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Wolfville went through pains to lose dry status.

Tragedy was averted, but disaster struck in Wolfville this week.

It appears the Valley’s prettiest town – apologies to Annapolis Royal – could be a tad thirsty this weekend.

When the ceiling collapsed at the Wolfville liquor store, news outlets rushed to the scene. Nothing draws reporters faster than a vulnerable liquor store. There were no reports of looting.

Now it appears Wolfvillains (that can’t be right) will be forced to travel all the way to New Minas – eight maybe nine kilometres – for their long Canada Day weekend booze. Maybe it was tragic.

There is no news here, or on the NSLC website, concerning holiday store hours. As of Tuesday the liquor commission’s website was helpfully alerting customers that stores will be open May 22, Victoria Day. We are not amused.

The chance has presented itself for the NSLC to operate its Wolfville outlet nostalgically, in celebration of its storied past and appropriate to this weekend’s commemoration of Canada’s 150 years of evolving nationhood. Wolfville’s was one of the last stores in Nova Scotia to resist customer self-service.

Well into the 1970s, the liquor commission nearest Acadia University was old-style wicket, wait and worry if the customer was south of legal age – 21 and later 19.

Behind a tiny wicket, stood a man who appeared able to find the sin in your very soul. Sternly and silently he stared into your fear-or-tear-filled eyes while a modest order was timidly placed. Few had the courage to request more than a single jar, lest the clerk’s bushy eyebrows were raised and the customer sensed the day of judgment was upon him.

No doubt the Baptist bona fides of each of the employees were carefully checked during the hiring process. Wolfville was then, and may be still, the heart of Nova Scotia’s Bible Belt, although parts of Presbyterian Pictou County could give it a run in the devotionally dour department.

Back then, Acadia students hid their potent purchases as they trod the hill back to their booze-banned dorms. Even on warm fall days, heavy bulging coats suggested a case of Keith’s disguised as a portly paunch under unseasonable attire.

These were the dying days of Nova Scotia’s near-prohibition by restriction. Liquor stores were open seven hours a day, six days a week. Inconveniently, the hours were 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., forcing regimented workers to sneak away and party-preparing collegians to make a last minute dash before the doors to drink locked.

Booming bootlegger businesses thrived after hours and on Sundays when church and state agreed that the padlocks remain firmly in place on the government-owned, necessary-evil. Into the 1970s, doctors wrote prescriptions for medicinal alcohol to provide, not price relief, but perfidy to the purchase.

But as the discreet drinking of the Stanfield-Smith era gave way to the blatantly boozy Regan regime, the restrictive liquor regulations slowly relaxed.

Still it took three decades for the province to open the flood gates on Sunday, and even then the spin was not customer convenience but the greater public good.

In 2007, when Rodney MacDonald’s government threw off the last vestiges of Christian control of liquor sales, the news release noted: “The incremental profit generated by this initiative will be transferred to the government for expenditures in areas such as health care, education and roads.” Demon drink was recognized as part of the solution to the province’s pecuniary problem.

In keeping with sesquicentennial fervour, the liquor commission is presented with a golden opportunity to celebrate the province’s puritanical past, not just in Wolfville, but across Nova Scotia. Close the stores and agency outlets at five on Friday, noon on Saturday, not to reopen until 10 a.m. Tuesday.

With any luck at all, street brawls, rioting and looting will result, reminiscent of such great moments in Canadian history as the VE riots in Halifax. Those too were caused by a dearth of drink. History comes truly alive. Top that, CBC.

Journalist and writer Jim Vibert has worked as a communications adviser to five Nova Scotia governments. He is a columnist with SaltWire Network.