THE MASSES REJECT PROHIBITION
Ninety-eight years ago, British Columbians rejected prohibition.
“Moderates Sweep Province; City and Country Alike Ask For Government Control,” said the front-page headline in the Vancouver World on Oct. 21, 1920. “Almost Two to One Majority (Against) Prohibition Act Recorded.”
The vote was recorded in a referendum on alcohol, four years after a previous referendum had approved prohibition, albeit in a controversial vote.
In 1920, there was no controversy — 76,165 people voted “wet,” while 45,478 voted to keep B.C. dry.
The anti-alcohol forces were shocked.
“Unexpected as was this development in many quarters, still more unexpected was the universality of the demand for a change of law,” the World reported.
“It had been thought that the cities might give small majorities for government sale, but (even) the Moderationists themselves expected no such overturn of the vote four years ago as the majorities in Vancouver and Victoria showed.
“Prohibitionists hoped that if their worst fears in the cities were realized sufficiently large majorities would be given in favour of the act in the rural districts to offset losses. (But) the event proved that urban and rural British Columbia alike wanted something other than the present prohibition act.”
In the city of Vancouver, the vote was 23,343 to end prohibition, 13,791 to keep it. Citizens voted for repeal in 10 of 12 polls; the only polls in favour of prohibition were on the west side, at General Gordon and King Edward schools.
South Vancouver was a separate municipality at the time, and voted 5,156 to 2,988 to end prohibition. Voters in New Westminster, North Vancouver and West Vancouver also voted to allow booze, as did voters in Victoria, Nanaimo, Fernie, Kamloops, Kelowna, and Prince Rupert.
Oddly one of the few places to vote in favour of prohibition was Nelson, a hotbed of B.C.’s pot industry today. In 1920, 914 people in Nelson voted to keep prohibition, 891 voted to rescind it. Voters in Richmond and Penticton also narrowly voted for prohibition.
B.C. Premier John Oliver said he was “very much surprised at the result of the vote — I had anticipated a majority for prohibition.”
Oliver shouldn’t have been all that surprised — prohibition was probably defeated in the 1916 vote, and never should have been implemented in the first place.
The 1916 results were quite confusing. When the referendum was held on Sept. 14, 1916, the vote was 36,392 for prohibition, 27,217 against. But that was without the vote of thousands of B.C. soldiers who were in Europe fighting the First World War. The soldiers voted solidly in favour of alcohol, so much so that when their votes were tallied by the end of March, 1917, prohibition had lost by 822 votes.
There may have been some hanky-panky involved, however. According to Albert Herbert’s 1969 thesis, Prohibition in British Columbia, a Royal Commission found “irregularities in voting procedure.”
It was alleged that in some cases, “free beer had been used as an inducement to get soldiers to go and vote.” In other cases “soldiers had voted as many as four times,” and in others, “ballots had to be disqualified because the names of soldiers on the ballot envelopes could not be traced.”
In the end, the Royal Commission allowed only 3,796 votes to count out of the 8,500 that soldiers cast, and the prohibitionists were victorious. Prohibition began in B.C. on Oct. 1, 1917. (By contrast, prohibition in the United States didn’t begin until Jan. 29, 1919, and lasted until Dec. 5, 1933.)
When the masses voted to allow alcohol again in 1920, the government was still leery of drinking. So it instituted rules stating tipplers could only buy booze at government liquor stores or in private clubs — there were no public bars or saloons like there were pre-1916.
Another referendum in 1924 approved the sale of beer in bars, and beer parlours finally reopened on March 21, 1925. But you still couldn’t serve wine or hard liquor in public, which led to rise of “bottle clubs” where people would sneak booze in and hide it under the table. There were also a lot of speakeasies in people’s homes, particularly in downtown Vancouver.
The government finally allowed the sale of hard liquor in public when it legalized cocktail lounges on April 22, 1954. But the rules were so stringent many cabarets continued to act as bottle clubs into the late 1960s.