A prohibition policeman is amusing pistol target

Monday, 11 January 2010 00:00

January 11, 1887. "Shooting Constables a Favorite Amusement" at the village of Chesley, Ontario, proclaims a sub-headline in the Toronto Empire.

The trouble stemmed back to 1887 and the Canada Temperance Act. Better known as the Scott Act for R.W. Scott, the sponsor of the legislation in Parliament, the Act provided that one quarter of the electors in any town or county could demand a plebiscite for a local option, a bylaw that would prohibit the sale—but not the production—of alcoholic beverages.

Temperance advocates campaigned furiously for plebiscites, approval by voters, and enforcement. Those who drank, made or sold drinks resisted just as furiously.

"You cannot extinguish by legislation the demand for drink," intoned Toronto The Week magazine. The results, it said, would be to increase intemperance, drive drinkers to illegal blind pigs that sell "the worst kind" of liquor, and demoralize the citizens. The results also included a ruckus over great difficulty in enforcing local options.

Thus when Pat Heffernan, a special Bruce County constable charged with enforcing the option, entered the village of Chesley "he was ordered to leave by J. W. Henry, a livery stable keeper," the Empire reported.
Heffernan paid no attention to the order. "Henry followed him about for some time and finally drew a pistol. He fired at Heffernan at close quarters, but missed. The constable was unarmed, but being an active and courageous man, he instantly jumped on Henry and downed him."

Henry was handcuffed and jailed at nearby Walkerton. But in Chesley, as elsewhere, the Scott Act "has not stopped the sale of liquor to the slightest extent," according to the Empire. "Hotel keepers who are able to pay fines are being fined right along, but those who can't pay fines are not interfered with."

Newly elected Bruce County council members were so supportive of a new plebiscite to repeal the local ban that they reportedly gave evidence of that support by a "liberal patronage" of the illegal hotel bars.
Elsewhere, there were other tricks to keep the bars open. At Uxbridge, "The latest plan is to lease the bar to a stranger who, when convicted, skips out before the fine is paid" (Empire January 11).

At Toronto, the local option plebiscite "saw hundreds of rowdy working men challenging prohibitionist voters who approached the polling platform," author Craig Heron writes in Brooze: A Distilled History (Toronto, 2003). "The measure was defeated, and ten thousand people joined a torchlight parade to celebrate."

Eighty local option plebiscites were held between 1879 and 1898, of which only 29 received voter approval. Voters later repealed most of these.

The Week seems to have been right: "You cannot by legislation extinguish the demand for drink."