Vancouver Sun columnist Jack Scott had a front door seat to what he dubbed a tragic farce
Vancouver Sun columnist Jack Scott hated people getting drunk in public.
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“At monotonously regular intervals about over a period of 10 years, I have been writing about the imbecilic, degrading, corrupting spectacle of drinking in our town,” he wrote on Jan. 18, 1949.
But he was no fan of provincial liquor laws, which didn’t allow the masses to drink hard liquor or wine in bars or restaurants from Prohibition until the introduction of cocktail lounges in 1954.
This resulted in “bottle clubs,” where patrons would bring their own bottles of booze and hide them under their table. They’d order glasses and a Coke or ginger ale and mix their own drinks.
Everybody knew what was going on, but from time to time, there would be a push to bust the bottle clubs. On Jan. 14, 1949, Scott watched a raid while having dinner in Chinatown.
He called it a “tragic farce.”
“In a booth across from us were two young married couples having a night out,” he wrote.
“Before ordering their meal, they asked the waiter to bring them four glasses and some mixer. Then one of the men took a bottle of rye from his coat pocket, surreptitiously and with a quick, characteristic glance over his shoulder, poured four drinks.
“His actions were those of a criminal. The drinks were poured furtively and swiftly below the rim of the table and the bottle was quickly put on the floor. Yet these four were obviously nice, normal, middle-class people whom the majesty of the law was providing with a built-in guilt complex.”
Then the dry squad showed up.
“One of the waiters spotted the entry of three detectives into the café,” wrote Scott. “He sprinted to the table across from ours and sounded the warning. One of the men downed his glass, but the others put their drinks on the floor under the table.”
The three police detectives in the raid “were the object of scorn and hilarity.”
“Diners nudged each other and childish delight and ridicule,” he wrote. “The waiters giggled and hid their grins with a hand.”
One of the detectives spotted the bottle of rye on the floor underneath the young couples’ table.
“He lifted it before their eyes and asked if it belonged to any of those present. With bland and smiling faces the four declined to admit ownership. That bottle? Why — never saw it before in my life!”
The dry squad left and as the doors closed behind them “there was a wave of laughter, a sound that was a thumb to the nose of authority and the dignity of the law.”
The couple across from Scott retrieved their glasses from under the table and one man raised his glass in a “mock toast,” laughing “here’s to crime.”
The irony in all this was that Prohibition in B.C. was initially defeated in a referendum in 1916-17.
Prohibitionists were confident after a vote was held in the province on Sept. 14, 1916, when the vote was 36,392 for Prohibition, 27,217 against.
But that didn’t include the vote of thousands of B.C. soldiers fighting in the First World War overseas. On March 29, 1917, the Province reported that 8,505 soldier votes had been cast, and they were solidly anti-Prohibition — “7,456 were ‘wet,’ 832 ‘dry’ and 217 spoiled.”
With the soldier votes were added to the 1916 vote, Prohibition was defeated by 82 votes.
But the prohibitionists argued the “debauched soldiers vote” had been corrupted by the “liquor interests,” and demanded then B.C. premier Harlan Brewster launch an investigation.
A subsequent Royal Commission 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.”
The soldiers who could not be traced may have been killed or “missing in action.” Thousands of Canadian soldiers’ bodies were never found.
The Royal Commission allowed only 3,796 votes to count out of the 8,505 that soldiers cast. As a result, the prohibitionists were victorious, and Prohibition began in B.C. on Oct. 1, 1917.
Many people were not happy, and another referendum was held Oct. 20, 1920. Prohibition was soundly defeated, 76,165 to 45,478.
