control in British Columbia should not belie its broader significance. While North Americans might have been inclined to dismiss the 1921 adoption of monopoly sales in Quebec as just another example of Rench Canada's distinctiveness, the same could not be said for British Columbia. As the first province in English Canada to choose government control, it had initiated a North American experiment in the post-prohibition world of alcohol regulation. By the end of the decade all provinces except Prince Ed,ward Island had adopted monopoly sales; by 1936 so had fifteen American stateseg2 Obviously, the new noble experiment involved problems broader than the continuing battles between wets and drys. Politically, clubs, brewers and hotels had no choice but to accept public sales in place of prohibition in 1920. But they were determined to make control work for them or to subvert it. Consequently, they used the courts and appeals to the federal jurisdiction in attempts to alter provincial regulation when it did not suit their interests. Additional pressure was created by disobedience to the law, and here they were assisted by some members of the government that regulated them. Lacking complete authority over the liquor traffic, the province was forced to modify regulation, particularly for the hotels and brewers. Government control showed that nothing was natural about "monopolies." They were the product of "purpose, choice, policy influence, tactic and human effort ." The brewers received a cartel that guaranteed sales and profits by minimizing competition. The hotels not only got beer back but also a virtual monopoly over its public sale by the glass. And the clubs got licences which allowed them to store their members' liquor. Once their positions were entrenched, the hotels, brewers and clubs accepted government control. Regulation that promoted security and protection was worth keeping. In fact, these victories laid the groundwork for close cooperation between government and private enterprise. Writing on utilities, Armstrong and Nelles have characterized similar cooperation as a "public-private" system; it was difficult to tell where the public ended and the private began.93 Business support of regulation that promoted security had a diverse history in Canada, with some precedents in British Columbia. The largest private utility, the British Columbia Electric Railway (BCER), had for years played three levels of government (including the City of Vancouver) against each other to prevent public regulation of its electricity and transit rates. When threatened by private jitney operators, however, the BCER accepted the creation of a public utilities commission in 1919 as a tactical requirement of maintaining control over its market.

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As Patricia Roy has commented, the BCER supported regulation "when it realized that government regulation of public utilities could, in fact, become government regulation f o r utilities." g4 Perhaps an even better example is the forest industry; like liquor, forest regulation had both revenue and control aspects. In British Columbia the provincial crown owned the resource, but leased exploitation rights to private enterprise. McBride's Tory government had created a professional Forest Branch in 1912 to promote the scientific management of the forests. Yet, as Stephen Gray has aptly demonstrated, private timber interests were able to penetrate "the administrative process in order to shape public policy to their private needs." Even under Oliver's Liberals, the alleged reformers, British Columbia continued to practice "liquidation forestry," which meant getting the wood out in whatever form was in demand. As in Ontario, the desire for revenue and economic growth by both the state and enterprise in British Columbia proved stronger than the need for forest c o n s e r ~ a t i o n . ~ ~ Despite some outrage expressed about the export of raw logs and the squandering of the resource, forest exploitation did not generate the same fervour as government control. In the 1920s public liquor sales differed from other government activities, because liquor remained a serious moral issue that cut across party and class lines and diminished the normally unifying effect of patronage. Under ideal circumstances government control would still have encountered difficulties since implicit in the act were two contrary objectives: generating revenue while promoting moderation. Moreover, the very weakness of government control in the early years encouraged subversion. For some Vancouver Liberals the real profit and power lay in undercutting control with bootlegging and rumrunning. On the other hand, among those Liberals who believed the government had already compromised too much with demon rum, these abuses provoked further outrage and widened the party cracks. The angry critics were determined that the regulators would not be captured by the regulated, but they seemed to be fighting an uphill battle. Where liquor was concerned, political life should have been easier for the British Columbia Conservatives when they came to power in 1928. The first, disgraced LCB was now a memory; the government had a working arrangement with the breweries and hotels, and the Liberals had wrested more liquor authority from Ottawa. But Simon Fraser Tolmie, British Columbia's last Tory Premier, led an ill-fated government.

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NOTES 1 Martin Robin, The Rush for Spoils: The Company Province, 1871-1933 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972), 186-190; Ellen Alexander, "The South Carolina Dispensary Systemn (M .A. thesis, Duke University, 1940), 21-31; Donald Mac McLeod, "The History of Liquor Legislation in Saskatchewan, 1870-1947" (M.A. thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 1948), 7479; Agent General to Farris, 1 April 1921, British Columbia Archives and Record Service (BCARS),GR1323, B2198. 2 British Columbia Legislative Assembly Sessional Clipping Book (LACB), 8, 14 February 1921 (quote); Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs (CAR), 1921, 877. 3 LACB, 23 February 1921,17 March 1921 (quote); British Columbia, Statutes, 1921, c. 30 ("Government Liquor Actn), ss. 3, 8, 11; Eleanor A. Bartlett, "Real Wages and the Standard of Living in Vancouver, 1901-1929," BC Studies 51 (Autumn 1981): 38. 4 Government Liquor Act, 1921, ss. 11, 57 (1st quote), 62 (2nd quote), 108. 5 Comptroller General to Farris, 23 October 1920, BCARS, GR441, Vol. 210, file 104 (first quote); Government Liquor Act, 1921, ss. 91, 92, 109; First Annual Report of the Liquor Control Board of British Columbia (LCB First A R ) , (1922), D5-D7, D68 (2nd quote). 6 LCB First A R (1922), D7, Ninth AR (1930), photos; Government Liquor Act, 1921, ss. 6, 10. 7 "Instructions to Vendors," 21 May 1923, BCARS, GR1323, B2201; LCB First AR (1922), D60, 63; British Columbia Liquor Control Board, Minutes of Meetings, (LCB Minutes), Vol. 1 (1922), 106-108. 8 Russell Walker, Politicians of a Pioneering Province (Vancouver: Mitchell Press, 1969), 22,38; Cooke to Manson, 12 September 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2198. 9 Manson to Savage, 6 May 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2198 (1st quote); Manson to Cooke, 13 September 1922, ibid. (2nd quote); Manson to Savage, 2 October 1922, ibid. (3rd quote). 10 Manson to Oliver, 9 May 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2198 (1st quote); Oliver to Manson, 8 May 1922, ibid. (2nd quote); Oliver to Manson, 22 July 1922, ibid. (3rd quote); Margaret Ormsby, British Columbia: A History (Toronto: Macmillan, 1958), 415 (debt figures). Initially the LCB applied a 40% markup to spirits, liqueurs and wine, and a 35% markup to beer. See LCB First AR (1922), D59 and Government Liquor Act, 1921, s. 55. 11 Manson to Oliver, 22 July 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2198. 12 A. Non to Farris, 15 June 1921, BCARS, GR1323, B2198; Richard de Brisay, "Canada Turns Against Prohibition," Nation 120 (April 1925): 460-462. 13 LCB First A R (1922), D60; Savage to Farris, 7 December 1920, BCARS, GR1323, B2168; Fortune to Farris, 22 August 1921, GR1323, B2198; Johnson to Manson, 22 April 1922, GR1323, B2201. 14 Reginald Hose, Prohibition or Control: Canada's Experience with the Liquor Problem, 1921-1927 (Longmans, Green and Co., 1928), 74-75; Peter Newman, The Bronfman Dynasty: The Rothschilds of the New World (Toronto:

Liquor and Liberals

15

16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23

24

25 26

27

28

29

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71

McClelland and Stewart, 1978; Seal Books, 1979), 93-94; Reginald Hose, 'Control of the Liquor Traffic in British Columbia," North American Review (September 1926): 420-430. Peck to Manson, 28 March 1923, BCARS, GR1323, B2198; John Lund, "The Outlaws," Pacific Yachting 28 (March 1987): 73-78; Frank Anderson, The Rumrunners (Surrey, B.C.: Frontier Books, 1968, 1980), 23, 33; John Thompson with Allen Seager, Canada 1922-1939: Decades of Discord (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985; paperback ed., 1986), 88. LCB First A R (1922), D10; LCB Second A R (1923), B11. Manson to Euler, 12 January 1928, 31 January 1928, BCARS, GR1323, B2199; Manson to Sweet, 29 October 1926, BCARS, GR1323, B2311. Savage to Manson, 26 December 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2199. LCB Second AR (1923), B10. Hose, Prohibition or Control, 62-63; Government Liquor Act, 1921, ss. 32, 42, 45, 46. CAR, 1921, 878, 880-881; LACB, 18 February 1921 (Smith), 24 February 1921 (Clark), 25 February 1921, 1 March 1921, 7 March 1921, 8 March 1921, 30 November 1921 (Uphill). CAR, 1921, 880-881; Oliver to Lieutenant Governor, 1 December 1921, BCARS, GR441, Vol. 217, File 13. CAR, 1921, 879. On the influence of veterans' clubs in Vancouver, see Elizabeth Lees, "Problems of Pacification: Veterans' Groups in Vancouver, 1918-1922" (M.A. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1985). LCB First A R (1922), D9-D10; LCB Second A R (1923), B8-B9; LCB Third AR (1924), N10; "Rex vs. The Army and Navy Veterans in Canada," 3 September 1921, BCARS, GR1323, B2199; Rex vs. Rock, 3 February 1923, GR1323, B2203; CAR, 1922, 857. Johnson to Manson, 26 April 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2203. Vancouver Sun, 28 June 1921, 30 June 1921; Manson to Sweet, 29 October 1926, BCARS, GR1323, B2311 (quotes); Richard De Brisay, "Canada Turns Against Prohibition." Johnson to Manson, 26 April 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2203; Tisdall to Manson, 8 June 1922, GR1323, B2203 (quote); Manson to Henderson, 6 May 1922, GR1323, B2198; LCB Circular Letter 758, 26 July 1922, GR1323, B2199; Methodist Church Resolution, 12 September 1923, GR1323, B2199, Manson to Nickle, 19 January 1926, BCARS, GR1323, B2311 (quote); LCB to Manson, 24 August 1922, GR1323, B2199; Inspector to Falconer, 3 April 1922, ibid. Falconer to Manson, 20 March 1923, BCARS, GR1323, B2199; Manson to British Columbia Breweries, 24 September 1923, GR1323, B2203; Davidson to Manson, 29 November 1927, GR1323, B2306; Hose, Prohibition or Control, 49-50. In 1922, the first full year of control, the following breweries operated in British Columbia:

72 / Demon Rum or Easy Money Cranbrook Brewing Co. Fernie Fort Steele Brewing Co. *Rainier Brewing Co. Nicola Valley Brewing Co. Lansdown [sic] Brewing Co. Nelson Brewing Co. *Westminster Brewery Limited Princeton Brewing Co. Enterprise Brewing Co. Union Brewing Co. *Vancouver Breweries Ltd. *Silver Spring Brewing Co. *Victoria Phoenix Brewing Co.

30 31

32 33 34 35

36

37

38 39 40 41 42

Cranbrook Fernie Karnloops Merritt Nanaimo Nelson New Westminster Princeton Revelstoke Trail Vancouver Victoria Victoria

The starred (*) breweries became members of the ABA, the brewers' cartel. Rainier Brewing ceased operations in 1927. See LCB "Circular Letter No. 76," 23 September 1922, BCARS GR 1323 B2199 and Davidson to Manson, 29 November 1927. British Columbia, Statutes, 1923, c. 38 (UGovernmentLiquor Act Amendment Actn), s. 25a; LCB Third AR (1924), N8-N9, N57-N58. Moderation League to Attorney General, [August 1922?], BCARS, GR1323, B2199; Kenneth Campbell, "A Tribute to Pioneer Members. . ," British Columbia Hotelman 20 (Sept.-Oct. 1958): 6. Weldon to Premier, 18 November 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2199; Spalding to Attorney General, 27 October 1922, ibid. (quote). Weldon to Premier, 18 November 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2199. LACB, 8 November 1922 (1st quote), 12 December 1922 (2nd quote). Gordon to Manson, 8 October 1923, BCARS GR1323, B2199; Manson to Nickle, 26 January 1926, GR1323, B2311; LACB, 10 December 1923, 20 December 1923; British Columbia, Statutes, 1923, c. 39 ("Liquor-control Plebiscites Actn), s. 3 (quote). Audrey Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites and Referendums by the Province of British Columbian (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia, 1958), 106 (quote), 109-110; Vancouver Daily Province, 18 June 1924; Robin, The Rush For Spoils, 207-209. Peck to Manson, 20 November 1923, BCARS, GR1323, B2199; Savage to Oliver, 18 October 1921, GR441, Vol. 217, File 13; Victoria Daily Colonist, 27 October 1921, p. 3; CAR, 1922, 857 (quote). Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 107-108; Sun, 18 June 1924, p. 5 (quote). Adams, 'A Study of the Use of Plebiscites," 109; British Columbia Federationist, 13 June 1924, p. 3; Colonist, 14 June 1924, p. 4 (quote). VTLC to Farris, 8 April 1921, BCARS, GR1323, B2198. Federationist, 20 June 1924, p. 2 (quotes); Colonist, 14 June 1924, p. 12. British Columbia, Statutes, 1923, c. 38 ("Government Liquor Act Amendment Actn), s. 17.

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43 Sun, 20 June 1924, p. 1 (bucketfull); Sun, 21 June 1924, p. 1; The British Columbia Gazette, 30 October 1924, p. 3299. 44 B.C. Gazette, p. 3299; Province, 12 July 1924, pp. 1, 7; Sun, 21 June 1924, p. 1 (1st quote); Sun, 23 June 1924, p. 1 (2nd quote). 45 Walker, Politicians, 6-8, 14. 46 Province, 7 November 1924, p. 1, 12 November 1924, p. 2 (quote); LACB, 21 November 1924, 6 December 1924. 47 LACB, 17 December 1924 (quote); Province, 17 December 1924, p. 1. 48 Congdon to Manson, 31 December 1924, BCARS, GR1323, B2204; Kenneth Campbell, "A Tribute to Pioneer Members," 6. 49 LCB Fourth AR (1925), J64-J67; Province, 28 July 1934, p. 31; Kennedy to Maitland, 3 June 1942, Records Management Branch (RMB), Attorney General's Files, Reel 618; confidential interview. 50 Province, 24 November 1953, p. 3; see also, Robert A. Campbell, "Sit Down, Shut Up and Drink Your Beer," in Working Lives: Vancouver 1886-1986, ed. Working Lives Collective (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1985), 137. 51 F.S. Spence, The Facts of the Case (Toronto: Newton & Treloar, 1896; facsimile ed., Toronto: Coles Publishing, 1973), 108-109; Perry Duis, The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston 1880-1920 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 252-253. In the 1890s in British Columbia saloon applicants needed the two-thirds approval of lot owners and householders and their wives before a licence would be issued. See Spence, Facts, 101-102. 52 Hose, Prohibition or Control, 69-71. 53 Province, 31 May 1925, p. 1 (1st quote), 25 May 1925, p. 12, 8 April 1926, p. 1 (census); "Memorandum for the Hon. the Attorney General," 8 May 1925, BCARS, GR1323, B2308. 54 Province, 19 May 1925, p. 22, 27 May 1925, p. 1, 31 May 1925, p. 2, 28 April 1926, p. 1 (quote); Local Council of Women, Box 1, File 3-4, Special Collections, University of British Columbia. For a good description of life on Cordova Street, see Robert A.J. McDonald, "Looking for Work," in Working Lives, 35. 55 Province, 6 June 1926, p. 8, 22 July 1926, p. 1, 23 July 1926, p. 7. 56 Province, 29 July 1926, p. 1 (quote); LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 20, 29 July 1926, BCARS, GR62. 57 Province, 30 July 1926, p. 1 (quote); Sun, 14 August 1926, 16 August 1926, LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 20. 58 Province, 26 March 1926, p. 6; Sun, 31 July 1926. 59 Province, 30 July 1926, p. 24 (quote); Victoria Times, 3 August 1926. 60 Province, 31 May 1927, p. 24; Sun, 21 June 1927; Tysoe to Deputy Attorney General, 22 June 1927, BCARS, GR1323, B2309. 61 Province, 6 July 1927, p. 28; 7 July 1927, p. 1. 62 Thompson with Seager, Decades of Discord, 131-135; LCB Tenth A R (1931), M15-M16. 63 Martin Robin, The Rush For Spoils, 211 (LCB positions). 64 Farris to Manson, 1922, J. W. deB. Farris Papers, Box 9, File 1, Special

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Collections, University of British Columbia; Johnson to Farris, 3 March 1921, BCARS, GR1323, B2198; LACB, 28 October 1921, 29 October 1921. 65 LACB, 28 October 1921. 66 CAR, 1921, 879; Sun, 19 November 1920, p. 2, 24 November 1920, p. 1; Robin, The Rush for Spoils, 188, 291; Falconer to Oliver, 14 July 1921; Oliver to Anderson, 29 December 1921, BCARS, GR441, Vol. 217, File 13. The chairman's annual salary was set at $6,500 while the other two members received $5,500. By contrast stenographers, the only women employed by the LCB, received $900 per year. See LCB Minutes, Vol. 1(1922), 106-108. 67 Colonist, 18 March 1922; Napier to Oliver, 3 March 1922, BCARS, GR879, Box 4, File 2, pp. 1-5; Napier to Oliver, 2 March 1922, ibid., pp. 15 (quote)16; Robin, The Rush For Spoils, 191-192. 68 Manson to Johnson, 10 April 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2200; Manson to Falconer, 23 December 1922, ibid. 69 LA CB, 30 November 1922; Farris t o Manson, 12 April 1922, Farris Papers, Box 9, File 1. 70 Douglas to Oliver, 23 November 1922, BCARS, GR1323, B2199; LCB Minutes, Vol. 1 (1922), 155, 186. 71 Manson to Parnaby, 11 September 1923, BCARS, GR1323, B2198 (quote); Manson to Furness, 23 October 1923, ibid.; Parnaby to Manson, 12 November 1923, ibid.; Furness to Manson, 10 November 1923, ibid.; Manson to LCB, 17 November 1923, ibid.; LCB Minutes, Vol. 3 (1924), 841. 72 Blygh to Manson, 15 August 1923, Farris Papers, Box 5, File 6 (1st quote); Blygh to Manson, 23 August 1923, ibid. (2nd quote); Manson to Farris, 24 August 1923, ibid. (3rd quote). 73 LCB Fourth A R (1925), J5; LACB, 8 November 1924 (quote); Menendez to Davidson, 20 October 1924, GR1323, B2200. 74 Province, 14 June 1924, p. 6; Hose, Prohibition o r Control, 33-34. 75 Province, 2 December 1925, p. 1; LCB Minutes, Vol. 4 (1925), 1303-1304; LACB, 11 December 1925 (quotes), 18 December 1925. 76 LACB, 4 December 1925; 10, 11 December 1925; Newman, Bronfman Dynasty, 139-140; Canada, Royal Commission on Customs and Excise, Interim Report No. 20 (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1928), 111. British Columbia Breweries also controlled Union Brewing Company in Nanaimo and Pilsner Brewing Company in Cumberland; neither appears to have survived prohibition. I thank Greg Evans of the University of Victoria for the Island brewery information. The other main distilleries in the province were Consolidated Distilleries of Vancouver, which had ceased operations by 1933, and United Distillers, which became linked to the Bronfman family in the 1930s. See Newman, Bronfman Dynasty, 139-140 and LCB 10th AR (1931), p. M15, LCB, 12th AR, (1933), p. 1-8. 77 Ralph Allen, Ordeal By Fire: Canada 1910-1945 (Toronto: Doubleday, 1961), 261-286; Canada, Royal Commission on Customs and Excise, Final Report (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1928), 3-4. 78 Royal Commission on Customs and Excise, Interim Report No. 10, 62-63,

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79 80 81 82

83 84 85 86

87 88

89

90

91

92

93

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105-106; Michael Bliss, Northern Enterprise: Five Centuries of Canadian Business (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987), 398-400. Province, 16 December 1926, p. 14 (quote), p. 25. Province, 17 December 1926, p. 6. LACB, 10, 27 January 1927; Robin, The Rush For Spoils, 211 (quote), 222-224. Province, 16 December 1926, p. 25 (1st quote); Times, 14 December 1927, p. 2; Sun, 9 March 1927, p. 1, 10 March 1927, pp. 1, 16; LACB, 11, 27 January 1928 (Murphy). Colonist, 19 March 1931, LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 23. Campbell to Manson, 28 February 1924, BCARS, GR1323, B2203. Province, 21 March 1927, p. 1, 22 March 1927, p. 1 (Reifel), 23 March 1927, pp. 1, 21, 30 March 1927, pp. 1, 21. Province, 23 March 1927, p. 3; British Columbia, Royal Commission on Campaign Funds, Findings, 6 April 1927, pp. 11 (quote), 8-14, BCARS, GR872, Box 1, File 2. Colonist, 19 March 1931, LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 23. Times, 28 April 1927, p. 1, 2 May 1927, p. 1, 3 May 1927, p. 1; British Columbia, Commission on Allegations of J.A. Gauthier, Final Report, June 1927, BCARS, GR874, Box 1, File 2. LACB, 1March 1927; Sun, 8 June 1927, p. 1; British Columbia, Commission on Allegations of Frank Carlow, Report, 2 June 1927, BCARS, GR873, Box 1, File 2; Robin, The Rush For Spoils, 222-223. Ian Parker, "Simon Fraser Tolmie: The Last Conservative Premier of British Columbia," in British Columbia: Historical Readings, eds. W. Peter Ward and Robert A.J. McDonald (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1981), 517-520. Richard Kottman, "Volstead Violated: Prohibition as a factor in CanadianAmerican Relations," Canadian Historical Review 43 (June 1962): 106-126; Canada, Statutes, 1928, c. 31 ("The Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Actn), 1930, c. 19 ("An Act to Amend the Export Act"); Royal Commission on Customs and Excise, Interim Report No. #,lo-12; Newman, Bronfman, 140. Harry Levine, "The birth of American alcohol control: prohibition, the power elite, and the problem of lawlessness," Contemporary Drug Problems (Spring 1985): 110; Hose, Prohibition o r Control, 108-109; Colonist, 7 June 1930, LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, Christopher Armstrong and H.V. Nelles, Monopoly's Moment: The Organization and Regulation of Canadion Utilities, 1830-1930 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 93, 317, 327. Patricia Roy, "Regulating the British Columbia Electric Railway: The First Public Utilities Commission," B C Studies 11 (Fall 1971): 20 (quote); see also, Armstrong and Nelles, Monopoly's Moment, 97-100, 254-262; Patricia Roy, "Direct Management from Abroad: The Formative Years of the British Columbia Electric Railway," in Glenn Porter and Robert Cuff, ed., Enterprise and Northern Development (Toronto: Hakkert, 1973), 101-121.

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95 Stephen Gray, "The Government's Timber Business: Forest Policy and Administration in British Columbia, 1912-1928," BC Studies 81 (Spring 1989): 24,45; H.V.Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines and Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849-1941 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1974, paperback ed. 1975), 200-202; see also, Patricia Marchak, Green Gold: The Forest industry in British Columbia (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1983), ch. 1; Jeremy Wilson, "Forest Conservation in British Columbia, 1935-1985," BC Studies 76 (Winter 1987-1988).

3 The Profitable Status Quo

The conclusion of Albert Griffiths's 1929 report on liquor in British Columbia displayed an unusual literary flair for a text written by a chartered accountant: I have felt throughout my work in this investigation the influence of an astute, powerful and expert operator. A man whose power politically has been virtually supreme. Practically all persons concerned in the liquor administration, in the bootlegging, in the rum running, in the lower political ranks, and with some of the political leaders, are either creatures or active associates of this being, working in close co-operation with him. . . . His machine work is perfect. I found throughout my operations that he was thoroughly informed of my every step, my intentions were conveyed to him a t all points so that practically each person I approached was fully prepared beforehand. l

Determined not to make the mistakes of the Liberals, the newly elected Conservative government appointed Albert Griffiths to investigate the British Columbia Liquor Control Board. Completed in December 1929, Griffiths's report to Attorney General R.H. Pooley exposed the continuing incompetence and corruption of the entire liquor administration. Of three liquor inspectors, Griffiths asserted only one had "the faintest idea of his duties and responsibilities." The LCB regularly bypassed the purchasing agent and bought liquor of "doubtful quality" to help local favourites. The operation of liquor stores was chaotic, and many vendors supplied well-known bootleggers "with large orders of beer and rum." The report condemned the cartel of the coast brewers and the favouritism that was the foundation of club and beer parlour licensing. In Haysport (near Prince Rupert), for instance, the LCB had licensed a "hotel" that, during most of the year, served a community of "some six persons, including the owner of the beer parlour."2

78 / Demon Rum or Easy Money Griffiths advocated "an entire upheaval of the Liquor Administration in order to remove the stain which now marks the name of British Columbia in this regard, and which has marked it since the inception of that Administration." More specifically, he called for better enforcement, more stringent penalties, the end of the brewers' cartel and a new type of club licence. For years veterans' and fraternal clubs had been allowed to violate the act and sell liquor because they used the profits mainly for good causes. He recommended these clubs be legally licensed to sell beer, provided the profits went to "benevolent and charitable

." Although Griffiths never identified the "being" who had hampered his investigation, the culprit might have been LCB Chairman Hugh Davidson, whom the Liberals had appointed in 1924 to replace the original LCB. Griffiths's entire report criticized activities for which Davidson had ultimate responsibility. Just before he launched his attack on the "expert operator ," Griffiths suggested the government reappoint a three-member board.4 The government never released the Griffiths Report, but in 1930 the Tories moved quickly on many of its recommendations. They brought back a three-member LCB responsible to the cabinet. In response to continued pressure from veterans' groups, the government also created a veterans' club licence that permitted their clubs to sell beer to members. The amendments also required brewers and distillers to have provincial as well as federal licence^.^ The changes to the LCB were more cosmetic than substantial. The government packed the new board with loyal Tories. Chairman Henry B. Thomson, a noted industrialist, had been party whip in the McBride government. William J. Baird, a Vancouver lawyer, had run for the Tories in the 1916 election. The third member, William F. Kennedy, the jovial Conservative MLA for Okanagan North, was liked on both sides of the House. Hugh Davidson graciously "resigned" from the LCB, and the government paid him $25,000 for the remainder of his ten-year ~ o n t r a c t . ~ As for the beer cartel, now called the Pacific Brewers' Agents, Attorney General Pooley announced in 1931 it was dead. Competition would dictate from whom the government would buy and at what price. The announcement must have bothered Pooley, since his wife's family owned the Phoenix Brewing Company in Victoria, a member of the cartel. But competition lasted only a few months. By early 1932 the government had restored its ties with the breweries, as the arrangement was comfortable for both, especially during the depression.',

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Depression and Government Control With the onset of the depression, demand for the province's resource exports evaporated. Between 1929 and 1933 the value of timber production fell from $93 million to $35 million; mineral production value dropped from $68 million to $28 million, and fish production went from $24 million to $9 million. By 1931 the official unemployment rate was 27.5%. But as the economy declined, the population continued to grow. Many unemployed who had to sleep outdoors preferred the Pacific coast climate to the prairie winter, and by 1932 nearly 75,000people in British Columbia were on some form of government relief. Faced with falling provincial income and increasing relief costs, the government also had to cope with the first drastic decline in liquor revenue. In 1930 the LCB generated $4.8 million for the public purse, but by 1933 revenue had fallen to $2.3 million, the lowest figure since the first year of liquor contr01.~ In part, declining liquor sales were a result of falling liquor consumption. Many British Columbians on relief or with reduced wage packets found they could do with less liquor. Nationally, per capita consumption figures dropped nearly 50% between 1930 and 1933. The other cause of reduced liquor revenue and official consumption figures was a dramatic increase in home production and petty bootlegging. A homebrewer could make a dozen beers for 60 cents, and by 1932 one newspaper estimated that Vancouver residents annually brewed an unbelievable 33,000,000 pint bottles. When the federal government announced a hike in the malt tax to curb homebrewing, one retailer sold 78,000 pounds in six days.g Despite the threat of stiff fines and long jail sentences, those who produced liquor usually sold it. One rural distiller bought potatoes a t $3.00 per ton and made them into liquor. Proud of his product, he said, "I'd sell. . .a gallon for about seven dollars, and that was quite a bit in the Thirties, but my stuff was good. It would take the hide off your horse, but it wouldn't kill him." This bootlegger was "never caught once. Others, but not me. I never did feel I was breaking the law."lo The decline in legal sales, and therefore revenue, troubled the government. In December 1930 the cabinet announced a general liquor price reduction. But since moderation rather than profit was the ostensible goal of government control, Premier Tolmie would only say that the price reductions had been made on the advice of the LCB. The unstated assumption was that lower prices would increase the sale of liquor. As the depression worsened, the government took further action to reduce the costs of the LCB. Salaries were lowered, and employees over the age of 70 were fired. In 1932 Thomson and Baird lost their jobs when the government made the LCB a one-member board again in order to reduce costs.

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Upon the recommendation of the Conservative caucus, the cabinet chose the popular W.F. Kennedy as the sole member. Kennedy displayed a stability previously unknown to the LCB;he remained the chairman until his death in August 1951.11 The affairs of the LCB also came under the scrutiny of the five-member commission appointed by the Tolmie government to improve government efficiency. The 1932 Kidd Report was named after Chairman George Kidd, former general manager of the British Columbia Electric Railway. Overall, the members recommended reducing the size of government and slashing government services. The report of the prominent businessmen (none directly involved in liquor) was quite candid about LCB priorities: "We think the board might be well advised to experiment as any merchant would do with a reduction in prices to ascertain whether an increase in sales justifies the reduction in prices from a profit point of view." To promote beer sales the report suggested home delivery by the Pacific Brewers' Agents and the sale of bottled beer in beer parlours for off-premises consumption. The hard times necessitated more concentration on revenue and less on control, or on limiting consumption.12 The government's concern over liquor revenue became more acute in 1933, when U.S. prohibition came to an end. LCB officials feared that, legally or illegally, Washington state liquor would compete with government control. In response to these fears, continued poor sales and the recommendations of the Kidd Report, the government made more changes. To encourage legal sales, the fee for an individual liquor permit, lowered in the 1920s to $2.00, was reduced to a nuisance level of 25 cents. In return for lower wholesale beer prices, the government allowed the Brewers' Agents to provide home delivery of beer. Finally, the government terminated the payment of a portion of the liquor profits to municipalities. Understandably, this change was unpopular with local governments.13 In fact, by 1933 the Tories were unpopular with most British Columbians. Incapable of restoring prosperity and torn by internal dissent, the government postponed an election as long as possible. Reluctantly, Tolmie called one for 2 November 1933. The "Work and Wages" campaign of Thomas Dufferin Pattullo, Liberal leader since 1929, won his party 34 of the 47 seats, and the defeated Tories did not even form the official opposition. That position went to the new Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF),a socialist party determined to use democratic means to replace unregulated private enterprise with a planned economy founded on public ownership. The CCF advocated public control of the liquor industry, especially the breweries.14

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As Attorney General, Pattullo chose Vancouver lawyer Gordon Sloan, bypassing the experienced Alex Manson. This appointment was less upsetting to Manson than to Gerald McGeer, a former Pattullo confidant who wanted the job. In a letter to the Prime Minister, he implied that liquor and banking interests had determined Pattullo's cabinet choices. But the evidence for liquor's influence was quite circumstantial; Sloan came from J.W. Farris's law firm. McGeer remained in the legislature, but from 1935 onwards devoted his attention to his new job as Mayor of Vancouver-15 Economic recovery, not liquor, was the main interest of the Pattullo government. But the Premier knew his vision of "socialized capitalism" would be expensive, and the federal government had little enthusiasm for financing it. As a source of revenue, liquor could not be ignored. Fortunately, liquor sales had reached rock bottom in 1933, and in the next year the minimal start of a recovery began to restore liquor revenue. Profits, however, did not return to their pre-depression levels until World War Two, and the government still endured much competition from bootleggers. Apart from more enforcement and lower prices, the government's main strategy for beating the bootleggers was an all-night liquor store in Vancouver. Since the early 1920s the LCB had kept one Vancouver store open late to discourage night sales by bootleggers. In 1934 an additional "owl" liquor store opened for eight hours at midnight. Initially, the store had the support of city police. But by mid-1935 the police and city council had decided the owl store helped rather than hindered the bootleggers who made their profit from convenient night delivery. Mayor Gerry McGeer urged the government to close the store, but Pattullo paid no attention to his former colleague.16 Even more troublesome than bootleggers were the competing interest groups that besieged both the Tory and Liberal administrations during the depression. While the hotel industry sought more privileges for its beer parlours, their association, the BCHA, also wanted the government to deny liquor sales to restaurants and clubs. Strict regulation of public drinking now promoted the interests of the hotel industry. In fact, the parlour operators found themselves unintentionally allied with temperance groups who also wanted to limit public drinking. The depression hit the hotels hard. Room rates fell to as low as $2.00 a week, and for many hotels beer sales were their only means of survival. In fact, some of these places were hotels in name only, as they really existed just to sell beer. But the BCHA claimed the entire industry would be in peril unless the government granted more privileges to existing licensees and refrained from licensing more hotels in Vancouver. From the Tories, they had won the right to sell bottled beer for off-premises consumption.

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In addition, the LCB allowed each beer parlour to replace its small "open" sign with one that read "licensed premises."17 Less than a month after the Liberals had resumed power, LCB Chairman Kennedy announced a new method of licensing beer parlours and veterans' clubs. Previously, they had paid a flat annual fee that ranged from $150.00 in remote areas to $1,000 in Vancouver. The new scheme reduced the annual fee to as little as $25.00, but every parlour had to pay an additional 50 cents for each barrel of beer sold. The change particularly helped the Vancouver hotels, but the government also stood to benefit if consumption increased. Previously, the only way for the LCB to augment licence revenue was to raise the fees, which riled the licence holders, or to license more facilities, which fuelled the fires of the public drinking debate.18 The appointment of W.F. Kennedy as LCB chairman began a period of close and usually cordial relations between the hotel association and the LCB. Private and public enterprise worked closely together, and it was often difficult to separate the functions of the two. For example, Kennedy helped the BCHA collect members' dues which, like licence fees, were based on the amount of beer purchased. Every month the LCB sent the BCHA a tally of the quantity of beer each hotel had purchased. At its annual meeting in 1938, the hotels formally thanked Mr. Kennedy for "the wonderful help you have been to us and the cooperation you have given our Association." At the same time, Kennedy proved to be an able diplomat, as he was also able to maintain good relations with temperance groups.lg Although the most devoted prohibitionists never abandoned the cause, the anti-liquor movement changed in the 1930s. The end of U.S. prohibition made it unlikely that the drys would succeed in the near future. Soon after America went wet, the BCPA changed its name to the British Columbia Temperance League (BCTL). F'rom then on the drys concentrated on the restriction of alcohol, rather than its elimination. Still, they had not lost all faith. Throughout the 19309, the BCTL called for another general plebiscite on liquor, in the hope that the people were still with them.20 Temperance still attracted a variety of followers-from business leaders to socialists-but protest ant ministers dominated the executive of the BCTL. The most effective speaker for the cause was Reverend R.J. McIntyre, General Secretary of the League. Until his retirement in 1946, he exchanged dozens of letters with William Kennedy. He complained vigorously about any changes that made liquor more accessible, such as home delivery of beer or its off-sale in beer parlours. Kennedy took McIntyre's comments seriously, especially when they referred to liquor violations.

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Charges of illegal advertising, solicitation in beer parlours or drinking in schools, were directed to the police or the Attorney General.21 Little love was lost between the BCHA and the BCTL, but both groups opposed licensed restaurants. While the temperance leaders argued that the expansion of liquor facilities in hard times was especially reprehensible from the moral standpoint, the hotels simply wanted no more competition.

Restaurants and Clubs Theoretically, the BCHA had always advocated that beer and wine should be available in hotel restaurants, but few hotels had shown much real interest. The issue only became contentious with the end of American prohibition. British Columbia restaurant owners feared the loss of tourist revenue to licensed restaurants in Washington, and they wanted to sell beer and wine with meals in order to compete. After Ontario began to license some restaurants in 1934, the British Columbia restaurants launched a popular petition campaign to impress the government with the extent of public support for drinking with meals. W .A. Grimsdall, president of the Restaurant men's Association of British Columbia, said beer and wine in restaurants, including those located in hotels, would promote moderation, decrease bootlegging and help to bring back

prosper it^.^^ In February 1934 the BCHA announced that it adamantly opposed licensed restaurants outside of hotels. The Association's secretary complained that, "licensed hotels with their heavy investments and altogether too high taxes and rentals face further competition by the granting of licences to sell beer in restaurants." The Hotel Association of Canada supported its provincial counterpart. President Lloyd Manly of the Dufferin Hotel in Vancouver used old fears about women and liquor to suggest that British Columbians should not be quick to ape American licensing practices: "our citizens visited Point Roberts [Washington] during the summer months and in the beer parlours saw pretty little girls dancing around in shorts."23 While a few influential hotel operators in Vancouver and Victoria openly lobbied for licensed hotel restaurants, the majority were content with the status quo. Beer parlour employees also opposed licensed restaurants. In a letter to the Attorney General, the secretary of the Beverage Dispensers Local 676 said licensed restaurants would ruin the tourist industry. More to the point, he added: "If Restaurants are allowed to sell beer, females will be directly or indirectly, handling beer, thus causing a lowering of wages to those who have endeavored to keep them up to the standard of a living wage."24

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The BCHA also had the support of the Vancouver city council, the Provincial Council of Women, and, of course, the Temperance League. Reverend Elbert Paul of the BCTL told members of the legislature that restaurant owners were interested only in profit and not "the broader moral and social aspects of the problem." In his mind, licensed restaurants violated the intent of government control, which was to restrict, not to encourage, "the widespread extension of facilities to promote the sale of liquor."25 At any time the government could have held a provincial plebiscite on licensed restaurants, and both the BCTL and the restaurant owners asked the Premier to let the people decide. But the Liberals were so divided that the issue never came out of cabinet chambers. According to the press, lobbyists for both sides had more or less equal influence behind closed doors. Since the general public also seemed to be more or less equally divided, the government was in an awkward position. The simplest solution was to maintain the status quo while offering the possibility of licensed restaurants in the future. This tactic left both sides unsatisfied but hopeful .26 Public drinking continued to produce strange alliances. Briefly the hotels and restaurants found t hemselves in agreement on t he issue of "pooling" of liquor in clubs. Along with temperance groups, they damned pooling as a thinly disguised move to let clubs sell liquor. Private clubs operated in a world of legal fiction that bore little resemblance to ordinary reality. Since 1924 the LCB had licensed them to store members' liquor in lockers and allowed them to charge a small fee for the convenience. The Board also permitted them to serve food and provide entertainment while members poured drinks from their personal bottles. To obtain a licence, a club had to exist only for social or fraternal purposes, not private profit. Upscale clubs in Vancouver, such as the Quadra or the Pacific Athletic, offered a variety of services like billiards, libraries, and even sleeping accommodation .27 For many clubs the reality was another matter. While veterans' and fraternal clubs such as the Elks existed primarily to provide congenial surroundings for members and services to the community, many others thrived only because of the liquor. Membership was easy to obtain and with no hesitation these clubs sold liquor to "members" and "guests." The government partially acknowledged the reality,when it allowed veterans' clubs to sell beer to members. Controlling clubs had always been difficult for the government. They were keenly defended by their members. More significant was the fact that some clubs were the domain of influential members of British Columbia society. It was one thing to suspend the licence of the Railwaymen's

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Club in Vancouver for dispensing liquor t o non-members very early on Sunday mornings. But the police rarely visited the Terminal City Club, the Vancouver Club, or the Union Club in Victoria. Here the economic and social elite fraternized and concluded business deals over drinks. The Union Club was also home to Colonel Donald McGugan, for years the LCB Superintendent of Law Enforcement and LCB chairman from 1951 to 1 9 6 9 . ~ ~ Pooling was a legal fiction that had particular appeal for the more exclusive clubs. Instead of keeping personal liquor in lockers, the members would pool their supplies and obtain individual drinks from the club at cost plus a small service charge. The club assumed responsibility for purchasing liquor, and members contributed to the pool by buying scrip in specific denominations. Advocates of pooling claimed it was a temperance move, because the current regulations encouraged members to bring entire bottles to their tables. Pooling permitted the temperate and more elegant service by the glass.29 According to Gordon Wismer, the new Attorney General appointed in 1937 after Sloan became a judge, the idea originated with William Kennedy. But Wismer himself liked the idea of club pooling. A Vancouver lawyer, he had entered the legislature only in 1933, but he had been a fixture in the Liberal party since the early 1920s. In those days he had been linked closely to the liquor ring that dominated Vancouver Centre and strongly influenced provincial politics. As Attorney General he was well known for his liquor connections and his "artful distribution of club licences."30 When news of pooling was leaked in 1938, opponents responded immediately. Wismer received complaints from the BCHA, restaurant owners and temperance leaders. Though each group had its own reasons for opposing pooling, the essence of their complaints was that pooling allowed clubs to sell liquor. The new Conservative leader, R.L. "Pat" Maitland, claimed that, if pooling were allowed, a rush would begin to open "proprietary" clubs that would exist for profit only. Club pooling was officially announced in 1940, and the opposition was intense but short-lived. Some of the most bitter criticism came from Vancouver's Mayor Lyle Telford, former CCF MLA and a temperance supporter. He told Wismer pooling "was merely an attempt a t the return of the bar in private form. . . ." He added: the manner in which the liquor traffic has been handled during the last few years leads me to believe that there has developed on the part of those in high places, a disregard for, if not contempt for the law which has been passed upon by the people themselves.

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Telford called for a plebiscite to deal with the entire problem of the distribution and sale of liquor in British C ~ l u m b i a . ~ ~ In 1941 the LCB issued 132 club pool permits. But clubs were much less visible to the public than beer parlours, of which nearly 400 existed in 1941. Clubs were relatively few in number and could hide behind the flimsy but technically accurate argument that they distributed liquor, rather than sold it. Beer parlour owners did not have even that excuse; they sold beer for profit to the general public.32 A more important reason for the quick end to the debate was war. From 1939 to 1945 the world conflict dominated all aspects of Canadian life. In one sense the war was a relief, since it ended a decade of depression. The federal government abandoned the balanced-budget mentality of the depression, pumped billions of dollars into the economy, and, with the War Measures Act, assumed control of political and economic life. Armed with emergency powers rarely used but readily available, Ottawa also reasserted its authority over the liquor traffic. But the federal government did not repeat the attempt of 1918 to impose national prohibition. If citizens could afford and find liquor, they could drink. Consumption increased with renewed prosperity, and liquor sales provided needed revenue for both the provincial and federal governments.

War, Revenue and Prohibition Initially Ottawa's wartime interest in liquor was entirely financial. A week after Canada had declared war on Germany, the federal government increased taxes on domestic spirits by 75%. By 1943 those taxes were 175% higher than in 1939. The government also raised taxes on imported spirits and malt by almost as much. Federal levies on domestic still wine increased 567% during the war, while the taxes on French still wine went up approximately 285%.33 The Dominion's thirst for revenue alarmed provincial leaders, since liquor was one of the few independent sources of revenue left to the provinces during the war. Under the Wartime Tax Agreements, negotiated with the provinces in 1941, Ottawa "rented" some shared areas of taxation, sllch as personal and corporate income tax. In general, Ottawa paid generous rent, although British Columbia suffered a net loss under the initial agreement. But the provinces did not abandon control of the lucrative liquor sales. To placate their leaders, the federal government exempted liquor boards from price controls, and federal tax increases were passed on to consumers. In addition, Ottawa guaranteed minimum liquor profit levels for the provinces. Those guarantees were never needed because, in the words of a fiscal historian, "all the provinces had underestimated the alcoholic capacity of their citizens under the stress of war. . . .''34

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Despite rapidly rising prices, consumption increased throughout the war. Prosperity gave people more money to spend, but fewer things to buy, since most consumer goods, from coffee to new cars, were severely rationed or unavailable. As the war progressed, liquor too was rationed, but it was always available for those who had plenty of money. Thus, wartime liquor sales were profitable for both the federal and the provincial governments. The British Columbia LCB passed on all of Ottawa's taxes and added hikes of its own. By 1943 liquor was earning for the province over $8 million per year, double the pre-depression high. In fact, liquor profits accounted for over 20% of provincial revenue in that year -35 Never theless, the magnitude of liquor profits only partly explains why neither level of government showed much interest in wartime prohibition. While World War One had acted as a catalyst for a popular movement, by the 1940s enthusiasm for prohibition was a thing of the past. At the annual convention of the BCTL in May 1940, the delegates asked Ottawa to ban the manufacture of liquor as a war emergency. In addition, the drys urged the province to close "all beer saloons and places of public liquor treating and drinking during the war." Their pleas fell on deaf ears. A majority of Canadians opposed wartime prohibition, and government control had proved relatively successful. Opinion polls showed that British Columbia and Quebec, which had the longest experience with government control, were the provinces most opposed to the return of prohibition.36 The drys also met determined opposition from liquor interests. On both sides of the border, producers raised the spectre of prohibition. Keenly aware of the importance of good public relations, the brewers and distillers emphasized their contributions to the war effort. E.P. Taylor, president of Ontario's Canadian Breweries, became a highly publicized, dollar-a-year government advisor. Three members of the Molson family left the brewery and served prominently in the armed forces.37 But the drys never gave up, and by 1942 the Canadian public had become more receptive to their message. Victory seemed further away than ever. The war was in its third year, and Canada was now fighting Japan as well as Germany. While the U.S.banned spirits production soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Canadians kept on drinking. Between 1939 and 1942 spirit sales increased nearly 40% and beer 60%. The majority of Canadians still shunned prohibition, but they were now more willing to sacrifice for the war effort. Temperance leaders played on these feelings and said that Canadian savings should buy bonds, not booze. They also renewed their call for a ban on public drinking for the duration. As the war intensified, liquor again became a political problem

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for both levels of g ~ v e r n m e n t . ~ ~ In a radio address on 16 December 1942, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King announced a wartime temperance plan. King said the government needed a total war effort, and in part that meant reducing consumption to promote efficiency and improve morale. The government had already banned spirits production, and King said that existing supplies would be reduced in strength. Moreover, each province would have to reduce hard liquor sales by 30% and beer and wine sales by 10% and 20% respectively. The Prime Minister also announced a ban on all liquor advertising, and he requested that liquor outlets be open for no more than eight hours a day.39 Generally speaking, King's plan met with public approval. It showed his government was concerned about consumption, but would provide some liquor for those who desired it. Temperance groups wanted the federal government to do more, but the BCTL was sufficiently pleased to send a letter of "deep and sincere appreciation" to the Prime Minister. F'rom Ottawa's point of view, the regulations were satisfactory, since the administration of those rules and the consequent political difficulties were left to the provinces.40 The British Columbia government, however, was less enthusiastic about the new restrictions. Liberal Premier John Hart, who had replaced Pat tullo when the Liberals and Tories formed a coalition government after the indecisive 1941 election, claimed that Ottawa had broken its pledge not to interfere with provincial control over liquor sales. Hart feared the province might lose $2 million annually through the imposition of the restrictions. For nearly two years British Columbia pressured Ottawa to compensate for the potential loss, and an agreement was reached in 1944.41 But the provincial government did not only have financial worries. Even before the federal restrictions, the province could not meet the demand for liquor. The war brought thousands of people to British Columbia: war workers from other provinces, army and navy personnel, and many Americans, both civilians and soldiers. The LCB had rationed imported scotch and rum since March 1941, as demand seemed insatiable and supplies were unpredictable because of the European war. The "owl" liquor stores in Vancouver caused massive vehicle and pedestrian congestion. For a while, the LCB hired off-duty police to regulate traffic, but in early 1942, it closed the all-night stores and limited the hours of the rests4* By the time the Prime Minister made his announcement, British Columbia already had general liquor rationing. The federal restrictions aggravated a bad situation, since the province's allocation was based on

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its obsolete 1941 population figures. By mid-1943 the LCB was limiting purchasers to a monthly binge of a pint of spirits or two dozen beers or a gallon of Canadian wine, and even to get any of those one had to have a National Registration Certificate and a provincial liquor permit. Vendors marked the permits so buyers could not make a second purchase, but some people illegally acquired more than one permit. For a couple of months in 1943 liquor was in such short supply that stores in Victoria and Vancouver opened for only an hour each day. Long lineups produced short tempers. F'rustrated patrons sometimes fought each other, while others gave up in disgust and returned their permits to the L C B . ~ ~ Repeating the experience of the prohibition years, the abuse of medical prescriptions for liquor became a problem. In Vancouver, the LCB allowed those with prescriptions to have them filled at a special store where they would avoid the crowds. In 1941 British Columbia doctors issued 578 prescriptions for alcohol. In the fiscal year that ended in March 1944 they prescribed alcohol 41,730 times, approximately a 7000% increase. One doctor even ordered a 40-ounce prescription for a very sick Because little liquor was available, bootlegging continued to be a serious problem and assumed a variety of forms. A thriving black market for soldiers' liquor permits developed. Many soldiers were stationed in the province for less than a year, and they sold or gave away their permits when they left. Even non-drinkers often obtained liquor permits and then either gave away or sold their allotment. In a typical British Columbia household, every adult acquired a permit whether all were drinkers or not. Other people brought liquor in from outside the province and sold it a t high prices. In addition, flavour extracts, rubbing alcohol, after-shave lotion and canned heat sold briskly during the war. All were poisons that caused ulcers, blindness or death if consumed to excess-45 While the government sought ways t o satisfy too much demand with too little supply, beer parlour owners endured their own wartime problems. When the federal government raised the tax on beer, the breweries assumed some of the increase, but they passed on most of it to the hotel parlours. Profits suffered as operators could not transfer their increased costs to customers; beer remained at ten cents a glass. Many parlours took to selling "short glasses" of beer, and the LCB received numerous complaints about glasses with "more head than beer ."46 For parlour owners, however, beer prices and short glasses were of minor importance compared with the move to close the parlours. Although most Canadians opposed prohibition, public drinking was still a sufficiently divisive issue to make hotel owners react forcefully to suggestions

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that the parlours should close for the war. Both the BCHA and the Hotels Association of Canada prepared elaborate briefs to defend beer parlours. They emphasized how much beer parlours had done to improve the standards of hotels and stressed that they served as "workmen's clubs." By providing a relaxing atmosphere, and a "drink of moderation," so they argued, parlours improved the efficency and morale of war workers.47 In British Columbia, opponents of public drinking targeted Vancouver's parlours in particular, as over 70 existed in the downtown area. Temperance supporters claimed they ruined young soldiers with drink and with venereal disease caught from house prostitutes. The government never moved to close the parlours, but the LCB reduced their supplies and cut back their hours. The Board also instituted a "supper hour" closing to encourage patrons to go home and not come back. And, in a move reminiscent of the 1920s, the government and the hotels deflected criticism with a campaign against prostitutes. Once again the solution to the perceived problem was the separation of the sexes.48 The debate over women in beer parlours had faded away in the late 1920s. Instead of separate rooms, many hotels provided only a separate area in the main parlour for ladies and escorts. By the 19309, even separate areas often existed in name only, and men and women openly drank together. The issue regained prominence in the late 1930s in the midst of an anti-vice drive initiated by the Vancouver police. Not content to be left out, the Director of Venereal Disease Control in the Provincial Board of Health concluded those diseases had reached serious levels in Vancouver. Dr. D.H. Williams also emphasized that "the prostitute is the main root and source of venereal disease in this province." He directed his concern a t beer parlours because prostitutes frequented them in search of customers and because "alcohol flares an almost healed gonorrhea into full blown activity, and it cancels out the value of treatment in syphilis. . . ." Not even the innocent were safe: the danger is obvious which the public is running in using beer glasses and lavatories which have been used by these women. .where infected women are sitting in common rooms and using common lavatories and who are stirring their infections into activity by the use of beer. . . .49

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Even before the war, LCB Chairman W.F. Kennedy had enthusiastically endorsed Dr. Williams's program to eradicate venereal disease. In 1938, he suggested to the Attorney General that anyone treated a t a public clinic who admitted having acquired the disease from a parlour prostitute should be placed on the interdicted list. The BCHA,however, showed less interest. J.J. Kahn, BCHA secretary, claimed that Dr. Williams had falsified figures to make the parlours look bad. When Williams went to visit the Minister of Health in Ottawa in 1939, Kahn warned the Minis-

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ter's secretary that Williams's "only idea is suppression, being more of a reformer thatn [sic] a physician. He figures himself a wonderful crusader. His ultimate objective is to wreck the beer parlour business."50 With the outbreak of World War Two, Williams expressed even more concern about prostitutes in beer parlours. He described parlours "frequented by diseased women" as, "an alien fifth column which is insidiously undermining the health of His Majesty's Forces and spreading infection to potential recruiting material among the young male population." Kennedy pledged his full cooperation, and while he praised the BCHA for its efforts in the "prosecution of this [disease] war," he said that hotels which did not join the fight would face "drastic action."51 In April 1942, after reaching a "mutual understanding" with the BCHA, Kennedy announced a major change in the way men and women would drink in beer parlours. Each hotel was to erect a partition at least six feet high between the men's parlour and the one for ladies and escorts. The LCB gave the hotels two months to comply with the new policy, which was not part of the Liquor Act or regulations. Although the order was initially enforced only in Vancouver, Esquimalt, and Prince George, Kennedy encouraged all parlours in the province to fall in line.52 Most parlours quickly installed the partitions, and the Provincial Division of Venereal Disease Control monitored venereal disease supposedly acquired in beer parlours. Officials interviewed male patients in Vancouver and asked them how they had acquired the disease. One patient had been at the Balmoral Hotel where "the alleged source of his venereal infection invited him to 'sit down and have a beer.' They then went to the patient's room where the exposure occurred." At the Manitoba Hotel a man asked "a girl if he could sit with her. They went to the patient's room later. . . . This girl received a fee of $3.00 in exchange for the venereal disease which she allegedly spread." These reports and the total number of ('beer parlour cases" were regularly sent to the LCB.'~ Although alleged beer parlour infections in Vancouver more than doubled between 1939 and 1944 (from 55 to 111cases), the city continued to have one of the lowest venereal disease rates on the continent. The BCHA was greatly concerned about the accuracy of the health reports that were sent to the LCB. It complained that disease officials relied exclusively on interviews with infected men. Chairman Kennedy sympathized with the complaint. He told the new Director of Venereal Disease Control, "if a patient is too drunk t o remember where he was at the time the contact was made, it is hardly fair to accept his statement that it was in a Beer Parlor as it might just as easily have been in some other place." To accuse specific parlours without sufficient evidence was serious as the offenders usually had their licences suspended.54

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To a certain extent the campaign against beer parlour prostitution reflected genuine concern about health and morality. Government officials, health authorities, temperance groups, and even beer parlour owners believed that the barriers would help reduce prostitution and consequently disease. But sexual segregation served other purposes as well. It helped to limit the popularity of the temperance groups' attempts to close the parlours for the duration. The LCB and the hotels acted quickly to maintain public support. In 1944 Kennedy informed the Attorney General of Ontario that the BCHA members had accepted the partitions because "they realize that if their business is to continue they must be extremely careful in protecting their interest by keeping public confidence. . . ."55 The ongoing attack on public drinking explains, in part, the separation of sexes, but the partitions remained long after the threat to the parlours had diminished. Not until 1963 did the LCB tell the hotels they could remove their partitions, and many chose to keep them. There was still a pervasive disquiet about men and women, particularly unattached men and women, drinking together in public. In 1942 the Province editors had wondered if the real reason for the barriers was the objection "to men and women drinking beer together in public upon any terms whatsoever. . . ." Traditionally, public drinking had been a male pastime. Many men simply did not want the company of women while they drank, and they treated women in parlours as prostitutes. As a compromise, British Columbia settled for segregation; some provinces opted for female exclusion from parlours or taverns. As late as 1984 both Quebec and Manitoba still had some public drinking facilities open to men oniy,56 For many Canadians, the war years were their introduction to liquor. Even before they went overseas, thousands of men and women learned to drink in military canteens and beer parlours, and waiters rarely asked those in uniform for age identification. For civilians, prosperity made it easy to purchase liquor regularly, if any were available. While Canadians gave patriotic lip service to wartime restrictions, they treated liquor like any rationed commodity; they wanted their full allotment even if they did not drink. A Gallup poll at the end of the war revealed that for the first time a majority of Canadians were keeping liquor at home.57 After the war, liquor consumption soared. The end of rationing, continued prosperity and the return of military personnel from overseas all contributed to increased sales. In British Columbia liquor sales doubled between 1938 and 1948,far in excess of population growth. In 1953 annual per capita consumption in the province reached a record 7.18 litres of absolute alcohol, and it continued upward. Although British Columbians drank slightly more than the national average, increased consump-

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tion affected the entire country. Nationally, consumption surged 35% between 1945 and 1950. Even Prince Edward Island, dry since the turn of the century, abandoned prohibition for government control in 1948. By the 1950s, over 70% of Canadians considered themselves drinkers .58 Although public drinking remained a contentious issue in British Columbia, in general most people were more favourable to it. The saloon debates belonged to another era; most people could not remember the bars or the dry years. Moreover, after the war the province received a surge of European immigrants who, as a rule, had more tolerant attitudes about alcohol. Whether native or foreign-born, drinking British Columbians resented having to take liquor to unlicensed cabarets where long table cloths hid the bottle slots, and customers bought mixers and ice to make illegal drinks. They were tired of dingy, crowded beer parlours. No new ones had been Iicensed since the beginning of the war, and Vancouver had the same number as it had had in 1930. In greatest demand were cocktail lounges and cocktails with meals in restaurants. Many British Columbians envied Ontario, which brought in both in 1947. The next year the voters of the state of Washington approved the sale of spirits in licensed places. In 1949 16,000 British Columbians signed a petition in support of liquor in cabarets, and a Gallup poll that showed over two thirds of British Columbian adults approved of cocktail lounges.59 Somewhat ironically, however, the campaign to reform the province's liquor laws did not begin with the cabarets or restaurants. In July 1945, the Right Reverend Harold E. Sexton, the Australian-born Anglican Bishop of British Columbia, made the first of a series of speeches in favour of more liberal liquor laws. The bishop advocated the moderate consumption of wine and beer with meals to curb excessive drinking in hotel rooms and automobiles. Sexton, who lived in Victoria, where the voters had never approved beer parlours, wanted more facilities: "It should not be necessary to go to Esquimalt. . .in order to 'lay the dust.'" In August he said, "let us get away from all humbug and hypocrisy and say quite frankly there is nothing wrong in itself in the use of alcohol if a man can afford it and uses it in moderation." While the Province claimed the Bishop represented the majority view in British Columbia, Sexton's comments provoked a heated response from temperance supporters. In a sermon completely devoted to Sexton, Reverend A.E. Cooke said the liquor traffic had "blasted maidenhood, damned boyhood, tortured babyhood and fouled every sanctity of the home." He called for "educating the people to personal abstinence as a Christian duty. . . ."60 Bishop Sexton opened the debate on liquor; the restaurant and cabaret owners continued it. Thwarted in the mid-1930s, the restaurant owners renewed their campaign to serve liquor with meals. The British Co-

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lumbia section of the Canadian Restaurant Association (CRA) continually challenged hotel and club privileges. Even better organized was the British Columbia Cabaret Owners' Association, operators of the province's unlicensed cabarets, or bottle clubs. With briefs, newspaper advertisements, and an elaborate pamphlet for the big campaign of 1949, the cabaret owners sought to impress upon the government and public that the Liquor Act was an outdated farce. Norman Klenman, secretary of the Cabaret Association in 1948, somewhat hyperbolically claimed the police would have t o arrest 25,000 people each week to enforce the law. Cabaret owners also argued that licensed nightclubs promoted temperance because people could buy liquor by the glass instead of draining entire bottles brought with them. Of course, licensed cabarets would be likely to increase their profits from liquor sales, but that point was not raised.61 The restaurant and cabaret owners met stiff opposition to their demands, but not all of it came from temperance groups. Those who possessed liquor rights-veterans' clubs, hotels and private clubs (those clubs that had liquor storage or pool permits)-did not necessarily oppose greater access to alcohol; they simply opposed more competition. Each argued the solution to liquor reform was to give more privileges to its group. For example, from 1947 on, veterans' clubs, reinvigorated with returned personnel, campaigned for more licences and the right to sell bottled beer for off-premises consumption. They also wanted members and guests to be able to buy beer at any veterans' club in the province.62 More brazen were the private club owners. In 1949 the British Columbia Club Managers' Association submitted a detailed brief to the Premier. Evoking old fears and applying odd logic the club owners argued more public drinking would lead to "a widespread increase in intemperance, and of criticism of the Government, and an inevitable return to prohibition." They opposed licensed restaurants, cabarets and more facilities for hotels. If changes were necessary, the government should license more clubs; only they could provide "well regulated comfortable and happy conditions" for the distribution of liquor by the glass.63 The hotel owners were not united on the expansion of public drinking. Because of the absence of beer parlours in the capital, the Victoria Hotels Association wanted cocktail lounges. According to Victoria hotel owners, licensed lounges would prevent drinking in automobiles and hotel bedrooms. They claimed that one of their main concerns was their lack of power to prevent "adolescent girls from being taken to guest rooms. It must be admitted that a t times we are outwitted with dire consequences especially to the young girl or girls." Cocktail lounges would prevent such tragedies, but only if the lounges were confined to hotels.64

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The issue of more facilities had divided Vancouver hotels in the 19309, but the wounds healed fairly quickly, and after the war the BCHA supported a compromise. If the government licensed restaurants and cocktail lounges, it should confine them to hotels. But few hotels in the province campaigned actively for lounges and dining room licences. What they really wanted was to increase the price of draft beer from 10 cents a glass to 15 cents or two glasses for 25 cents. The price of draft beer had remained the same since beer parlours had opened in 1 9 2 5 . ~ ~ Of all the groups, beer parlour workers were probably happiest with the status quo. The Beverage Dispensers Union looked at more facilities "with alarm." The union executive maintained the present act was "satisfactory." Less explicit was their main concern: jobs. Licensed restaurants and cabarets not only might employ non-union labour, they could draw business away from the unionized beer parlours. The British Columbia executive of the national Trades and Labour Congress took a slightly different position. They advocated cocktail lounges in hotels, presumably staffed by union labour.66 All these opponents of more licensed businesses found unsought support from temperance groups. Reverend R.J. McIntyre of the BCTL said increased public drinking would promote more drunkenness and crime. Rather than any immediate changes, the BCTL wanted a royal commission to investigate "all aspects of the liquor situation in British Columbia." Over the next few years the WCTU, many protestant churches, and the Provincial Council of Women all seconded this call for an investigation. More interesting was their opposition to any liquor plebiscite until a commission had reported its findings. Before the war, temperance groups had favoured another general plebiscite. Reverend Aubrey Small, who replaced Reverend McIntyre as general secretary of the BCTL in 1946, explained the League's new position: The League is not opposed to plebiscites as such, but its officers are of the opinion that the present state of public information is not such that a socially useful answer would be likely to result from a plebiscite on the liquor law. . . .

Small realized that voters would likely approve a plebiscite on more liberal liquor laws. Thus, a royal commission would serve two purposes. First, in the usual way, a commission would stall any change. Second, an investigation could possibly substantiate the validity of the temperance position. If the people were better informed about the evils of alcohol, they might not want more liberal liquor laws.67 Temperance leaders found some allies within the CCF. In 1945 Harold Winch, party leader from 1939 to 1953, called for the public ownership of "brewing, distilling, production and distribution of liquor," a policy the

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party had adhered to since the 1930s. During the war the BCTL in its turn adopted liquor nationalization as a means to eliminate the destructive incentives of private profit. According to one Baptist minister, "the liquor business profits at the expense of the general public, but it does not assume responsibility for injury and hospitalization caused by its product." But to make their hostility to liquor quite clear, the BCTL also supported the eventual elimination of "the whole liquor traffic." Some prominent CCF members, such as Arnold Webster, a Christian socialist and Winch's successor as party leader, backed the Temperance League because, "we must bring the whole weight of social disapproval to bear on the use of alcohol."68 After the war temperance leaders concentrated on a royal commissison instead of the more extreme and less likely nationalization of the liquor traffic. Harold Winch liked both ideas, but the commission offered the political opportunity to expose the evils of the government. He argued the commission should have the "widest possible scope" and that its terms of reference should include "campaign funds, advertising and education." Winch believed the corruption of the 1920s was continuing in the coalition government, and he hoped to gore both parties with it.6g Winch also favoured a royal commission because it was all his party could agree upon. In 1947 he reported on behalf of a special CCF executive committee established to consider liquor reform. Winch told party officials that the committee's members would have to speak for themselves as the only thing they could collectively accept was a royal commission. Even the Winch family was divided. Ernie Winch, a party founder, was a teetotaller, while his son Harold personally favoured cocktail lounges. When the House voted, in 1949, on a CCF motion to establish a royal commission, two CCF members helped to defeat it because the motion implied support for more public drinking.7o Nevertheless, despite public opinion and private pressure, the LiberalTory coalition made almost no changes in the Liquor Act after the war. Even LCB chairman William Kennedy had little influence. In 1947 he sent the Attorney General a shopping list of ideas that included cocktail lounges and licensed dining rooms in hotels. But Gordon Wisrner rejected Kennedy's major proposals. Wismer, defeated in 1941, was returned t o the legislature in the 1945 election and won back the post of Attorney General in 1946. He also rejected the idea of a new brewery operated by a group of veterans. In a 1947 letter to the Veterans Brewery Holding Company, he carefully explained the "arrangement" the government had had with the breweries since 1923, and he said he saw no reason to alter it. Of Kennedy's suggestions, Wismer accepted the need for more beer licences in Vancouver, the elimination of individual liquor

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permits-an irritating nuisance t o everyone-and the end of club pooling. After 1947, private clubs, some of Wismer's strongest supporters, could legally sell liquor to members and guests.71 At first Wismer said he opposed public cocktail lounges because "no one supported the idea." He claimed that only well-organized pressure groups wanted to expand public drinking, and they did not represent the majority. What he did not admit was that his government, a mixture of Liberals, Tories and members who ran as coalitionists, could not agree on any liquor policy.72 Government members held a variety of views on liquor. W.A. Cecil Bennett (Coalition-South Okanagan) urged a royal commission, like his colleagues in the CCF. The government member for North Okanagan, Charles Morrow, argued for food in beer parlours to reduce drunkenness, and added: "Give the people what they want, not what we think is good for them." Some government members wanted a plebiscite for the entire province, while others argued the only sane solution was to poll areas where changes were likely to be approved. The Victoria Colonist printed an apt cartoon in March 1947. It showed a stick of dynamite, labelled "The Liquor Question," about to explode as an ostrich-the government-kept its head in the sand.73 By 1950 the Vancouver government members-excep t Wismer-were near revolt because their constituents wanted more liberal laws. Vancouver MLAS asked the cabinet for a liquor plebiscite for the city only, but the Attorney General said he would resign if the Premier, Byron Ingemar "Boss" Johnson, approved a city poll. The compromise reached in 1951, and announced by Wismer, was a province-wide plebiscite to be held at the next election.74 By the spring of 1951 both Liberals and Tories had tired of the coalition. The two parties were divided over a number of issues, including government-financed hospital insurance. As well, ambitious members on both sides thought the coalition had lost its usefulness, as it no longer commanded wide public support. At Wismer 's suggestion, the government amended the Elections Act to provide for a complicated system of alternative voting for the next election. Ostensibly designed to guarantee that a candidate won the majority of votes in the riding, the amendments made it likely that one of the two private-enterprise parties would form the next g ~ v e r n m e n t . ~ ~ Liquor too played a part in the demise of the coalition, although to a lesser extent. Two Tory cabinet ministers had questionable liquor connections that upset some members. Minister of Mines Roderick MacDonald sat on the board of Coast Breweries, but potentially more embarrassing were the activities of Herbert Anscomb, Finance Minister and

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Conservative leader after Pat Maitland's death. The member for Oak Bay was also a director of Coast Breweries and the chief owner of Growers' Wine Company, the oldest wine producer in the province. Under Anscomb the Finance Ministry essentially set the prices his company received from the LCB for its products. As one Ontario Tory said, "even in Quebec they would not put up with the things that are tolerated in B.C."~~ As for the British Columbia wine industry, it had developed on Vancouver Island in the early years of government control. In fact, the industry was almost a partnership between state and enterprise; through the LCB the government promoted and protected local wine. In 1923, Saanich loganberry growers, aided by a $10,000 provincial government loan, formed the Growers' Wine Company and sold the LCB 5,000 bulk gallons of wine made from the abundant berry. The public liked the cheap red wine, and by 1925 the company produced 22,000 gallons. Two years later Herbert Anscomb, later to become notorious, joined Growers' as general manager. By the late 1920s Island and mainland growers could not make the product fast enough, and each year loganberry wine sales climbed towards the level reached by European wines sold in British Columbia. The market extended into other provinces, as British Columbia offered the only ideal growing conditions in the country.77 The local popularity of loganberry wine peaked in the early 1930s. What hurt logan sales was not so much the depression as competition from local grape wine, an industry initiated by Growers' when it signed a contract with an Okanagan grape grower in 1931. The following year Italian winemaker Guiseppe Ghezzi persuaded his fellow countryman, Kelowna grocer, Pasquale "Cap" Capozzi, of the potential success of processing surplus apples into wine and other products. With the additional financial assistance from W.A.C. Bennett, a local hardware merchant, they formed Domestic Wines and By-Products, Ltd. Unfortunately, the company's first wines tended to re-ferment in their bottles and explode on liquor store shelves. In 1936 the partners changed the company's direction and name. They began to make wine from both British Columbia and imported grapes, and Bennett became president of Calona wines, a name selected as a result of a local contest. While president of Calona Wines, the dry Bennett never sampled a single glass. Unlike Anscomb, Bennett quit the wine business when he entered the legislature in 1941, but he maintained close ties with the Capozzi Growers' and Calona quickly dominated the British Columbia wine industry, and they both benefited from government protection. To all liquor products made in British Columbia, even wine produced mainly from California grapes, the government applied a lower markup than

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it did to out of province liquor. British Columbia consumers preferred fortified grape wine to loganberry wine, and the LCB had to lower loganberry prices to maintain sales. But all wine, no matter what its origin, constituted only a tiny percentage of LCB sales.79 Like the brewers, British Columbia wine makers showed little enthusiasm for outside competition, which would have been a death knell for the grape-wine industry. While loganberries thrived in British Columbia, wine grapes did not, and growers and vintners turned to the government for protection. In 1940 they persuaded the government not to let T.G. Bright & Company open a winery in British Columbia, because the Ontario company planned to import cheap Ontario wine and bottle it in the province. Bright's also wanted the British Columbia government to price its wine as a local product and to end the preferential treatment given to loganberry wine.*O Some Ontario wines were sold in British Columbia, but the LCB stocked no wines at all from the United States-not even California. The golden state produced cheap, palatable and heavily promoted wine. Even with a higher markup, California wine could compete with British Columbia wine; hence the government banned it completely. In fact, no province sold California wine. In a remarkable display of interprovincial cooperation, all liquor boards refused to list California wines in order to protect the wine industries of British Columbia and 0 n t a r i 0 . ~ ~ In the late 1940s agents for California wineries pushed to have their products sold in British Columbia. Charles Nelles, a Victoria-based importer, besieged the LCB and the Attorney General with correspondence. Nelles and others eventually aroused the interest of the U.S. Consul in Victoria, the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council, and the local press. All called on the government to permit the sale of California wines in British Columbia. The Sun said the province's position violated the spirit of a trade pact signed between the U.S. and Canada. But coalition Finance Minister Herbert Anscomb would allow nothing to threaten the profits of Growers' Wine. He did not even like to see Ontario wine listed in his province.82 Anscomb's business interests had been a contentious issue at the Tory convention in 1950. Led by the president of the Young Conservative Association, some delegates urged Anscomb to resign his directorships. Anscomb countered that he had never attempted to hide his interests and denied any company received special favours from the government. The young Tories threw their weight behind the feisty and ambitious W.A.C. Bennett. Although the press played on dissension at the October convention, Anscomb easily defeated Bennett. The following spring Bennett left the party to sit as an i n d e ~ e n d e n t . ~ ~

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While some Liberals claimed Anscomb hurt the coalition, they were reluctant to cast too many stones. Attorney General Gordon Wismer's liquor connections went back t o the 1920s, but they were far less public than those of Anscomb. In the spring of 1951, the Victoria Times, while not attacking Wismer personally, condemned the government's liquor policy. The paper asserted that "beer parlor licences [were] traded. . .with political influence," that the brewing "monopoly was strictly preserved," and that the government excluded California wines "to protect British Columbia wine interests." More pointed, however, were the allegations made in February 1952 by Blair Fraser, a writer for Maclean's magazine, who said of Wismer: Most club licences are held by friends of Wismer several of whom worked their way up from humble beginnings by diligent service in the Vancouver Centre Liberal Association (The Vancouver Centre machine competes with that of Montreal Cartier for the gamiest reputation in Canada.)

Wismer damned the article as "inference and innuendo" and immediately launched a libel suit. Three years later the magazine apologized.84 As in the case of most political liquor intrigues, the evidence against Wismer was circumstantial. In the late 1940s an anonymous hotelman sent a long, rambling report to CCF leader Harold Winch. The informant maintained "the most important racket in B.C. is the liquor ring and their control of everything pertaining to liquor in this province. . . . It is not government control it is brewery control." Although noting what he regarded as Anscomb's total corruption, he directed his venom at the "Wismer Vancouver Centre gang," who passed "every licence application, purchase, suspension and licence cancellation. . .they direct Kennedy in every move he makes." The power behind Wismer was supposedly William Couper (the hotelman spelled it "Cooper"), president of the Vancouver Liberal Council and secretary of the Vancouver Quadra Club. According to the informant, Couper and his associates, who included representatives from the breweries, hotels and even the new chief inspector for the LCB,operated the ring from the Quadra Club. There they decided who would receive licences, who would lose them, and how much licensees were t o contribute to election campaigns. Apparently the previous inspector, a Tory, had kept a dossier on the "seamy side of life" with such details as "who slept with whom, who put Wismer to bed and with whom." Interestingly, when LCB chairman Kennedy died in August 1951, both the Beverage Dispensers Union and the Trades and Labour Council urged Wismer to appoint Couper as LCB Chairman.8s The hotelman's report also referred to a liquor inspector "Gibbons," whom the Liberals sent north to "wrest the CCF seats and bring them back to the Liberal fold." In April 1947, Roderick Gibbons had written

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Wismer at his home to give "you the Memo you desired." The memo was a long-winded, sycophantic request that Gibbons be promoted from liquor investigator to inspector. Gibbons said he had been told by Bill Couper (he spelled it "Cowper") to contact ~ i s m e r . ~ ~ According to Gibbons, he had been advised to confine his memo to his "association with the Central Executive and the Liberal Party." He explained to Wismer how he had persuaded LCB chairman Kennedy to suspend a beer licence on the Island until the operator pledged his support for a Liberal election candidate. As for his qualifications, Gibbons said, "I know the interior licences, I have worked Politically, with and for them in the interests of the Board and Liberal party." In a followup letter, Gibbons said he could help Wismer in his attempt to become party leader: "This Interior Inspectorship gives [me] a grand opportunity to further these aspirations in your interests. Putting it plaintively, [sic] I am your friend and have been for a good many years." Wismer's official reply to Gibbons was terse and non-committal, but Gibbons got the job.87 No matter how much truth lay in Gibbons's comments, they were not public knowledge when the coalition collapsed in 1952. In January, Premier Johnson fired Anscomb, who had publicly released details of a new tax arrangement with the federal government before he informed the provincial cabinet. The Liberals were now the government, but Johnson hoped to strengthen the party's position with an election. He called one for 12 June, and on the ballot was a vague liquor plebiscite: "Are you in favour of the sale of spirituous liquor and wine by the glass in establishments licensed for such purpose?" The legislature did not debate the plebiscite because the government approved it by cabinet order. While a plebiscite was not without political risk, a royal commission might have given substance to the rumours of liquor scandals.88 Hospital insurance, not liquor, was the main issue of the 1952 election. As in 1920 and 1924, all parties avoided a specific position on the plebiscite, so as to not alienate any voters or risk further divisions in their own ranks. CCF leader Harold Winch said that the liquor laws needed changing, but that it did not matter how people voted on the plebiscite because it was unnecessary, vague and stupid. The CCF wanted "a fullscale inquiry into the entire liquor situation in B.C." The Conservatives sidestepped the plebiscite altogether. With masterful ambiguity their platform stated: "Liquor Plebiscite: The B.C. Progressive Conservative Party stands for Local Option."89 So divided were the Liberals that their platform ignored the plebiscite. When questioned, Premier Johnson refused to comment. At a meeting of hotel employees, Wismer admitted the Liquor Act was "ridiculous

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in some respects," and that no matter how the vote went, he planned to establish a committee to investigate Liquor Act changes, but not the entire industry (probably the last type of investigation he would have supported). Wismer seemed more concerned about what he called "poison whispering" about him.g0 The 1952 election was the first in which the Social Credit party was a serious contender. Like the CCF, Social Credit had been born in the depression. Rather than replace capitalism, however, the Socreds sought to reform it. The main enemy was what they regarded as the international financial conspiracy. In their early days, they also intended to provide "social credits" to close the gap between low wages and high prices, and they continually promoted Christian virtues. In British Columbia the party languished for years in the despair caused by poor organization, internal squabbles and lacklustre leadership. But by 1952 the Socreds had benefited from money and organizers sent from Alberta, where Social Credit had provided solid, conservative government since 1935. Although technically leaderless in the 1952 election, the party gained credibility when W.A.C. Bennett-formerly a Tory, later a coalitionist, and finally an independent-joined the Socreds in 1951.~~ Like the other parties, the Socreds were not anxious to take a clear position on the liquor plebiscite. Reverend E.G.Hansell, the Alberta import who served as campaign leader for the British Columbia Social Credit League, said he could not commit the party to "any definite line of action." He added that the plebiscite was confusing and meant very little. Reverend Hansell supported local option, and if his party formed the government, "law enforcement would be of major concern. Liquor monopoly would not be tolerated." 92 Temperance groups, of course, campaigned for a "no" vote. The Vancouver Council of Churches and the BCTL combined forces and formed the Alcohol Research Council (ARC). Although the organization had a scientific-sounding name, it relied on old saloon fears. A vote for the plebiscite would give the government a "blank cheque" to open bars anywhere. One of the ARC'S half-page advertisements dramatized this theme with a prominent headline: "It's as simple as this. . .DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT WANT A BAR NEAR YOUR HOME?" The same advertisement displayed a map of the Lower Mainland with black arrows everywhere to mark the possible location of bars.93 The "yes" campaign was led by the '(Citizen's Committee for a Common Sense Liquor Law," chaired by George A. Cran, former advertising director of the Sun. That newspaper long had been active in the campaign for more liberal liquor laws. Opponents of the "yes" committee claimed it was financed by the "liquor interests," and that the restau-

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rant association was willing to pay up to $100,000 in support of the plebiscite. But Cran said his group only received individual donations from Vancouver businessmen. Judging by the number and size of its advertisements, however, the committee must have received many generous donations. 'Yes" advertisements played on familiar themes. Liquor by the glass would promote temperance, reduce bootlegging, eliminate the bottle clubs and "result in better communities." The committee favoured licensed restaurants and cocktail lounges in commercial areas only, so people would not have to fear the opening of a bar on every residential block.94 Apart from numerous protestant churches, which sided with the "no" advocates, only hotel and club employees took a strong public position on the plebiscite. At a meeting held a few days before the election, they adopted a resolution that urged an "emphatic No vote." A.R. Johnstone of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union said a "no" vote was necessary to protect "the established wage pattern for our trade." In addition, if restaurants were licensed, waitresses could lose their jobs, as existing regulations prohibited women from serving liquor, and if women were eventually allowed to serve liquor, they would take jobs from men and lower wages.95 Unlike the wording of the plebiscite itself, the result of the vote was not vague. Nearly 70% of electorate voted and over 316,266 chose "yes" while about 204,761 opted for "no." Of 41 electoral districts only four voted "no": North Okanagan, South Okanagan, Salmon Arm and Chilliwack. The majority wanted liquor by the glass, but it would be up to the new government to decide what that meant and how to implement it.96 Much less clear, on the morning after the election, was the choice of party to form the next government. The alternative ballot proved so complicated that the results were not known for six weeks. No party won a majority of the seats, but the upstart Socreds took 19 while the CCF had 18. The Liberals and Tories had only managed six and four seats respectively. The CCF took Wismer's seat, and he retired from politics. As usual, Fernie voters returned independent Tom Uphill. "Wacky" Bennett-his nickname had been coined by Harold Winch-wasted no time in becoming Social Credit leader, and on 1 August 1952 he formed a minority government. Not only had Bennett's home riding of South Okanagan voted against the plebiscite, he himself had never taken a drink in his life.97 The great depression of the 1930s provoked a significant, if subtle, change in liquor policy in British Columbia. Because of the economic shock

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and the decline of liquor sales, the government became concerned about shrinking revenue and took some steps to promote sales and consequently consumption. Even with the return of prosperity, financial worries continued throughout World War Two, since liquor was one of the few independent sources of provincial revenue. Yet, during the war, the more practical problem for the LCB was finding enough liquor to satisfy demand. Although revenue became more important, the government was in no position to be as brazen as the Kidd Report suggested and act like any other retailer. It could not openly promote consumption, for liquor remained a sensitive moral and political issue in the 1930s. Temperance still carried some weight and its supporters remained confident enough to demand another vote on liquor. Even as late as World War Two, both the federal and provincial governments respected temperance influence, Especially because of the continued concern about public drinking, the provincial government could not ignore the second word in "government control." The public drinking issue also encouraged strange alliances that reinforced the status quo. Temperance groups and hotels had little in common but neither wanted to see licensed restaurants. What was equally important was that British Columbia was not host to a single liquor interest. Hotels and clubs battled each other over expanded liquor privileges, and the hotels themselves did not always have a united position. Each group wanted more privileges for its members and restrictions placed on the others. Certainly, the changes that the government made in the 1930s and 1940s benefited the vested liquor interests. But had they been more united, the changes might have been more significant, particularly as the influence of temperance slowly waned. Continually diminishing dry sentiment, and a generally wet war, resulted in widespread demands for more licensed public drinking after 1945. Those demands were transmitted and promoted by the popular press, which championed private enterprise and castigated the alleged political corruption involved in government control. The press reflected the shift in public opinion towards more liberal attitudes about liquor. Moreover, liquor was less significant for provincial coffers after the war. The post-war boom, a better deal in the tax rental agreements of 1947 and the imposition of a provincial sales tax in 1948 reduced the importance of LCB revenue. By 1952 it had declined to 12.9% of provincial revenue, as compared with a peak of 25.6% in 1947. It would seem that the government could, without political or financial difficulty, have offered more licensed public drinking and perhaps even privatized some liquor d i ~ t r i b u t i o n . ~ ~

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But the government was a wartime Liberal-Tory coalition that had no particular reason t o exist after 1945, except that of keeping the socialist CCF out of power. The governing parties had achieved no consensus on liquor, not even within their own ranks; maintaining the status quo was safer for the coalition. Moreover, the conflict and competition between the various liquor interests made the outcome of any change problematic. It might have been expected that the government would endorse the new temperance position that favoured a royal commission, the venerable Canadian institution that provides movement and inaction at the same time. A royal commission, however, would probably have exposed the entrenched position of liquor patronage and the close ties of certain politicians to the liquor industry. Moreover, liquor patronage in British Columbia had typically promoted as much division as unity. Moral outrage might have dimmed by the 1940s, but the battles between the liquor "ins" and "outs" remained intense. In the end the restored, but weakened, Liberals opted for a non-binding plebiscite as the simplest and safest option. Even so, liquor regulation was more dynamic than it appeared to be on the surface. Certainly, vested liquor interests wielded tremendous influence with the LCB and the government in power. It was also true that the LCB worked so closely with the hotels and brewers that at times it was difficult to say where private enterprise ended and regulation began. But tension always existed, because of competing liquor interests and the influence of temperance leaders. LCB chairman William Kennedy listened both to the hotels and to Reverend McIntyre of the Temperance League. The plebiscite showed that the general public was no longer satisfied with the status quo on public drinking. But because of a quirky ballot system, the voters elected a dry premier who had opposed the plebiscite in the first place. And Wacky Bennett had no interest in more public drinking.

NOTES 1 Albert Griffiths, "Report of Investigations and Inquiries in Connection with the Administration of the Liquor Control Board," 31 December 1929, 39, British Columbia Archives and Record Service (BCARS), GR1323, B2307. 2 Griffiths, "Report," 4, 19. LCB Chairman Davidson cancelled the licence of the Haysport hotel in 1930. See Kennedy to Sloan, 26 February 1934, BCARS, GR 1222, Box 1, File 10.

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3 Griffiths, "Report," 40 (1st quote), 17, 13, 37, 21 (2nd quote). 4 Ibid., 38. 5 British Columbia Legislative Assembly Sessional Clipping Book (LA CB), 25 March 1930; Vancouver Daily Province, 25 March 1930, p. 1; British Columbia, Statutes, 1930, c. 34 ("Government Liquor Act Amendment Act"); Ninth Annual Report of therr Liquor Control Board of British Columbia (LCB Ninth AR), (1930), M15. 6 LACB, 4 March 1930; LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 10 August 1934, 23 May 1930, BCARS, GR62; Thomson to Davidson, 31 March 1931, BCARS, GR770, Box 1, File 106-1. When the Liberals returned to power in 1933, Davidson was appointed chairman of the milk board. See LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 30 October 1934. 7 LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 6 February 1931, 28 March 1931; Province, 13 March 1931, p. 1; "Liquor Problems 1940s and 195Os," File 41a-9, Angus MacInnis Memorial Collection (AMC), Special Collections, University of British Columbia; British Columbia Liquor Control Board, Minutes of Meetings, (LCB Minutes), Vol. 11 (1932), 4272. 8 Martin Robin, The Rush For Spoils: The Company Province 1871-1933 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1972), 235, 301; Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, The Control and Sale of Liquor in Canada, 1938 (Ottawa, 1938), 13. 9 Vancouver City Archives (VCA), Clippings File 5317, 15 May 1932, 21 March 1933, 1 April 1933. 10 Barry Broadfoot, Ten Lost Years 1929-1939: Memories of Canadians Who Survived the Depression (Toronto: Doubleday, 1973; Paperjacks ed., 1975), 173-174. 11 Province, 21 December 1930, p. 1; LCB Minutes, Vol. 10 (1931), 4030, Vol. 11 (1932), 4271; Thomson to Kidd, 21 May 1932, BCARS, GR770, Box 4, File 174; LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 5 May 1932, 1 June 1932; LCB Minutes, Vol. 11 (1932), 4343. 12 Ian Parker, "Simon Fraser Tolmie: The Last Conservative Premier of British Columbia," in British Columbia: Historical Readings, eds. W. Peter Ward and Robert A.J. McDonald (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1981), 526527; Victoria Daily Times, 8 August 1932, pp. 6-7 (quote); Martin Robin, The Rush For Spoils, 239-242. 13 British Columbia, Statutes, 1933, c. 34 ("Government Liquor Act Amendment Act"); LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 4 April 1933, 7 April 1933, 14 April 1933; Province, 20 February 1933, p. 3, 27 December 1933, p. 10. Distillers had already lowered their wholesale prices. See LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 5 August 1932. 14 Robin, The Rush For Spoils, 257-264; Parker, "Tolmie," 529-531; Margaret Ormsby, "T. Dufferin Pattullo and the Little New Deal," in British Columbia Historical Readings, 533-534; CCF Executive Minutes and Caucus Minutes, 1935-1936, AMC, File 42-12; Province, 7 March 1935, pp. 12. Robin Fisher has written a comprehensive biography of Pattullo. See Dufl Pattutlo and British Columbia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,

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1991). 15 Martin Robin, Pillars of Profit: The Company Province 1934-1972 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973), 11-12, 17. 16 The Control and Sale of Liquor in Canada, 1939, 18; LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 17 January 1934; McGeer to Sloan, 15 May 1935, BCARS, GR1323, B2311; Province, 14 January 1936, pp. 1, 14. 17 Government Liquor Act Amendment Act, 1933; LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 14 April 1933; Walsh to Pooley, 14 March 1930, BCARS, GR1323, B2308. 18 LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 3 December 1933; LCB Minutes, Vol. 14 (1935), 5495-5496. 19 Wyllie to Kingsley, 16 December 1938, BCARS, GR770, File 199A; Kahn to Kennedy, 1 October 1938, ibid. (quote). 20 Province, 27 January 1931, p. 1, 21 September 1935, p. 32. 21 Nootka Packing to George Alexander, 6 September 1938, BCARS, GR770, Box 5, File 199; Edmonds CCF to Pattullo, 26 October 1936, GR1222, Box 7, File 1. The Kennedy-McIntyre correspondence is located in GR770, Box 2, File 126-2. 22 Province, 15 December 1928, p. 1; Memorandum Re Beer, 10 June 1931, BCARS, GR770, Box 2, File 109-1; Grimsdall to Pattullo, 19 February 1934, 23 March 1934, BCARS, GR1222, Box 1, File 11. 23 BCHA to Members, February 1934, BCARS, GR1222, Box 1, File 11 (1st quote); Manly to Sloan, 23 February 1935, GR1323, B2307 (2nd quote). 24 Chester to Sloan, 20 February 1934, BCARS, GR1323, B2308; Walsh to Chester, 20 March 1934, GR770, Box 5, File 199; BDU Secretary to Sloan, 21 February 1935, GR1323, B2307; LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 20 February 1934. 25 Province, 1 March 1935, p. 1; Elbert Paul to Legislature, 16 March 1934, BCARS, GR1222, Box 1, File 11. 26 Province, 15 February 1935, p. 1, 11 April 1935, p. 3, 29 October 1935, p. 36. 27 LCB Third AR (1924), N57-N58; Haywood to Chairman, 21 June 1948, Records Management Branch, (RMB), Attorney General's Files, Reel 619. 28 LCB Minutes, Vol. 19 (1940), 8746; Vancouver Sun, 8 June 1985, p. Dl. 29 Province, 23 January 1940, p. 2. 30 Walkem to Wismer, 10 January 1938, RMB, Reel 373. LACB, 28 October 1921, 29 October 1921; Robin, Pillars of Profit, 94 (quote). 31 BCHA Resolution, 31 October 1938, RMB, Reel 373; WCTU to Wismer, 25 November 1938, ibid.; Vancouver Restaurant Owners' Association letter, 7 December 1938, ibid.; Province, 29 November 1938, p. 4; BCHA to Wismer, 11 January 1940, RMB, Reel 373; McIntyre to Kennedy, 17 January 1940, ibid.; Telford to Wismer, 2 February 1940, ibid. 32 LCB 20th AR (1941), K7. 33 Kennedy to Maitland, 19 November 1945, RMB, Reel 371. 34 Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond and John English, Canada Since 1945: Power, Politics and Provincialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 74; LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26,lO May 1945; R.M. Burns, The Accept-

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35

36

37

38 39 40 41 42

43

44 45 46

47 48 49

50 51

able Mean: The Tax Rental Agreements, 1941-1 962 (Toronto: Canadian Tax Foundation, 1980), 26, 32 (quote), 268. R.E. Popham and Wolfgang Schmidt, Statistics of Alcohol Use and Alcoholism in Canada, 1871-1 956 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1958), 25; Bothwell, Canada Since 1945, 72; Revenue Table. Province, 14 May 1940, p. 18; polls: Province, 24 September 1942, p. 3, 23 December 1942, p. 11; see also, Jay Rubin, "The Wet War: American Liquor Control, 1941-1945," in Alcohol, Reform and Society, ed. Jack Blocker (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), 235-258. Rubin, "The Wet War," 246-247; Province, 27 May 1943, p. 8; Michael Bliss, Northern Enterprise: Five Centuries of Canadian Business (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1987), 453; Shirley Woods, The Molson Saga, 1763-1983 (Scarborough, Ont.: Avon Books, 1984), 271. Province, 24 September 1942, p. 3, 17 December 1942, p. 8; Rubin, "The Wet War," 241; WCTU to Maitland, 16 June 1942, RMB, Reel 371. Province, 17 December 1942, p. 8, 23 February 1943, p. 15. Province, 17 December 1942, pp. 1-2,4; McIntyre to King, 21 March 1943, BCARS, GR770, Box 2, File 126-1. Province, 17 December 1942, p. 2, 23 February 1943, p. 15; British Columbia, Statutes, 1944, c. 22 ("Liquor Revenues Agreement Actn). Wyllie to Belton, 23 February 1943, BCARS, GR770, Box 4, File 162; LCB Minutes, Vol. 21 (1942), 9520; Province, 2 March 1942, p. 24; Secretary to Vendors, 12 March 1942, RMB, Reel 373. "Various Steps Taken-Restrictions on Sale of Liquor," BCARS, GR770, Box 4, File 162; LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 28 October 1943; LCB Minutes, Vol. 22 (1943), 102, 125-127, 171-172; Province, 4 December 1943, p. 5. LCB 20th A R (1941), K37, 23rd A R (1944), P39; Province, 5 April 1943, p. 2. Province, 20 March 1943, p. 2, 12 May 1945, p. 2; Kennedy to Maitland, 19 March 1945, RMB, Reel 371. BCHA to Legislature, 1939, RMB, Reel 371; Vancouver Breweries to Wismer, 21 September 1939, RMB, Reel 372; Wyllie to Attorney General, 19 October 1939, ibid.; BCHA to McGugan, 5 March 1952, RMB, Reel 448; UComplaintletters to the LCB," BCARS, GR770, Box 4, File 162-3; BCHA to Members, 12 April 1944, GR770, Box 5, File 199; Kennedy to Maitland, 14 April 1944, ibid.; Province, 6 April 1946, p. 1. BCHA to Kennedy, 3 October 1942, BCARS, GR770, Box 5, File 199. "Various Steps Taken," BCARS, GR770, Box 4, File 162. Secretary to Davidson, 7 August 1930, BCARS, GR770, Box 2, File 109; Kahn to Kennedy, 22 February 1937, GR770, Box 5, File 199; Rae to McNeill, 16 September 1939, GR770, Box 5, File 199B; Williams to Kahn, 7 March 1939, ibid. (quotes). Kennedy to Wismer, 27 January 1938, BCARS, GR770, Box 5, File 199B; Khan to Senior, 6 October 1939, ibid. (quotes). Kennedy to Angelus Hotel, 13 January 1941, BCARS, GR770, Box 5, File 199B (quotes); Kennedy to Williams, 15 January 1941, ibid.

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52 Kahn t o Kennedy, 17 April 1942, BCARS, GR770, Box 5, File 199A; Wyllie to Beer Licensees, 23 April 1942, ibid.; Kennedy to Blackwell, 13 December 1944, GR770, Box 5, File 199B. 53 Cleveland to Kennedy, 9 December 1942, GR770, Box 5, File 199A. 54 V . D . Infections Allegedly Acquired From Persons Met In Beer Parlors," BCARS, GR770, Box 5, File 199B; Vancouver News Herald, 15 October 1942; Kennedy to Saxton, GR770, Box 5, File 199B (quote). 55 WCTU to Maitland, 28 February 1945, RMB, Reel 371; Kennedy to Blackwell, 13 December 1944, BCARS, GR770, Box 5, File 199B. 56 Sun, 3 December 1963, p. 1, 16 June 1984, p. A16; Province, 22 April 1942, p. 4. 57 James Gray, Bacchanalia Revisited: Western Canada's Boozy Skid to Social Disaster (Saskatoon, Sask.: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1982), 76, 80, 84. 58 Province, 10 December 1948, p. 1; Popham and Schmidt, Statistics of Alcohol Use and Alcoholism in Canada, 1871-1956,23-24; LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 29 June 1948; Gallup Poll, 1957[?], RMB, Reel 449. 59 LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 6 December 1946, 29 March 1947, 9 October 1947; Province, 7 February 1949, p. 7 (petition), 15 July 1949, p. 36 (poll); Norman Clark, The Dry Years: Prohibition and Social Change in Washington (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965), 245-246; Norbert Macdonald, "Population Growth and Change in Seattle and Vancouver, 1880-1960," Pacific Historical Review 39 (August 1970): 315-317. 60 Province, 20 July 1945, p. 3 (quote), 21 July, 1945, p. 4; Rev. A.E. Cooke, "Bishop Sexton and the Liquor Laws," p. 12 (quote), BCARS GR770, Box 2, File 126-1. 61 Province, 25 February 1947, p. 8, 29 February 1952, p. 38; LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 26 February 1949; CRA to Wismer, 14 February 1947, RMB, Reel 371; Cabaret Owners to Government, 24 April 1948, RMB, Reel 371; LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 7 October 1948, 15 October 1948 (ads); Province, 20 November 1948, p. 15 (Klenman); "There's Always Somebody Who Wants the Liquor Law Changed," B.C. Cabaret Owners' Association pamphlet, 1949, RMB, Reel 371. 62 Kennedy to McKee, 20 December 1947, RMB, Reel 372; Harman to Attorney General, 29 October 1951, ibid.; Warburton to Wismer, 9 February 1949, RMB, Reel 371; Province, 25 January 1949, p. 2. 63 Waters to Wismer, 2 February 1949, p. 9, RMB, Reel 371. 64 Victoria Hotels Association to Wismer, 19 December 1946, RMB, Reel 371 (quote); Province, 27 March 1951, p. 14. 65 Sun, 27 April 1951; BCHA to McGugan, 5 March 1952, RMB, Reel 448. 66 Mills to Wismer, 8 March 1950, RMB, Reel 371 (quotes); LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 15 January 1947. 67 LCB Scrapbooks, 4 March 1946 (1st quote), 22 February 1947; Munro to Wismer, 10 April 1950, RMB, Reel 372; Province, 8 February 1946, p. 1, 28 February 1951, p. 1; Small to Wismer, 15 March 1950, RMB, Reel 372 (2nd quote).

110 / Demon Rum or Easy Money 68 Province, 9 October 1945, p. 8 (Winch), 16 June 1942, p. 9 (Baptist), 27 May 1943, p. 8 (Webster); Robin, Pillars of Profit, 182-183. 69 Province, 28 February 1947, p. 34 (quote); LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26, 5 March 1947; AMC, File 47-8. 70 AMC, File 47-12; Dorothy Steeves, The Compassionate Rebel: Ernest Winch and the Growth of Socialism in Western Canada (North Vancouver: J. J. Douglas, 1960), 8; Province, 21 February 1946, p. 21, 7 April 1948, p. 15, 17 March 1949, p. 9. 71 Kennedy to Wismer, 17 February 1947, RMB, Reel 371; LCB Minutes, Vol. 26 (1947), 1977, 2088-2102; Robin, Pillars of Profit, 94; Wismer to Veterans Brewery Holding Company, 22 February 1947, RMB, Reel 372. 72 Province, 29 March 1947, p. 1. 73 LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 26,15 February 1947 (Bennett and Morrow); Province, 1 March 1947, p. 7; Colonist, 2 March 1947. 74 Province, 7 March 1951, pp. 1, 3, 30 March 1951, p. 5; Robin, Rush For Spoils, 94-96. 75 Robin, Pillars of Profit, 117-122; David Mitchell, W.A. C. Bennett and the Rise of British Columbia (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1983), 123-127. 76 Blair Fraser, "B.C.'s Coalition Commits Suicide," Maclean's, 15 February 1952, 5 (quote), 60; Robin, Pillars of Profit, 66-67, 112. 77 Reginald Hose, Prohibition or Control?: Canada's Experience with the Liquor Problem, 1921-1927 (Longmans, Green and Co., 1928), 28; LCB 3rd A R (1924), N10; LCB 4th A R (1925), J7; LCB 6th AR (1927), 0 9 ; LCB 7th AR (1928), S6; Growers' Wine to Kennedy, 11 March 1939, RMB, Reel 373; John Schreiner, The World of Canadian Wine (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1984; paperback ed. 1985), 82. 78 LCB 11th AR (1932), N7; LCB 12th AR (1933), I?; LCB 13th AR (1934), J7; Mitchell, Bennett, 44-45; Sun, 12 January 1984; I