In prohibition drive B.C. goes wet

Wednesday, 21 October 2009 00:00

October 21, 1920. The dry side is "confident of easy victories" in pending prohibition plebiscites in five provinces, the Montreal Star predicts.

Most provinces already have prohibition laws. But there is a loophole that allows booze to flow like a river. People in nominally dry provinces can import booze from wet areas. Thus in 1919, some five million Canadians consumed 4.8 million gallons of distilled liquor, 35 million gallons of beer, and undisclosed amounts of wine and cider, according to Statistic Canada (Historical Statistics of Canada, 1983). Now voters were asked to make prohibition work, by banning imported booze.

"Manitoba is due to become an awfully arid area," said the Star. In Alberta, "The prohibitionists claim they will capture at least 75 percent of the total vote," and Premier Charles Stewart has promised to make the province "bone dry." From the Great Lakes to the Pacific, predicted the Star, the West "will be so dry that the Sashara will appear as one big oasis in comparison."

Not quite. The following week, voters in Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta voted to shut down booze imports and make their provinces bone dry. British Columbia voters faced a somewhat different question: whether to maintain the province's three-year-old prohibition Act, or repeal it in favour of government-controlled liquor sales. They voted to repeal prohibition by a "huge majority," the Star reported the following week. In Vancouver, the wets won by 23,942 to 13,766 votes. It was "The last thing either side looked for."