BOTEL BEER PARLODRS: REGULATING PUBLIC DRINKING AND
DECENCY IN VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBTA, 1925-1954
Robert Allan Campbell M.A., University of British Columbia, 1978
THESIS SUBMZTTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in the Department of History
m~obertA. Campbell 1998 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY September 1998
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This dissertation examines the regulation of licensed public drinking in Vancouver, British Columbia between 1925 and 1954. It is based on a variety of archiva1 sources including diverse state documents (especially those of the
Liquor Control Board), union records, and tha papers of temperance and refonn groups. In methodological terms, the dissertation blends material and discursive approaches to social history.
Little historical work has been done in Canada on public
ârinking after prohibition. With the return of drinking in
British Columbia, former hotel saloons were transformed into hotel beer parlours. The first ones opened in Vancouver in
1925, ana only in 1954 àid tne government allow new venues of public drinking. Catering ta a working-class clientele, beer parlours regulated class, gender and sexuality, and race. Yet rather than an exarnple of social control, parlour regulation is better understood as moral regulation.
Many scholars have become disenchanted with social control. It implies a linear process that emphasizes the actions of the state, allied elites, and reactive resistance iv to them. Social historians seeking more flexible analytical tools have adopted a moral regulation approach. Moral regulation refers to a process of normalization, the attempt to render natural and obvious what is actually constructed and contested. From this perspective regulation involves many actors, including those being regulated.
mile beer parlour regulation certainly embraced coercion and resistance, it went beyond them. Parlour regulation was both informed by and produced particular kinds of knowledge about decency and public drinking. Contests over knowledge partly explain why regulation changed in the 1950s, and middle-class cocktail lounges emerged as the site of decent drinking. Moreover, the state also produced knowledge, and that, along with more coercive techniques, helped maintain its influential role in regulation. One does not return ta school at mid-career and in middle-age without some trepidation. Many people helped to make the transition easier and the experience rewarding. ~t
Simon Fraser University 1 want to thank Allen Seager for originally opening the door to me. Ian Dyck, Mark Leier, and
Joy Parr stretched my mind and made me realize how, in the best sense of the word, ignorant 1 was. My senior supervisor,
Tina Loo, has impeccable professional credentials, but she also knows how to combine encouragement, fimess, and humour.
My colleagues at Capilano College were al1 supportive, but I particularly want to thank Towser Jones. She picked up the pieces that 1 dropped and rarely asked when I was going to return. 1 also want to acknowledge the leaves, both paid and unpaid, that the college granted me.
Yet the biggest debts 1 owe are to my wife, Janet
Souther. She paid the bills while I read books. More important, though, she never doubted the worthiness of my undertaking nor my ability to complete it. Sometimes 1 had trouble with both, and 1 relied on her a great deal. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ...... cc...... v
Table Contents.
One: Building Bridges: hiblic Drinking, Regulation, and the Social History of Alcohol.., ...... -O .-.** .--1
Two: Working Drinkers and Drinking Workers: Class and Regulation ...... -----...F--.-.*-...-...... 46
Three: Ladies and Escorts: Regulating Gender and Sexuality ...... --.9S
Four: Appearance and Performance: Constructing and Regulating Race*...... 147
Five: Reconfiguring Decency: The Politics of Regulation ...... -*189
Six: Managing the Marginal: Beer Parleurs, the State, and Regulation ...... -...... -...... -....227 Chapter One
Building Bridges: Public Drinking, Regulation, and the Social History of Alcohol
At ten cents a glass, the beer in a Vancouver parlour
was reasonably priced. That glasç, however, was tied to a
variety of regulations designed to shape the behaviour and
attitudes of those who sat and drank. Predictably, and with mixed results, working-class patrons attempted to avoid or alter the regulations. Yet much of the power of regulation went beyond rules and resistance, for in its web were enrneshed not only the regulated but also the regulators, a group that included more than çtate officiais. Parlour workers and operators were important because they both enforced and endured regulation.
This dissertation analyzes the regulation of licensed public drinking in Vancouver through an examination of hotel beer parleurs, Beverage alcohol in hotel saloons had been outlawed during prohibition. Licensed public àrinking returned ta British Columbia in 1925 in the form of hotel beer parlotxrs, They held sway until 1954 when a new
Government Liquor Act provided for additional venues of 2 public drinking, rnost notably cocktail lounges. I argue that parlour regulation is better understood as moral regulation rather than as an example of social control. Let me briefly explain why.
First, state officiais did attempt to impose what 1 cal1 the discourse of decency on working-class drinkers. Patrons were expected to sit quietly at tables and drink only nioderate amounts of beer, and patrons often resisted those expectations. Yet the complexity of class relations inside the parlours challenges simple notions of regulation as the imposition of state-directed control. Parlour workers and operators were charged with much of regulatory enforcement, and they had their own interests and priorities. Sometimes those interests dovetailed with those of state; often they diverged. Patrons, too, had diverse ideas of what constituted decent behaviour. From the staters point-of-view the results of regulation were mixed, uneven, and even contraàictory.
Moreover, if we look closely at parlour regulation, much more than class and beer were at wark. The decent parlour was also one in which patrons, workers, and operators adhered to dominant norms about gender, sexuality, and race. Parlour decency was both informed by these norms and attempted to re- inscribe them. Yet the reinscription of the values of the dominant needs to be seen more broadly than coercion conveys.
While parlour regulation certainly embraced coercion and resistance, it went beyond them. Beer parlour regulation was both infomed by and produced particular kinds of knowledge about public drinking. Here "knowledgeM does not refer to given information or truth, but to a contested process of ordering reality. The discourse of decency was infoned by and reinforced knowledge about class, gender, sexuality, and race. Yet this knowledge of public drinking is also important for two other reasons. First, contests over knowledge partly explain why the public àrinking regulation changed in the
1950s and the cocktail lounges emerged as the site of decent drinking. Second, the state also produced knowledge, and that knowledge, along with more coercive techniques, helped maintain the staters influential role in regulation. *******
For the few historias interested in the influence of alcohol in Canadian history, temperance and related issues rernain the alluring themes, Little historical work has been done in Canada on public drinking in general and public àrinking after prohibition in particu1ar.l In oz
om Pro ... 1 intentionally moved beyond the dry years. As the first province in English Canada to adopt government control of liquor sales. British Columbia initiated a new direction in alcohol regulation after a brief experience with prohibition between 1917 and 1921. mon analyzed 'control" from a variety of perspectives, including public drinking, but it did not examine beer parlours comprehensively.2 My first attempt at a more systematic analysis of beer parlours was "Ladies and Escorts: Gender
'Despite the title of Cheryl Krasnick Warshls (ed.) collection, Drink in C-stoW Essava (Montreal and Kingston: McGiii-Queen1s University Press, 1993), the majority of the essays are oriented to temperance subjectç, The same is true, of course. of Jan Noelrs award-winning ades Refore Co~fewation (Toronto: üTP, 1995). As for Sharon Cook's study of the Ontario WCTU, it is as much a work on evangelicalism as temperance. See Sharon Anne Cook, . . U Wows C-t iaTewrmce Union, m. md Refo O, 1874 -1930 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queenfs University Press, 1995) a
[Ottawa: Les Publications Histoire social/ Social History, Inc, 1997), a collection edited by Jack SI Blocker Jr. and Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, is more diverse, Yet in the three articles devoted to Canada, temperance is an important theme in two of them,
2(0ttawa: Carleton University Press, 1991). Segregation and Public Policy in British Columbia Beer
Parlours, 19254945,' some of which has been incorporated
into Chapter Three,3
My dissertation fits best within the social history of
alcohol. This work is being written by an eclectic group of
historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists
whose geographical interests nearly span the globe. According
to Jack Blocker, "the task of the historian of alcohol, most
generally stated, is to describe and explain historical
patterns of beverage alcohol use and the social response to
drinking." He adds that drinking pxovides a window to view
other aspects of society: economic patterns, gender roles,
and cultural values,
As Blocker notes, the obvious starting point for assessing alcohol use is drinking itself. Not surprisingly, source material for this usually unrernarkable, often daily activity, is difficult to corne by, especially for drinking
3BC Stiidi es 105-106 (Spring/Sumrner 1995) : 119-138. Many years aoo I wrote a short, popular piece on beer parlorirç. See Robert A. Campbell, "Sit Dom, Shut Up and Crink Yom Beer, Ir in JVorkino T-~anouver 18 FI6 - 198 6 , cd. Working Lives Collective (Vancouver: New Star Books, 19851, 147,
QJack Blocker, Introduction, " Hj stoire soc5 ale/~ocial storv 27 (November 1994) : 226 (quote), 233. that occuned beyond the public gaze. In addition, much of the record on drinking has been generated by those who sought to alter, control, or eliminate the drinking patterns of others. We probably know more about working-class drinking habits than those of elites, in part because of the interests of social historians, but also because working-class drinking tended to be a more public activity and an object of reform.5
Since the 1970s the historical literature on public drinking has expanded considerably. We now have studies from a number of geographical areas, which has reduced the previous emphasis on the United States and Great Britain.
Generalizations about such diverse work are necessarily glib, but much of the essence, especially for nineteenth century
North America, can be captured by the main title of Jon
Kingsdale's 1973 article, The 'Poor Man's Club.'" Most scholars have argued that the pub or saloon was an important part of working-class culture as a centre of male
%usanna Barrows and Robin Room, introduction,^ in d Rei stoa, ed. Susanna Bmows and Robin Room (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 7-8; Blocker, l~Introduction,n228-229; Peter Pope, "Fish into Wine: The Historical Anthropology of Demand for Alcohol in Seventeenth-Century Newfo~ndland,~fistnire tory 27 (November 1994) : 269-271. sociability. In addition to good cheer, alcohol, and food, licensed establishments offered entertainment, perhaps accommodation, and such basics as heat and toilets. Depending on time and place the saloon served as polling place, employment office, and locus of popular politics.6
Three points need to be made about these broad brush strokes. First, few works systematical1.y examine public drinking after prohibition. The dominant view in the Werican literature is that prohibition eventually killed the saloon.
It also seems to have killed much interest on the part of historians in public drinking after prohibition. For Canada this neglect is a real oversight as former hotel saloons were transformed into hotel beer parleurs. The parlour was a reaction to both prohibition and the saloon, and as such
6Jon Kingsdale , The ' Poor Man ' s Club : Social Funct ions of the Drban Working-Class Saloon," nmerican 0- 25 (October 1973): 472-89. Two Canadian works that fit well with Kingsdale are Peter DeLottinville, Voe Beef of Montreal:
Working Class Culture and the Tavern, 1869-1889,g1 7 p~ 8 and 9 (Autumn/Spring, 1981-1982): 9-40 and Howard Angus Christie, The Function of the Tavern in Toronto 1834-1875 With Special Reference to Sportm (M-P-E.thesis, University of Windsor, 1973 . bears investigation for what it reveals about the accommodation of pro- and anti-drinking sentiments.'
Second, Kingsdalets title obviously portrays the saloon as a gendered institution: the poor m8ciclub. Most studies emphasize public drinking as a centre of male sociability. AS
Thomas Brennan has noted for eighteenth centuzy Parisian taverns, sociability meant far more than a desire to associate. Sociability assumed certain values, and
"conviviality imposed certain obligations of consumption and expenditure." These obligations often brought men into conflict with other societal values, particularly the responsibilities of home and work. Roy Rosenzweig has argued that Worcester Massachusetts saloons were a refuge from both home and werk in an era of increasing industrial discipline.
The main attraction was not drink but the activities of male companionship: singing, joking, storytelling. At the same time one of the most important bonds of cornpanionship was treating or buying a round of drinks. Madelon Powers has
-- -- - 'Sec James H. Gray, Pnaze: The mact of W~&&J on t& e Wes (Toronto: Macmillan, 1972) , 52-68, 205-210 and *. Gray, Bacckianalia RF~vM~+&: Wps+e3;11-'~ R~XVSkid tq tex [Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1982), chap. three and four. stressed that treating was also at the core of the code of
reciprocity between customers and saloon keepers. A treat was
not a one-way favour but an expression of mutuality. While
bartenders were often forbidden to drink on the job, the code
obliged them to accept a treat or an equivalent, such as a
cigar. Like others, Powers also emphasizes that saloon
culture was "primarily a masculine domain." Except for prostitutes, women were usually not welcome in the bars, and women who entered the male domain were treated as such.8
In her study of contemporary and Victorian pubs, Valerie
Hey argued that pubs reinforced patriarchy through a cult of
. 8Thomas Brenn=, -a ad Po* Cultlre in tee- - CF! (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 14; Roy Rosenzweig, -ht Hous For Wh% We UYF! fnduçrr Citv,- 1870 - 1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 40-59; Madelon Powers, The 'Poor Man's Friend' : Saloonkeepers, Workerç, and the Code of Reciprocity in US. Barrooms, 1870-1920," - Ciass Ustor~45 (Spring 1994) : 3 (quote) -5; see also Madelon Powers, "Decay from Within: The Inevitable Doom of the American Saloon," in -, . . ed. Barrows and Room, 114-115; Iowerth Prothero, ce. 1830- 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19971, 285-6; W. Scott Haine, . . . .. rld of the PanslmJafe: Soc~&ihtyAmma the French (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996)- Peter DeLottinville reters to Joe Beefls Canteen in Montreal as a Wale bastion,1falthough his sources make sorne references to prostitution. See "Joe Beef of Montreal,l1 endnote 24 (quote) and 2. heterosexual masculinity. Men defined pub space as both
public and out of bounds to women. Thus gender dominance was
partly expressed by naming space. Yet Hey added that male pub
culture was based on bath male power and vulnerability. Male
vulnerability was the result of the emotional dependence "on
a desired yet despised gender." Dominance and desire were
closely linked to sexuality. Men atternpted to control female
sexuality by defining women as deviant if they were in male
space. These comments and the work of other public drinking
historians reinforce ideas of separate spheres, with the
public world of drink belonging to men. Fernale entry was
largely restricted to marginalized women.9
------gValerie Hey, -y and&(London: Tavistock, 19861, 69 (quotel-70; see also, Cheryl Krasnick
Waxsh, tt Oh, Lord, pour a cordial in her wounded heart ' : The Drinking Woman in Victorian and Edwardian Canada," in Bxink canada:storical Esçav~,ed. Cheryl Krasnick Warsh (Montreal and Kingston: McGiil-Queenfs University Press, 19931, 85; Barbara C. Leigh, "A thing so fallen, and so vile: images of drinking and sexuality in women," Contemgor~ probIem 22 (Fa11 1995) : 415-434; J. Park, ItOnly ' those womenl: women and the control of alcohol in New Zealandrn 17 (1990): 221-50; Sahe Ahîstrom, "Cultural differences in wornenls drinking," Conteworu Dnlg probu 22 (Fa11 1995) : 393-414-
In a manner similar to Hey, Dimitra Gefou-Madianou has argued that male public drinking in contemporary Euro-Mediterranean societies represents an anti-domestic discourse, The exclusion of women reinforces female subordination and obscures male dependence on women. Public drinking 11
Some historians have questioned this public drinking gender dichotomy. In England women have had a long history in the drinks trade as alewives, barmaids and, for widows, licence holders.'* The practice of granting licences to widows became established in Puritan Massachusetts as a form of poor relief. Yet in nineteenth century Ontario, women, mainly widows, "were among the most successful innkeepers," according to McBurney and Myers. A similar point was made in
Edwin Guillet's huge compilation of inns and taverns in pioneer Ontario: "Widows-and not always widows of innkeepers- often kept taverns, a fact apparent £rom the names frequently camaraderie helps to construct heterosexual masculine identity and allows men to transcend their everyday roles and domestic responsibilities. See Dimitra Gefou-Madianou, tlIntroduction:alcohol, commensality. identity trans?ormations and transcendence," in &Lcohal. Gender and urs, ed. Dimitra Gefou-Madianou (London: Routledge, 1992), 8, 13.
1°Peter Clark, -Alnuse: A Soc= mtoq~ 2200 - 1830 (London and New York: Longman, 1983), 21-22, 205- 06; Judith M. Bennett, "The Village Ale-Wife: Women and Brewing in Fourteenth Century England," in Yown and Work in pre- E-, ed. B. Hanawalt (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1986). 20-36; V. Padmavathy, "The English Barmaid, 1874-1914 : A Case Study of Unskilled and Non-uriionized Wornen Workerç." (Ph-DIdiss., Miami University, 1989) ; Bennett, 81-u Rrewsters a Woyld. 1300 - 1600 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Peter Bailey, "Parasexuality and Glamour: the Victorian Barmaid as Cultural
Prototype, Ir Gender 2 (Summer 1990) : 148-172. given to the-'the Widow Brown's Tavern' and 'Mother McLeants
Innr, among others."" Madelon Powers cites some less
forgettable names for places nui by female barkeeps, not
necessarily widows: "Peckerhead Kate's," "Indian Sadiers,"
and nBig Tit Irene' S. "12
Rather than male bastions, Perry Duis argued that
saloons in Boston and Chicago were semi-public places that provided some space for women. Boston authorities in particular experimented with various types of gender segregation rather than exclusion.r3 In a short article on women and public drinking Madelon Powers noted that many
American saloons had a separate entrance and area for women, which "both facilitated and circurnscribed wornenrs
==David W. Conroy, ï;El P-c Hnu.%s : Drm& Bevohtf~nof Woritv in CouMassachunntts (Chape1 Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 103-9; Margaret McBurney and Mary Byers , in the Town : Taverns nf 0- (Toronto: UTP, 1987), 12; Edwin Clarence Guillet, Pioneer 1-d -, combined ed,, vol. 2 (Toronto: The Ontario Publishing Co. Ltd,, 1964)' Part 4, 152.
*Powerst The 'Poor Man's Friend'," 3-
UPerry R, Duis, # 18130- 193.4 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, l983), 2-6, 252-3, 265, 276-7, 13 participation in saloon culture." Working-class women also
"rushed the growler" (obtained pails of beer from saloons) and operated kitchen barrooms.14 Judith Fingard has shown that in Victorian Halifax some working-class women did drink in saloons and some were proprietors, either of licensed facilities or illegal home-based operations.15 Both Kathy
Peiss and Roy Rosenzweig have stressed that, faced with the prohibition movement and commercialized leisure alternatives,
American saloons tried to become more respectable in the early twentieth century. Peiss concludes, "women increasingly frequented saloons." For England David Gutzke went further and claimed that the First World War represented the first major shift in popular drinking habits in more than a century. Upper working-class and middle-class women began
laMadelon Powers , It Women and Public Drinking , 1890-1920, fii torv Today 45 (February 1995) : 47 (quote)-48; see also Duis, Xh21~-, 106 .
1sZudith Fingard, TheiçideterjanAalifax (Porters Lake, N.S.: Pottersfield Press. 1989), 121-22; Fingard, "'A Great Big Rum Shop': The Drink Trade in Victorian Halifax," in mered Ry Rw: ~-stnrv of Pvovinc~~,ed. J. Morrison and S. Moreira (Porters Lake, N. S. : Pottersf ield Press, 1988) , 93-6. patronizing pubs, and a wartime trend became a post-war tradition.16
We should be careful not to push tiiis argument too far.
None of the authors cited fundamentally questioned the idea that the world of public drinking was predominately masculine. Even David Gutzke admitted that full gender equality was prevented by hostile magistrates, unregenerate regional pub cultures, and unsympathetic materna1 feminists.
As Peiss cautioned, women "penetrated the male sphere of the saloon in ways that were carefully delineated.Ir For example, they did not stand at the bar and their presence, particularly as customers, remained controversial. With a slightly different twist, Mary Murphy argued that the public drinking world in Butte Montana was thoroughty masculine until prohibition, which "rattled these patterns" and created public drinking space for women. l7
I6Kathy L. Peiss, 10Wumen& JJÇJ~F-F~in nirnofw- - - New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986) , 28 (quote) ; Rosenzweig, wtHw, 183; David Gutzke, Wender, Class, and Public Drinking in Britain During the First World War," Histoke socwe/Soci& rv 27 (November 1994) : 368-9.
17Gutzke, "Gender, Class and Public Drinking, 3 82-3, 388-9; Peiss, --, 28; Mary Murphy, e 5n Rutte, 1914-4 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 19971, 43; see What needs to be stressed, though, is that public
drinking does not fit well into a simple separate spheres
model. However restricted, women had a presence in the drinks
trade as producers, licence holders, and customers. While mainly a centre of masculinity, public drinking space was the
site of gender dynamism and even contention. Moreover, a variety of influences may have increased opportunities for public drinking for women in the early-twentieth century:
"respectable" saloons, more commercialized and heterosocial leisure, and the destabilizing effects of war and prohibition. At the same time, however, we should be cautious about the applicability of these changes to Canada in general and British Columbia in particular. As Cheryl Krasnick Warsh has commented, by the 1880s public drinking had become unacceptable for respectable women and by the turn-af-the- century it "had vanished as a nom for women." In British
Columbia, by 1910 women were legally banned from saloons. In analyzing the significance of public drinking specific
- also, Clark, The EwhAlehou, 235-6; Beverly Ann Tlusty, I1Gender and Alcohol Use in Early Modern Augsburg, Hi,, / Soria3 Ej s+cry 27 (November 1994) : 241-260. context is important, and generalizations can take us only so far .
The third and final comment that stems fxom Jon
Kingsdalefs "The Voor Man's Clubfw is the assumed importance
of public drinking in working-class life. It would seem
reasonable to conclude that working people-especially men--
were hostile to the anti-alcohol movement that culminated in
prohibition in Canada and the United States. Such a
conclusion, however, is not only misleading, it also elides
some of the fundamental debates and theoretical implications
of alcohol history as social history. For North America there
is also a practical link between public drinking and
temperance since the main goal of the drys was to shut working-class saloons, not necessarily eliminate consumption ."
XaWarsh, 'Oh, Lord, pour a cordial, .II .75 -6 (quote); British Columbia, Pevised Statuteç of Rrrtish Co- , 1911, c. 142 ("Liquor Licence Actn), S. 65. Vancouver city banned women from its saloons in 1909.
"A few words about words. In Ncrth America the anti- alcohol movement is usually described as a three-phase one: temperance" ref erred to limiting alcohol consumption, especially spirits, nTee-totalismtldescribes the Total ("teen refers to the letter not the drink) abstinence from al1 intoxicating liquors. Temperance and tee-totalisrn relied prirnarily on exhortation and personal initiative. IrProhibitionnrelied on the power of the state to outlaw Despite the expanding literature on public drinking, the
core subject in alcohol history has been temperance, especially, until recently, the prohibition movement in che
United States. Some historians put temperance and particularly its historians into one of two camps. James
Roberts labelled the groups "social reform" and '\social control," but this characterization is confusing as concepts of social control permeate both sides of the debate. Jan Noel more wisely chose \\partisanswand "s~eptics.~Partisans argue that temperance supporters were responding to real problems linked to alcohol consumption. Sceptics tend see dry supporters as àriven by religious bigotry, ethnic hostility, or narrow class interests. While Noel leans to the partisan side, she emphasizes that temperance was multifaceted and dynamic, which also is true of its hist~riography.~~
retail sales. Yet the terms, especially lttemperance,îrwere not fixed in meaning. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union, for example, supported prohibition. Alcohol historians tend to use "temperance" as the generic word to discuss the vaxiety of campaigns against drink and drinking, hence the Alcohol and Estory Group. More colloquially, one may also refer to Irdryswand nwets.v On temperance phases in Canada, see Demonun, 10-1L.
toian Tyrrell, llTasks and Achievernents of Alcohol and
Temperance Eiistoriography, tt (Paper presented at the International Congress on the Social History of Ncohol, Huron College, London, Ontario, May 1993) : 3, 12; James What, then, do we make of the workers who supported temperance? This question was at the heart of Brian
Harrison's ground-breaking and the Victorians, which first appeared in 1971. He argued that the cross-class character of temperance reflected the complexities of nineteenth century English society. Temperance was not simply middle-class morality imposed on the working-class. Many working men (Harrison says almost nothing and nothing positive about women), especially 'an élite of workingmenM sought to distance themselves from the rough elements of working-class life. Since then a number of historias have examined the diverse attitudes that working people had toward alcohol and the importance of temperance for sorne.
Roçenzweig, for example, acknowledged the existence of
"temperance radicals," in Worcester, primarily Protestant
Roberts, PLI, Te--- Wo-a Clas in eteenth - centw Ge- (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1984) 8-9; Noel, Canada Dry, 4-16. Like Sharon Cook in Tm Sm Sbad~w,~,Noel also emphasizes the powerful influence of evangelical millenialism on the early temperance rnovement, The classic *partisanN history of the prohibition movement in Canada remaias Ruth Spence, Sa.. (Toronto: Ontario Branch of the Dominion Alliance, 1919) . An unrelenting sceptical view of American... prohibition is John J. Rumbarger, Profitç.on: Alcohol Refom ertca. 1800 - 193Q (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989)- 19
Swedish wireworkers, but 'even Irish-Catholic workers did not
al1 agree on temperance."21
If one argues that, in part at least , the dry movement
was a reaction to real social problems, then explaining its
support by some working people is relative easy. As Michael
Katz put it, "temperance, for instance, underlay the
discipline necessary for both individual survival within the
capitalist order and successful collective action." The view
that temperance facilitated independence from capitalism was notably popular with the leaders and some members of the
Knights of Labor. More important, as working-class families often lived at the slippery edge of economic stability, wornen often had much incentive to see that incorne was not diverted to saloons. For industrialking Montreal, Bettina Bradbury has argued that "for wives who had to scrirnp, Save, and plot so that the family would eat well even with al1 of a man's wage to work with, drinking often posed as much of a threat to family survival as did unernployment or low wages,"
Z1Brian Harrison, the Victn~ims: The lu5 - 1072, 2nd ed- (Staffordshire : Keele University Press, 1994) , 26; Rosenzweig, -ht Hou, 103, 225; see also, David Bnmdage, "The Producing Classes and the Saloon: Denver in the 1880srn 26 (Winter 1985) : 29-52. although, as she notes, the quantitative impact of wages
diverted to drink cannot be measured exactly. As James
Roberts has emphasized, the "social and political import of
temperance reform could Vary from one context to another."
The meaning of temperance and its appeal to different groups
were not static, and concern with drink "could be combined
with any number of political and economic positians."22
Yet whether the emphasis has been on alcohol use (public
drinking) or the social response to drinking (temperance),
the theoretical context has been social control, one of the
paradigns of the "newM social history of the 1960s. One
stream of this history essentially began as debates among
British Marxist historias after the Second World War. They
"Michael 8. Katz, Michaei Z. Doucet, and Mark J. Stem, Social Orwatign of E& I-trm (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 19821, 24; on the Knights and temperance in Canada see Gregory Kealey and Bryan - The Palmer, preoft Mi&t Re. A s of -or in. 1880 - 190Q (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 151-152; Brian Paul Trainor, Towards a Genealogy of Temperance: Identity, Belief and Drink in Victorian Ontario" (M.A. thesis, Queen's University,. . 1993), esp. chap. 4; Bettina Bradbury, Workina F-9. Geder= angailv cr Montres (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993) , 103-105 (quote); Roberts, 9. Anna Clark has demonstrated how drink exacerbated gender tensions in industrializing Britain- See Clark, The. Ç-9. d the Muof the Rntish WoaaClasç (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 5, 266-7- generally agreed that the focus should be on history from the bottom up, that is as much as possible from the perspective of non-elites. Yet conceptions of class--primarily the working-class--and the significance of class were at the centre of many captious discussions.23
The debates became more heated after the publication of
E.P. Thompsonfs The Makincrofth EIlgLinha in
1963. Thornpson moved away from structural ideas of class and class consciousness in order to make more room for human agency. He argued that class was a process based on the historical experience of productive relations. Even more significant, he ernphasized that class consciousness was not so much determined by economic relations but by the cultural experiences of working people, many of which were not directly tied to work or the workplace.24
. . 23Harvey J. Kaye, The Rritish wstnlçtarianç:va (Cambridge: Polity Press, 19841, "Introduction";. Adrian . Wilson, "A Critical Portrait of Social History," soclm mtorv: uhSoeietv 1570 - temretat- (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993 ) 13 -14.
=4E.P. Thompson, a MW9of the Emjsh WcvUcr Cl- rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 1980) , 8-12. On the major and controversial influence of Thompson, see .Harvey . J. Kaye and Keith McClelland, ed-, E.P- Thqmgson: Critxal Persoective~ (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990) . 22
As Gareth Stedman Jones long ago emphasized, rnany social
historians who examined the historical experience of working- people outside of wage labour easily embraced simplified notions of social control. Leisure activities, including drinking, could be conceptualized as either a successful way
to control workers, or, alternatively, as a cultural expression of class and thus a form of resistance to control.
Often historians assumed that social control was of "marxist provenance--social control being something which by definition a bourgeoisie continually administers, and in increasingly heavy doses, to an errant but gradually domesticated proletariat." The phrase implied a linear process of regulation that underscored the actions of the state, allied elites, and, the reaction and resistance of working people. '5
For years now both the social control paradigm and social history have been under attack. The foundation of the critique has been to question "class" as the master category of analysis. Critics have argued that the ernphasis on class
2SGareth Stedman Jones, Tlass expressionisrn versus social control? A critique of recent trends in the social history of 'leisure, mtorv Wnrkqhoo JO- 4 (Autumn 1977) : 162-170, quote at 164, within the context of social control has produced, narrow,
static, and simplistic history. In the words of a group of
feminist Canadian scholars: "The historical past is far too
cornplex, and people's lives shot through with too many
contradictions and ambiguities, to be easily captured by this
tired dichotomy of top-down domination versus bottom-up
resistance.' Many others have also argued that class
traditionally has been conceived rnainly in masculine terms.
"Working-class" often meant only adult, male wage-earners.
Both feminism and gender studies have discredited this
limited per~pective,~~
26Franca Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde, "Introduction, in mrConf'Licts: New Rssavs in Wamenrs ms+orv, ed. Franca Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde (Toronto: üTP, 1992), xviii; Laura L. Frader, "Dissent: over Discourse: Labor History, Gender, and the Linguistic Turn." ffistowd Theoq 34 (1995): 213. On gender and class see, for example, Joan Scott, "On Language. Gender,. . and Working-Class His tory, in her (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) . 53 -67 ; see also Scott, "Wornenfs History" in the same volume; Ava Baron, "Gender and Labor History: Learning From the Fast, Looking to the Future," in ow- a New tarv nf , ed, Ava Baron (Ithaca: Corne11 U. Press, 1991) esp, 10-11; Leonore Davidof f , "Gender, Class and Nation, " H-&y 42 (February 1992): 49-53; Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, "Intrad~ction,~n.S. Hiç_torv Wownf s -tory ed. Linda K. Kerber, Alice Kessler Harris and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Chape1 Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995) esp. 6-7, 24
Scholars influenced by a welter of theories sometimes housed under the rubric of "post-structuralism," have pushed the debate about class and gender much further. They reject the idea of master categories of analysis (such as class, gender, or race) and the possibility of re-creating historical experience. Instead, they focus on the simultaneity and multiplicity of identities. From this vantage social positions are not fixed or universal. One is at once a worker, mother, and Chinese. The content of these categories varies in relation to each other, tirne, circumstances, and the perceptions of the observed and the observer. From this perspective it is virtually impossible to reconstruct the experiences of those who lived in the past.
Instead historical understanding is available in partial, fragmented ways by interrogating categories, the essence of deconstruction. Thus, post-structuralism emphasizes the analysis of the power of language, broadly conceived as systems of signification. As Tina Loc points out, discourse refers to the mconstitutive and performative role of language; that is when we talk about what we actually do with language. "27
Z7The classic post-structuralist text is Joan Scott's 25
Post-structural critiques have provoked intense debate
among social historians in part because they challenged the
fundamental assumption of the "primacy of material conditions
in driving or shaping historical subjects and historical pro cesse^.'^ While the battles continue, other historians have attempted to bridge the gap between material and discursive orientations by arguing that their opposition is a false dichotomy. The approaches can complernent one another. As
Laura Frader has emphasized, discourses contribute to the constitution of class, gender, and race, but they "exist in, and in relation with, the social world and are produced by
. . collection of essays, the Pol~tlcsof Historv , but more useful for the Canadian context is Joy Parr, "Dender History and Histoxical Practice,Im tHistoricalj 76 [Sepceder 1995) : 354-76; Tina Loo, -9 MW.Order. ançl Rrltlsh-. Co a, 3821 - 187r (Toronto: ûTP, 1994)
7 (quote). See also Patrick Joyce, "Introduction,If in Ch.%, ed. Patrick Joyce (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1995) , esp. 3 -10. The standard critique of post-structuralism is Bryan Palmer, tk +tory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), which he updated in Tritical Theory, Historical Materialism, and the Ostensible End of Marxisrn: The Poverty of Theory Revisited," mtemional Revipw of story 38 (1993): 133-62. Although not diçappointed to see class fa11 £rom grace, Christopher Kent has written one of the clearest summaries of the debates of the last two decades, See Christopher Kent, Victoriari Social History: Post -Thompson, Post -Foucault, Postntodern, " Victor- Studies 40 (Autumn 1996) : 97-133,
27
In short, people and the lives they lived are still worthy of historical investigation.
As Stanley Cohen has argued, because of the influence of
Foucault and feminist theory, social control approaches have become more nuanced. Social historians seeking some more flexible analytical tools have delved into moral regulation literature. Much, but not all, of this work is grounded in
Foucault's idea of governmentality, 'the contact between the technologies of domination of others and those of the self."
Joan Sangster has described moral regulation as "the process whereby some behaviors, ideals, and values were marginalized and proscribed while others were legitimized and naturalized." Moral regulation refers to a process of normalization, the attempt to render natural and obvious what is actually constructed and contested. Ultimately, as Mary
Louise Adams has noted, "moral regulation limits the forms of expression available to us by masking difference with an illusion of social unity. What are taken for 'normalt are, for the most part, representations of dominant intere~ts."2~
29Stanley Cohen, "The Critical Discourse on 'Social Controlr : Notes on the Concept as a Kammer," -te- 17 (1989): 353-354; Mitchell Dean, "'A social structure of many soulst: moral regulation, govenunent and self-formation," Canadian of Socioloz Regulation is informed by and reinforces particulas kinds of knowledge. \%nowledgeM encompasses much more than given information that is true or absolüte. It is a process of ordering reality, and its t~this made not discovered. In
Foucaultfs words:
"Tnithw is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of statements. \'Truth" is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it.30
19 (1994): 158 (quoting Foucault); Joan Sangster, Tncarcerating 'Bad Girls1: The Regulation of Sexuality through the Female Refuges Act in Ontario, 1920-1945," st-orv- of S 7 (1996): 241; Mary Louise Adams, "In Sickness and in Health: State Formation, Moral Regulation, and Early VD Initiatives in Ontario," udies 28 (Winter 1993-94): 119; see also, Michel Foucault, uGovernrnentality," in a- Effect:,ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 102-103; Philip Corrigan ana Derek Sayer, meGreat h .Sta+e Fo (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 4.
Another stream of moral regulation literature winds its way back to Marx, usually via Gramsci's concept of hegernony. Mariana Valverde has argued that Marxian and Foucaultian approaches to moral regulation share much "political common ground" because they both focus on "power and domination." See Mariana Valverde, \'Editorrs introduction/ Canadian of Soclology 19 (1994): vi-vii (quotes).
30Michel. . Foucault, P&uex&&mwled~ : Sdected Interviews FIT W-as- f 972 - 1977 , ed. Colin Gordon (New York,. . Pantheon, 1980) , 133 ; Joan Scott, -der and the Powsof HkGQxJc, 2. By linking power to knowledge Foucault broadened conceptions of power to include much more than coercion.
Y?owerm also refers to the more contingent process of normalization, of creating understandings, of naming.
Foucault shifted his gaze away from the state and examined power and its effects in the ''capillaries" of society. As he put it, power "needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression." These reconceptualizations of power in turn led to a significant rethinking of regulation, particularly in relation to social control and the tat te.^^
From this perspective regulation is a process that involves many actors, including those being regulated. The state is not necessarily the only regulator, and some argue not even the most important one- Moreover, the state does not act consistently, and the results of state regulation are not
31Foucault, -owledae, 96-7, 119 (quote). Foucault's conceptions of power were àiscussed quite specifically in nRistorvaf~exuali+v. Vol. 1, & qn (London: Allen Lane, 1978 ; reprint, New York: Vintage Books, i990), esp. 92-102. always those desired or expected. Regulation is complex,
inconsistent, and certainly not linear.
Working £rom Foucault, Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo have
invoked some simple explanatory images. They see social
control as a hammer, a linear use of force that rnay or may
not find its mark. Moral regulation fs more like a net:
multi-nucleated, decentred, restrictive, but full of holes.
Power is embedded in the rnesh, and resistance is the
exploitation of the holes. Resistance alters the fabric of power, the shape of regulation, and al1 those entwined in the rnesh. Regulation thus moves beyond the state and decentres power .32
Moral regulation, 1 believe, also fits well with the direction taken in alcohol history that emphasizes the social construction of knowledge. Alcohol historians have profited from the more constructiviçt approaches of their colleagues in other social sciences. For example, rather than focus on
32Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo, Makina Good : Law a rka6&4. 1867- 1939 (Toronto: WP, 1997), 5-6; Loo and Strange, "The Traveling Show Menace: Contested Reguiation in Turn-of-the-Cent- Ontario," Law & Socintv pe,view 29 (1995): 662-665; Tina Loo, "Dan Cranmerrs Potlatch: Law as Coercion, Symbol, and Rhetoric in British Columbia, 1884-1951," Canadian 73 731992) : 165; Foucauit, PnwedKncawledqe, 39, 98. 31 the perceived problems with alcohol, as historians often do, anthropologists tend to emphasize the diverse uses and meanings of alcohol in a variety of cultures. Thus, drinking is not necessarily an escape from cultural norms. It can be an expression of culture or even the attempt to create different cultural norms within a larger society.33
As well, sociologists have become particularly interested in the construction of social problems. Joseph
Gusfield has argued that social problems are "subject to change in public attention and definitioc without a clear relation to their existence as conditions of life." Naming a condition a problem is part of the process of attempting to create a knowledge consensus. Thus, a social problern is actually "a linguistic instrument for ordering our understanding and suggesting action," In short, social
33Mary Douglas, 'A distinctive. .anthropology perspective," in Constrnctive Draa: Per-tiv~s on Dru f=--, f=--, ed. Mary Douglas (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 19871, 3-11; Dwight B. Heath, "A decade of development in the anthropological. . study of alcohol use, l97O-l98O, in n,esp. 46-7; Dimitra Gefou-Madianou, " Introduction," 1-7; Marianna Adler, 'From Anthropological Symbolic Exchange to Comrnodity Consumption: . . Notes on Drinking as a Symbolic Pra~tice,~in r>rinklncrr Relief, 376-398; Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, "John Barleycorn Must Dier: An Introduction to the Social History of Alcohol, " in in Cu,5-10. problems have a history that goes beyond any comection to their material circumstances. For example, American scholars now argue that drunkenness has meant different things at different times, and the idea of alcoholism as a disease is a relatively recent constniction, and a very contested one.34
Drinking derives its meaning from its social context.
As Patricia Prestwich rather baldly states: 'apart from its chernical properties, alcohol is a social construct that
3QJosephGusfield, Coa~stedMe.anil,m, --. The Copst~tion of- ((Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 5 (1st quote), 18 (2nd quote);. . Susama Barrows and Robin Room, Introduction, IV Pr-, 6, 12 ; Mirni Aj zenstadt and Brian Burtch, "The Idea of Alcoholism: Changing Perceptions of Aicoholisrn and Treatment in British Columbia, 18704988," -th _and r-ciety 2 (1994): 10-11, 26- 7; Harry Levine, "The Discovery of Addiction: Changing Conceptions of Habitua1 DN~~~M~ssin America," es on =corn 39 (1978): 143-174; Grant Paton-Simpson, "The varied meanings of drinking and intoxication--a review," or~- Drya- Prob- 23 (Summer 1996) : 221-258. See also Gusfield's earlier work, The 0l-e of Pub3 ic Problemç: vinaand(Chicago : University of Cbicago Press, 1981) 2-23. For a critique of the disease concept of alcoholism see Herbert Fingarette, h of Alcouni as a Dmse (Berkeley: University of California, 1988). Scott Haine takes a provocative approach ta the construction of social problems and social control, Ris study of nineteenth century Parisian medical and legal records led him to question what he calls "important limitations to Foucauldian theories of social control," See W. Scott Haine, 'A spectrum of cultural constructs: the intenelationship between social, legal, and medical constructs of intemperate behavior in Parisian drinking, 1860-1914," -or- nrua Problp- 21 (Winter 1994): 536. varies with the society, the period, the users, and the observers." The specific social context of alcohol use and regulation is vital to understanding that use and regulation.
This approach is apparent in the work of British Columbia historical sociologist, Mimi Ajzenstadt. In her dissertation she examined the construction of economic, moral, and especially medical-moral discourses about alcohol in British
Columbia from 1870 to 1925. She argued that regulation was a dynamic process of negotiation among a variety of elites.
Atcohol regulations mainly targeted women, natives, and ethnic minorities.35
What 1 seek is a more constructivist orientation to alcohal regulation after prohibition. My approach is similar to the direction in legal history, Like law, regulation can be seen as a means of ordering society. Yet order does not simply rnean the lack of disorder; order is 'a set of values
-- 3sPatricia E. Prestwich, "The regulation of drinking: new work in the social history of alcohol," Prob- 21 (Fall 1994) : 365; Mimi Aj zenstadt, The Medical- Moral Econorny of Regulations: Alcohoi Legislation in B.C-, 1871-1925," (Ph-D. diss., Simon Fraser University, 1992), iii-iv; see also ber "Cycles of Control: Alcohol Regulation and the Construction of Gender Role, 1870-1925," Jodof C- Stu- 11 (Sprkg 1995) : 101-120 - 34
that structur[e] social relations." Liquor regulators had
certain assurnptions and expectations about gender and
sexuality, class, and race, which were interwoven in what 1
refer to as the discourse of decency. This discourse
emphasized moderate consumption, appropriate cornportment, and
heterosexual propriety.36
Parlour regulation #as as much about naming space and the people who occupied that space as it was about controlling drinking, Regulators created knowledge that acted as tmth daims and, more important, justified action. The discourse of decency not only defined people, it was also was the rationalization for taking action based on gender, class, and race. Yet the values of decency were not simply translated into policy that was implemented in a top-down, rigid way. For one ïhing, the values themselves were not necessarily consistent or static. More important, the targets of regulation also promoted their own versions of decency. To a certain extent, parlour regulation was always a contest over knowledge.
36Tina Loo and Lorna McLean, "Introduction," in Law a& Soc&+v inCanada.ed. Tina Loo and Lorna McLean (Toronto: Copp Clark, 19941, 2, Regulation included more than elites and the state, but
it was not a democratic process, and the state remained very
important. As Ajzenstadt concluded, "the state came to be perceived not merely as an agency that could legitimately create a framework of moral guidelines, but rather as one required ta monitor the behaviours of al1 members of the community in order to promote their health and rnorality/l'
Beer pariours warrant a full study for a number of reasons. First, parlours show how the provincial state and its supporters tried to morally engineer public drinking after prohibition, Authorities sought to promote decency and reduce opportunities for what they regarded as deviance.
Their efforts were conceived in class-specific ways, and
Chapter Two emphasizes how concepts of class permeated regulatory discourse. While parlours were often referred to as uworkingmentsclubs," they were not working-class social centres in the way saloons had been. People could again drink
37Ajzenstadt, "The Medical-Moral Economy of Regulations," 260-26s; Ajzenstadt, "The Changing Image of the State: The Case of Alcohol Regulation in British Columbia, 1871-2925, " tTnlmal of So~inioav 19 (1994): 455 (quote) - 36 in public, but in an environment devoid of the trappings of the former saloons. No stand-up bar was permitted. Patrons had to remain seated at tables where they were served by waiters. Until the 1950s no food, music, or games were allowed. About al1 one could do was drink.
The bulk of parlour patrons were working-class and, just as important, were defined as such by the authorities. The officia1 assumption was that working-class cornportment needed to be regulated closely. State resources devoted to replation, however, were minimal, and much of the enforcement fell to parlour workers and operators. Their interests and priorities did not necessarily reinforce state priorities, which themselves were not always consistent.
Moreover, patrons had diverse ideas about appropriate cornportment and acted accordingly, despite the efforts of authorities , operators, and parlour workers .
Beer parlours are also important because they provide an good setting to analyze gender relations and sexuality, which is the emphasis of Chapter Three. Authorities originally envisioned the parlour as masculine domain, since public drinking in British Columbia had been primarily a male preserve. Certaidy some parlour rituals (drinking patterns, treating, and story telling) contributed to the public
markers of heterosexual masculinity. Yet, more important,
parlours immediately became a site of gender contention
because as soon as the parlours opened, some women walked
through their doors. For a variety of reasons the government,
hotels, and many men did not want them there. Onattached women who entered parlours were treated as ptostitutes, a
label rejected by those women who sought to expand, with some
success, the boundaries of heterosocial leisure. While women were condemned for illicit sexuality, men were only chided, provided their actions remained heterosexual.
As Chapter Four emphasizes, parlours also Say much about ethnic and racial regulation. Until 1951 federal and provincial law barred aboriginal. people £rom any acceçs to alcohol. Yet some natives drank in Vancouver beer parlours,
More often than not waiters and parlour operators determined aboriginal status by appearance and behaviour rather than documentation- An Indian was someone who l~okedor acted
"like an Indian" in the eyes of white men. Those who did not coad pass as whites . Even after uIndianîr lost its legai marker as far as public drinking was concerned, the "beer parlour Indian" remained. 38
No statute prevented Asians or blacks from entering the parlours, but skiure and defactq racism was prevalent, and again racial definitions were linked to behaviour as well as appearance. From the beginning beer parlour regulations required that licence holders and ernployees who handled beer be eligible to vote. Until after the Second World War that restriction intentionaliy eliminated Asians £rom either owning the licence or working in a parlour. In part the restriction was rnotivated by alleged Asian links to vice.
Some Chinese were hired in a menial capacity, such as janitors, while others leased the hotel rooms, which could be operated separately £rom the parlours. Not rnany Chinese appeared to be parlour custorners; they preferred the haunts of nearby Chinatom. A couple of hotels were known for their black patronage, and those parlours were particularly watched by the authorities. The Liquor Control Board (LCB) also encouraged unwritten house rules that forbade service to mixed-race couples, which were narrowly defined as men of colour in the Company of white women. A man of colour racialized himself, that is engaged in indecent behaviour, by behg in the Company of a white woman. The woman, too, sullied whiteness by associathg with a man of colour. 39
At first glance Chapter Five seems to go in a diffexent and dissonant direction in comparison with the previous chapters. The approach taken in this chapter is more traditionally chronological than the thematic emphasis outlined so far. In general the thematic approach is a better way of discussing the complexities and multi-level dynamics of regulation. Yet it can deemphasize time and especially change over tirne, something important to historians, including this one- Another reason why parlours are worth studying is that they did change in response to political pressures after the Second World War.
Chapter Five is devoted to explaining the significant post-war changes that culminated in additional licensed facilities. Those changes are best understood within the politics of regulation. Yet politics has to be analyzed in more than one way. To a certain extent it refers to a state- centred process of balancing interest-group demands, and, in tus case, the supporters of cocktail lounges appeared to win. Yet politics also refers to contests over knowledge about public drinking that went beyond the state. =ter the war one can see a shift in the discourse of decency, what might be called a new knowledge cf public drinking.
a resuit of a successful September 1916 referendum, the
British Columbia Prohibition Act went into effect in October
the following year. It outlawed the retail sale of beverage
alcohol except for sacramental, medicinal, and industrial
use. Prohibition, however, did not completely eliminate
saloons, which had been confined to hotels since before the
First World War. Many survived selling non-alcoholic 'near-
beer," and whatever else they could hide from the inspectors.
The abuse of medicinal prescriptions was an even more
notorious enforcement problem. By the end of the war many
British Columbians had become disillusioned with prohibition.
The leading anti-prohibition organization was the
Moderation League, which was formed in 1919 by a group of business leaders who had grown disenchanted with prohibition.
Rather than a return to private retail sale, the League advocated government control of sealed liquor and the sale of beer and wine in restaurants. Because of the political volatility of public drinking, the Liberal government did not
3aThe material in this paragraph and the following four is largely drawn from Dernon Rwor Easy Money; for this paragraph see, 20-25. 42 offer the latter option when it asked the voters in 1920 to endorse either prohibition or government control. In October -
1920 the electorate, who now included women, abandoned prohibition for liquor sales in government stores operated by the appointed LCB that reported to the Attorney General.
Regulating àrinkers was a high priority from the beginning.
In order to purchase liquor in government stores a customer needed to obtain a permit, and an annual permit cost nearly a day's wages for the average worker in the early 1920s.39
The 1921 Government Liquor Act declared unlicensed public drrinking illegal, and it specifically outlawed the words 'bar, " "bar-room," "saloon, " and "tavern. '* In oxder to curb the hotels, the act also banned the sale of near-beer-
In response many Vancouver hotels opened private "clubs," with membership fees as low as ten cents, where mernbers could drink their own liquor. These clubs were given nominal legitimacy by the city, which issued them licences. Veteransf clubs were even more defiant and battled the government in court. Early court decisions favoured the clubs, and in 1923 the government created the club licence. For a $100 annual fee, a club was allowed to let members keep liquor for personal consumption on club premises. The majority of licences went to legitimate Veterans' clubs, not hotels. Yet after much contentious debate inside and outside the legislature, the government also passed legislation that provided for a public drinking plebiscite.40
When the voters went to the polls on 20 June 1924, the opponents of beer were led by the renamed British Columbia
Prohibition Association. The drys argued that beer by the glass eventually meant the return of the saloon. The wording of the plebiscite acknowledged that issue: "Do you approve of the sale of beer by the glass in licensed premises without a bar derGovernment contra1 and regulation?" On the wet side the Moderation League was joined by veteransr groups, some labour unions, and the British Columbia Hotels Association, initially a group of Vancouver hotels that had organized to win the right to sel1 beer by the glassœ41
ûverall in the province dry views carried the day;
73,853 opposed beer while 72,214 supported it. Still, twenty- three of forty electoral districts supported beer, including
Vancouver. Faced with these mixed results the government, through the LCB, began to license hotel beer parlours in districts that had supported beer. The first parlours opened in Vancouver in blarch 1925 -42
Vancouver's parlours deserve particular attention because, as the province's largest city, Vancouver drove liquor policy. The parlours opened there first, and more existed in Vancouver than any other city. Victoria, by comparison, had none in the period under examination. As well, gender segregation in parlours and venereal disease monitoring were initiated in Vancouver. Liquor authorities hoped that strict supervision of hotel facilities would either satisfy or thwart the criticism of the parlours by temperance supporters who remained politically influential for years. Parlour opponents also targeted those in the city.
They believed, probably correctly, that if they killed the parlours in Vancouver, they would be victorious across the province. Still, as we shall see in the succeeding chapters, the engineering of beer parlours was based on much more than temperance pressures. From the begiming considerations of class were paramount , Chapter Two
Working Drinkere and Drinking Workere: Class and Regulation
The 1950-1951 Official Handbook of Local 676, the beer parlour workers' union, offered a pointed juxtaposition. fn it the Local President did not shy from the language of class struggle. He stated that "the true goal of Unionism" was 'to put a stop to the exploitation of the workers. . . :Yet the handbook also contained a photograph of the President of the union's Local Joint Executive Board making a presentation to the retiring President of the hotelst association. At the initiative of Local 676, the chief executive of the employers' organization received a lifetime membership in the international union. 1 *******
Front the begineing beer parlours were conceptualized in class terms by state officials, the press, parlour operators
kniversity of British Columbia, Special Collections, Hotel, Restaurant Culinary Employees and Bartenders Union, Local 40 (HRCEBU-WC), Box 6, Officialook.. . 1950- 7 951, p.3 (quote), 53-4; Box 6, Minute Book May 1937 to December 1957: 7 December 1949 - 47 and employees, and even patrons. Class permeated the entire diseourse of regulation, from beer as the working man's drink to the behavioural expectations that state regulators had of patrons and workers. Official paternalism had both proscriptive and prescriptive components. Proscription emphasized the inhibition of behaviour, and regulators tried to prevent the excesses of working-class, particularly male, sociability. Hence no bar, no songs, and, for awhile, no women. Regulators also encouraged, or prescribed, what they considered decent behaviour on the part of patrons and parlour workers .
An obvious class relationship existed between the beer parlour union and the British Columbia Hotels Association
(B-). At the same tirne, the union and the BCHA, like parlour workers and operators, were part of an intricate regulatory process. On the one hand, the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of that process interacted within the context of capitalist economic relations. ho se relations set real limits on regulation. Parlours ultimately existed to make a profit for their owners, and that priority was never far below the surface. On the other hand, however, parlout regulation was too fluid to be captured in simplistic caricatures of "usU uid Wthem.w Those categories certainly
existed, but their content varied according to time and
circumstances. The class relations in Vancouver beer parlours
are examined first because they undermine simple models of
domination and resistance,
In his analysis of the lives of a group of young
working-class men in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Thomas Dunk argued
that fundamentally wage labour constructed their lives, but
he concluded that "there is no specific form of working-class
ideology, politics or culture." In fact, for his nboys,18
culture was expressed through what he called "non-class" discourses that masked class conflict: racism, sexism, and militant heterosexual masculinity. The boys knew they held
subordinate positions, and they resisted. Their resistance, however, was ritualized through leisure activities- What began as popular critique ended up as a celebration of the immeciiate: 'the sole reward for their effort Iwas] often, to become further embedded in the world they were trying to escape. "2
-- -- - 2 Thomas Dunk, Jt's a WorkinsM,;t~'s- Town: Md- - rthwestm Onm~io(Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's U.P. 1991) , 38 (1st quote), 153, 160 (2nd quote) Parlour patrons, men and women, influenced the regulation of beer parlours through their resiatance to the discourse of decency. Singing, fighting, and excessive drinking can be seen as a cultural expression of class, a ceremonial rebellion against the dominant order. Yet it was rebellion that, for the most part, contained no fundamental threat to that order.
Parlour waiters acknowledged the containment of ceremonial rebellion with their participation in regulating violence. They stopped the fights and suffered the bruises, ripped clothes, and the consequences if they made the wrong decisions. Casual workers in particular, those with both the most and least to lose, offered a popular critique by drinking on the job. Such drinking defied the state, the operators, and the union. In the end, though, these workers were left with little more than hangovers.
Still, from a regulatory perspective, the significance of drinking on the job should not be dismissed too quickly.
For the Local 676 executive it was a serious problern. The parlour operators wanted complete control over the hiring process, and employee drinking bolstered their case. The issue was not just whether drinki~gundermined effectiueness, but that workers sent by the union did not obey the rules. in order to defend the hiring hall, a limited form of workersr control, the union dieciplined its members. The local also turned to the state for assistance. One of the justifications for this action was that hiring hall policies forced the union to send out workers who were unfit. The union partially adopted an argument of the employer as a reason for turning to the state to help the union regulate members so the hiring hall could be maintained.
Parlov workers and hotel operators were not always overtly at odds. For example, illegal gambling, or bookmaking, was a risky activity because of the priority the state gave to suppressing it, but in some hotels it produced collaboration between operators and workers. Waiters garnerêd additional income and operators more customers. Moreover, the operatorsr scheme to serve less than full glasses of beer could not have succeeded during the Second World War without the acquiescence of parlour workers, This practice of "short" service pitted parlour workers against their patrons who believed their customary right ta a full glass had been denied. This dispute was sufficiently seriaus ta attract the attention of the various labour councils at a time when they 57 were trying to deal with the more pressing issues of the war.
For the record the councils were careful to lay blame at the feet of governments and the hotels, but on a daily basis short service was a conflict between customers and parlour workers .
Short service also highlights the limits and inconsistencies of state replation. Short service was an unintended consequence of liquor rationing, which was both a federal and provincial undertaking, but not a particularly well-coordinated one. The federal government reacted more to pressure from the drys, while the province was drawn to rationing because of the problem of too many people and not enough beer. Moreover, federal and provincial tax policies increased the cost of beer to the operators, but neither level of government was keen to see the retail price rise,
Individual operators responded with short service, and in tum the province pressured the BCHA to force its members to cease the practice. While not a creature of the state, the employers' organization often existed in a symbiotic relationship with it. Yet the BCEA executive could not exert sufficient leadership with its recalcitrant members and finally moved towards more coercive measures. These were encouraged by the provincial government to maintain its authority and by the federal government because short service circumvented national price controls. In the end short service diminished not so mucb because of specific actions to quel1 it, but because beer rationing ended soon after the war .
Vancouver beer parlours opened in former hotel saloons in the downtown core. The unofficial parlour boundaries were
Burrard Inlet on the north, False Creek on the south, Burrard
Street on the West and, on the east, a more porous boundary at Main Street. East of Main was a working-class neighbourhood that was home to a few parlours. The bulk of the male patrons were drawn £rom the city's casual labourers, dock, mill, and railway workers, and itinerant loggers. They often stayed in the hotels attached to parlours before they headed back to the woods, A few Vancouver parlours were located in first-class hotels and they generally attracted little official attention. Liquor Control Board (La) expectations and policies were conceptualized in reaction to 53 the lower-end hotels with their over-whelmingly working-class clientele,3
From the beginning state officials sought tu create licensed facilities that would not offer opportunities for what they considered deviance. The drys had been quite euccessful in discrediting a saloon environment. Hence, in parlours no bar service was allowed. The ban on bar service was entrenched in legislation rather than cabinet regulation, which made it more difficult to change as it required an amendment to the liquor act. In parlours waiters brought beer on trays ta srna11 tables, and in order to be senred customers had to remain seated, even though technically sitting was not
3 On the working world of Vancouver see Robert A.% McDonald, "Working," in -,ives t Vanclouver 1886-7 qB, ed. Working Lives Collective (Vancouver: New Star Books, 1985), 25-33. In his senti-autobiographical novel, Deadman's -et, Peter Trower captured the spirit of the urban environment of beer parlours in the early 1950s: The usual crew of tenderloin regulars thronged the sidewalk around me--knots of carousing loggers lurching noisily from bar to bar; shabbily dressed East End housewives look- for basgains at the Army and Navy or the Save-on-Meat store; scrofulous winos with grimy paws cadging dimes in raspy voices; cut-rate hookers wearily heading for toast and black coffee at some greasy spoon cafe; a furtive heroin pusher bound for the Broadway Hotel- -Vancouverrs notorious "CornerM [Hastings and Main] --to set up shop at a dim beer parlour table. , . . See Q-' s (Madeira Park, B .CI : EIarbour Publishiag, 1996) , 27- a legal requirement. The LCB discouraged booths and settees because of the opportunities they provided for more intimate contact. No inducements to consumption were permitted. Free lunches were banned, as was, until the 1950s, the sale of any food, eoft drinks, or cigarettes. The regulations also forbade al1 games and entertainment. The unintended irony of these restrictions was there was little to do except drink.
Until the 1950s the only product sold was beer. While bottled beer was available, cheap ken cents for an eight-ounce glass) âraft beer was the staple trade. 4
Parlour policy was clearly linked to conceptions of decency. No one issued a document that defined decency, and it remained flexible and unwritten, as much of parlour policy was unwritten. In practice decency generally meant moderate consumption, appropriate cornportment, and heterosemial propriety. Provincial regulations barred women from working
4 On the ban on bar service see, British Columbia, sed Staw, 1924, c -146 ('Govemment Liquor Actn), S. 8. The original beer parlour regulations were published in, Remof the *or Contra1 Board of tk Pravjnce. - ofhunlau (-th AR) (1925), J64-7, In 1926, the first full year of beer service, parlours went through 70,000 barrels of draft beer and 12,000 equivalent barrels of bottled beer- See Davids~nto Manson, 1 December 1927, British Columbia Archives (BCA), GR1323, B2302. in the parlours, unless they were part of the parlour business. At first many parlours banned women as customers.
Soon, however, in concert with the La, operators created a separate area for men only and another for women and male and female couples. The goal was to separate unattached men from unattached women- These areas became more rigidly separated by partitions erected during the Second World War. Much regulatory attention was devoted to preventing unattached men from crossing over to the ladies and escorts side. s
At the end of the 1920s Vancouver had sixty three beer parlours, but only three parlour inspectors for the entire province. By the late 1940s about that many watched only
Vancouver, and the number of parlours had not increased.
Still, state resources devoted to regulation were minimal.
Parlours were not regularly inspected until after the Second
World War and then onïy consistently once each year, In practice much of the regulatory burden fell upon parlour operators and workers*6
5 Beer parlour partitions and their influence on regulation are àiscussed in mch greater detail in Chapter Three, On the ban agalizst fernale parlour workers, see above cited regulations, page J66.
6 In 1929 chartered accountant Albert Griffiths completed a report on liquor for the newfy-elected Consemative n and Waj te=
On S May 1925 the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council
(VTLC) received the credentials of the newly-named Beverage
Dispensers Union (BDU). Within a month the union had
organized forty-five beer parlours, and by the beginning of
September Tim Hanafin of the BDU reported that the last
parlour had been organized. This achievement was notable for
.. .. .- government. He concluded that of three inspectors, only one had "the faintest idea of his duties and responsibilities." See "Report of Investigations and Inquiries in Connection with the Administration of the Liquor Control Board," 31 December 1929, p. 4, BCA, GR1323, 82307. The LCBfs parlour regulatory resources also included a few undercover agents. LCB regulation was also assisted by the police, health officials, temperance and other observers, and even the press, which had an appetite for alleged parlour debauchery. Parlour inspectors left quite a paper trail. One of the richest sources for the parlours is the Inspector Reports (GR0052, BCA). As one might expect, the bulk of the material is official LCB documentation, particularly annual inspection reports and related correspondence- Yet the files, collectively, contain information from a variety of sources: undercover investigator reports, correspondence from the Division of Venereal Disease Control, hotel association letters, police reports, Fire Warden sumaries, newspaper clippings, cornplaint letters, union letters, temperance groupst comments, employee comments, phone cal1 sumrnaries, and customer comrnents. At the front of each hotel file is a summary list of notations, which mainiy cite problerns and actions taken, The lists, however, are often incomplete and no substitute for reading through the files, some of which are hundreds of pages. 57 a union that had endured much hardship during prohibition.
Union folklore credited Hanafin's efforts in the dry years for keeping the union an affiliate, Local 676, of the Hotel &
Restaurant Employees & Bartenders International Union.7
Local 676 had received its charter as a bartenders union in July 1903. Legally restricted to hotels before the First
World War, most of Vancouver's saloons survived prohibition, but they certainly did not prosper during the dry years. From a bartender8s point of view one cf the many unfortunate consequences of prohibition was the reduction of regulation.
Since near-beer technically was not liquor, at first anyone could sel1 it. Nxmerous non-union "jitney bars," named after
7University of British Columbia, Special Collections and University Archives Division, Vancouver and District Labour Council, (V&DLC-UBC), Minute Book 1923-1926: 5 May 1925, 2 June 1925, 1 September 1925. The reference to Hanafin helping to keep the union alive cornes from HRCEBU-UBC, Box 6, 1949 - 50 , 8-9. See aiso, City of Vancouver Archives, Hotel, Restaurant Culinary Employees and Bartenders Union, Local 40, (HRCEBU-CVA) Add. MSS 723, Vol. 1, File 7, nOutstanâing and fiery Unionist supported our amalgamation" (n.d, ca, 1974). The spelling of "Hanafin" varies, but that is how he signed his name.
The International union, an Arnerican Federation of Labor affiliate, was chartexed in 1891 with 450 members. Since 1981 it has been called Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) . See Dorothy Sue Cobble, -9 Tt Out : Wuesse..; d Their Unions in the menah Cent~lry(Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 19911, 61, 249 n.5. 58 the private automobiles that competed with taxis, opened on
Vancouver streets. The cornpetition hurt. By 1918 Local 676 had changed its name to the Soft Drink Dispensers, and the union discussed amalgamation with the restaurant workers. 8
For bartenders the opening of beer parloure meant a return to a more prefened environment of regulated public drinking. Nothing in the act or the official regulations explicitly confined parlours to hotels. Yet, through the
BCHA, Vancouver operators had been Lobbying for "first consideration" in selling beer by the glass. In return, they claimed they would \'welcome the most stringent regulations."
Union bartenders had much incentive to support the hotel operators in their successful bid to restrict beer sales to hotel parlours. Local 676 became one the strongest defenders of the hotel monopoly, and ta a large extent workers linked their fortunes with those of their parlour employers.
a Robert A. Campbell, a frnm Prohibition... t~ tian (Ottawa: Carleîon University Press, 19911, 23; HRCEBU-UBC, Box 4, Minute Book July 1914 to December 1918: 17 April 1918, 23 Jdy 1918. 59
Structural conflict did not disappear, but it was sometimes
difficult to see. 9
Beer parlour regulation required different work
processes from saloons. The primary responsibilities of the
man behind the counter were pulling beer, hooking-up kegs,
and minding the till. His other duties were oriented to
patron regulation, such as preventing crossovers. Still, the
counter worker was not a bartender in a style of the old
saloon, and the collective agreement acknowledged this
dif ference with the title of "tapman.
Moreover, since bar service was prohibited, parlours had an increased requirement for waiters. They bridged the distance between customers and taprnen. Waiters had the
initial responsibility of deciding if patrons were over twenty-one years, non-aboriginal, sober, and located on the correct side of the parlour. Waiters were supposed to take
9Weldon to Premier, 18 October 1922, BCA, GR.1323, B2199 (quote); Campbell to Manson, 31 December 1924, BCA, GRl323, B2204.
10 y.-, 28 July 1934, p.31; Kennedy to Maitland, 3 June 1942, Attorney General Files, Records Management Branch (RMB), Reel 618; "Minimum Scale of Wages of the Beer Parlors," BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 199. Some hotels employed ncombinationfrworkers who both pulled and served beer, orders and place them at the bar. Yet they often bought a tray of beer from the taprnan and sold it on demand, which the inspectors conaidered pushing beer. While a waiter had the most contact with abusive customers, he also had more opportunity for sociability, even if officially he could not accept tips. Monitoring tipping was very difficult, but its prohibition from the beginning was a warning to waiters not to encourage excessive consumption and thus increased income through tips .11
Working in a busy parlour was physically demanding, particularly for the waiters. A consultant hired by the hotels in 1957 to estimate potential profitability calculated that one taprnan could senrice six waiters. If he worked at his theoretical maximum, he would pull 1,800 glasses an hour, or one glass every two seconds. The consultant also concluded that a waiter could oversee nine tables, and theoretically he could make fifteen rounds per hour and serve 300 glasses of beer. Until the 1950s the standard full beer tray held twenty glasses, which, according to the union, weighed 22% pounds.
11On pushing beer see, Bruce to Director, 18 April 1953, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-362; LCB Fourth AR (1925), J67 (tips). 61
In an hour, then, a waiter might carry nearly 340 pounds of beer in glasses. The consultant admitted that bis calculations might not be "humanly possible." Even at a fraction of these rates, though, a busy waiter would be run off his feet. As a result, many waiters aspired to be tapmen.
The work was less physically challenging and the pay was better .12
Parlour workers operated under a master collective agreement negotiated between Local 676 and the BCHA. For the union the strongest article of the agreement was its closed- shop provision, which offered some workers' control.
Technically, parlours could only hire workers dispatched from the union office. The closed-shop was not water-tight and was violated by both operators and workers. Yet the union keenly defended it, and judging from the occasional flare-ups over the issue at union meetings, so did most members. Once a man achieved the status of *steadyM at a hotel, he no longer had
It The consultant's report was prepared by John M. Rienstra an economist for Joseph P, Ward & Associates, 19 June L957, see, Attorney Generalrs Files, RMB, Reel 509, 7- (quote)-8; tray weights, Local 676 to McGugan, 9 July 1952, AG Files, RMB, Reel 371, file L217-2, 1951- 62
to deal with the union dispatcher. Casual men were the ones
commonly sent from the union office. iu
Seeking more control over hiring, the BCHA tried to
eliminate the closed-shop provision. In a brief to a 1953
Conciliation Board, the BCHA argued that the closed shop had
"proved very unsatisfactory to the Employer." The Association
claimed that the union often sent workers who were ignorant
of the regulations and engaged "in the nefarioris trade of
taking bets on duty, drinking on duty, smoking on duty, al1
of which is [sicl contrary to regulations." Drinking on duty
had long been a concern of the BCHA because of pressure from
the LCB and complaints from operators, The exasperated
manager of the Anchor Hotel in 1951 blamed a spare waiter for
his parlourfs latest incident of tirinking on duty. In a postscript to a formal explanation to the LCB he scribbled:
"We cal1 the Bev. Dispensers Union nearLy every day for
U For a good description of how dispatching worked see the minutes of the 31 October 1954 meeting of local 676, HRCEBU-UBC, Box 6, Minute Book, May 1952 to February 1955, One man worked at 16 hotels in four years before he got a steady job at the Manitoba Hotel, See BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-342, waiters and have never or hardly ever been sent efficient
Help .d4
Spare workers were easy and comrnon targets, but the union executive also was concerned about drinking, since it jeoparàized the closed ehop. After a tapman was caught
ârinking at the Regent in 1948, the unionfs business agent discretely informed the LCB that he had been called to the hotel many times to check on employee drinking. According to union records the Regent went through twenty-nine men in less than a month in search of crew that would not drink on the job. He suggested that the govemment take action and fine the individuals. The Board's Chief Inspecter eschewed more state authority and told the union that it should regulate its own members by putting offenders "before a disciplinary
Board of the Union and f ining them acc~rdingly."~~
14Brief Submitted to Conciliation Board Hearing Re Local 676 by the British Columbia Hotels Association, 18 May 1953, HRCEBU-CVA, Vol 2, File I (first and second quotes) ; BCHA to Members, 24 September 1937, BCA GR770, Box 5, File 199; Hume to Haywood, 4 July 1951, GR52, Box 7, File 121-321 (3rd quote) .
l5Mills to Haywood, 18 August 1948, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-357; Haywood to Mills, 19 August 1948, ibid. (quote). The executive assumed responsibility for punishing delinquent members, but drinking at the union office, during union meetings, and before or on the job remained vexing problems for the leadership. In 1958 the local supported an executive recommendation to create a trial committee to deal with various infractions. Members could be fined, suspended, or both, and a suspended member could not work. The local later prepared a list of rules that were to guide the behaviour of those sent by the dispatcher. Men could be disciplined by the union if they drank on the job, or, for that matter, gained employment \'without being dispatched from the Union office." In 1965 two mernbers of the executive secretly met with Attorney General Robert Borner. According to him, they said that the collective agreement bound them to dispatch men, even though their \8performance, by reason of their taste for liquor, is going ta be unsatisfactory." The
Attorney General told LCB Chairman that the union sought LCB assistance Vo police their ~hop."'~
16 See =CEBU-UBC, Box 1, Minute Book January 1955 to July 1964: 30 August 1955, 8 January 1957, 8 December 1957, 14 March 1958, 27 August 1958; <\Rulesof Registration of Bevesage Dispensers Union, Local 676, n. d. [1958?] , HRCEBU- CVA, Vol - 2, File 2 (1st quote) ; Bonner ta McGugan, 31 August 1965, Attorney Genera18s Files, RMB, Reel 617 (2nd quote). 65
S. Warkws. the
Officially the LCB granted licences to individuals, partnerships, or corporations, not specifically to hotels.
Parlour operators rarely owned the hotels in which the parlours were located and in many cases did not even manage the hotel rooms. Hotel owners who received sufficient rent from parlour operators often showed little interest in the room rentals. As a consequence some hotels were that more in name only, despite the unwritten regulation that parlours be part of hotels. Only in 1947 did the LCB receive statutory authority to force parlour operators to gain control over general hotel operations in order to raise standards. At the time nineteen hotels had their rooms leased to people not connected with the parlours. Çeven years later, when the new liquor act came into effect, the rooms of thirteen hotels were still not under the control of parlour operators. 17
The working world of operators and workexs was predominately but certainly not exclusively masculine. Some
17 Campbell to Manson, 31 December 1924, BCA, GR1323, B2204; Ke~ethCampbell, "A Tribute to Pioneer Members ...", Cowia Hote- 20 (Sept. -0ct. 1958) : 6, 8; British Columbia, Sf;atut=, 1947, c - 53 PGavernment Liquor Act Amendment Act, 1947"), s, 11; The separate room leases were calculated from the GR52 LCB Inspecter files. women, like Mrs. Rose Low, held beer licences. Low opened the
Empire Hotel parlour on East Hastings in 1925 and rernained
there until 1931. She moved on to the Martinique Hotel and in
1935 served on the executive of the BCHn. By 1938 she was the
licensee of the Clarence Hotel. In 1948 Mary Rosen became the
sole licence holder of the Stratford parlour after buying out her male partner. As well, in 1948 Mrs. N. Fabri and Miss 1.
Anderlini were the sole directors of the Europe Hotel. These cases were unusual only in that these women were the sole licensees. By the 1940s almost al1 beer parlours were small, private corporations, and between 1948 and 1954 women served as directors in at least 24 Vancouver parlours. A few hotel buildings were owned or CO-owned by women, and some had their room operations leased to women. f 8
While the regulations generally banned female parlour workers, a woman who was part of the parlour business couid work on the premises. Yet even in those parlours in which
L8On Rose Low see BCA, GR770, Box 13, File 2; 1935 BCWA letter head. ibid., Box 5, File 199; provbre, 23 February 1940, pll; on Mary Rosen see BCA, GR48, Box 15, File 2; on Europe Hotel see 1948 Inspectorrs Hotel Report, GR52, Box 8, File 121-330. The sources for the references to directors, owners and room managers are the LCB Inspector files. Six hotels had women listed as owners or CO-owners and £ive as room managers, women were the sole licence holders, their names do not appear on the lists of people who regularly handled beer. In a 1961 conciliation brief, Local 676 made reference to 'one case in point where an operator works, and has his wife also take part in the operation, . . . thus displacing a bartender and a waiter." This example, however, was the exception not the rule. The only women who were regularly employed in
Vancouver parlours were janitors, and they generally worked when parlours were closed. Outside Vancouver wornen servers were more common, but they tended to be part of family-run operations. As well, interior hotels did not have the high provincial profile as those in Vancouver, and not al1 were under collective agreements. Gendered constructions of decency obviously affected parlour operators as well as patrons and workers. Yet these examples show the cornplex process of defining and enforcing decency. Depending on how one ordered reality, "woman semer" could mean a threat to unionized male labour, a method to reduce costs, or a symbol
19 of family and community in a srnall tom,
"Wrief submitted on behalf of: Beverage Dispensers Local 676 . . . ," ERCEBU-CVA, VOL 2, File 1, p.6; on women servers in interior hotels see, for example, Skeena Hotel (Terrace), BCA, GR.52, Box 7, File 121-294; Grandview Hotel Class divisions separated workers from parlour operators. Operators were entrepreneurs who tried to maximize tkeir profits, while workers were unionized employees who aought to improve their wages and conditions and exert some control over their working lives. Every year or two the conflict was resurrected, at least rhetorically, in the negotiations between the BCHA and Local 676. The class divide was real but not fixed. some employees, especially tapmen, served as parlour managers with the authority to hire and fire. Some employees became operators. Even more important on a daily basis, some operators, particularly in the smaller hotels, worked in the parleurs, usually behind the bar. Local
676 was constantly trying to restrict the number of operators who could work in the parlour. In 1953 the union's business agent informed the LCB that if an operator was allowed to work in a parlour "the ultimate result could be an Union ernployee out of a job ."'O
(South Hazelton), ibid-, File 121-293; New Lytton Hotel (Lytton), ibid, , File 121-301,
20See Inspecter files (BCA GR521 for Manitoba, Dufferin, Lotus, New Empire, Dominion, Kingston, Pacific, and Ivanhoe Kotels; Beddome to McGugan, 3 August 1953, GR52, Box 8, File 121-327 (quote). A. J. "Jack" Galloway is a particularly interestkg, if unusual, case- From 1937 to 1951 he was manager and bartender at the Belmont, except for his time in Sometimes operators invoked class to explain conditions in their parlours. In 1953 the operator of the New Empire said his parlour had problems because "the clientel [sic] in our district consists of loggers and miners and zt times are hard to handle. . . ." Yet justifications based on class occasionally went in the other direction, too. in a lotter supporting the application of the Devonshire Hotel for a beer licence, T.E. Chester of the Hotel Vancouver said patrons of
Y irst -class hotelsN were not ~accustomedwto "the surroundings provided by the majority of licensed premises."
Hence, upscale hotels like the Devonshire and the Vancouver needed their own beer licences, so their customers could avoid working-class parlours and patrons. 22
war service. In 1952 he sought to become a director of the Dominion Hotel, and later that year he was elected President of Local 676, a post he held a couple of times in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, while still on the 676 executive, he started a controversial bar school as a private enterprise that was closely linked with the union. See Haywood to Chief Constable, 30 April 1952, GR52, Box 8, File 121-327; HRCEBU- WC, Box 6, Minute Book, May 1952 to February 1955: 30 November 1952; Box 1, ~inuteBook, January 1955 to Jdy 1964: 8 December 1957, 30 June 1963; Box 7, Minute Book, January 1958 to January 1974: 1962 minutes, passim.
2farandolini to Haywood, 24 April 1953. BCA, GR52, Box 8, File 121-329; Chester to LCB, 10 February 1936, GR1323, B2308. 70
Liquor inspectors also walked through parlour doors with
expectations grounded in class. Only rarely, though, were
these expressed in overt political terms. For example, in
1952 an undercover agent in the St. Helena Hotel \"noticed three men circulating among patrons a petition sponsored by the Communist Party . . . against an increase in bus fares."
He concluded his report with \\nootherinfractions were observed." Three days later an inspector met with the operator to discuss the petition, His concern was the presence of Communists not the bus £are increase as this issue later was taken up by the respectable Vancouver Council of Women .2 2
More commonly, class was linked to behavioural expectations. In most parlours inspectors were always prepared for a rough crowd, and they seemed surprised when they did net find trouble. After touring the Melbourne Hotel in February 1928 an inspector commented that \'considering
22 [Agent] to Chief Inspecter, 3 February 1952, BCA, GRS2, Box 9, File 121-359 (quotes); Pettit to Supervisor, 6 Febxuary 1952, ibid. On the VCWrs conceni about bus fares see University of British Columbia, Special Collections and University Archives Division, Vancouver Council of Women, (VCW-Il9C) , Box 9, File 4, Committee of Off icers Meeting, 24 August 1954. 71 that this premises caters largely to the Longshoremen trade and Fiehermen, the patronage is kept pretty well in hand. . . A quarter of a century later these sentimerts were echoed in an inspectorts tour of six downtown eastside hotele: "considering the influx of loggers and construction men . . . at this time of year for the Christmas Holidays, conditions were fairly orderly throughout the east end of the city.
More typical, at hast in terms of expectations, was the description of the New Fountain in 1951: '1 arrived to see a fight started in the Men's section . . . [sicl in which one of the participants was being kicked across the floor." The inspector asked the manager if he intended to stop the fight and recorded the manager's reply as, "Weil!, that's nothing, that goes on al1 the tirne." When the inspector pulled out his identity card, the manager \'immediately jumped in to quiet the gang down .""
23 Miller ta Hase, 8 February 1928, BCA, GR770, Box 12, File 12; Bruce to Director, 15 December 1952, GR52, Box 8, File 121-326.
24Lythgoe to Chief Inspector, 24 June 1951, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-349 (New Fountain); see also Chief Inspector to Chairman 15 January 1949, GR52, Box 9, File 121-366- The inspectors also tried to enforce the ban against games, dancing, and music, including singing, al1 of which officiais believed encouraged a saloon-like atmosphere and excessive camaraderie. Singing caused the most problems for the Board because patrons' voices were difficult to regulate, and some operators condoned it. A convivial atmosphere with thirst-inspiring songs could. enhance beer sales. Usually parlour operators were just warned about singing, but in
March 1951 an inspecter stood on the sidewalk outside the
Dominion Hotel on Abbott Street and observed:
. . . mass singing by the patrons in the ladies's section of the licensed premises, the leader apparently being Mr. [E.M.], licensee, who had a megaphone and was moving from one table to another. At intervals he handed the megaphone to the patrons, who continued to sing. 2s
Accordin2 to the Chief Insoector, the operator claimed he only used the megaphone for calling customers to the telephone, and "when questioned in regard to patrons singing through it, he stated, 'They took it away from me.'" The LCB took his licence away for ten days. The BCHA posted signs in parlours that warned patrons about singing and playing
25 Chief Inspecter to Chairman, 27 March 1951, BCA, GR0052, Box 8, File 121-327. musical instruments. Yet with ingenuity and defiance
customers still sang, sometimes with the assistance of
operators,26
While operators and workers were divided by class
relations, they were entwined in a regulatory world that
often enhanced a closer relationship. During the period under
study, the LCB confined parlours to the cityrs downtown.
Parlour opponents were particularly keen that no licensed
hotels be allowed in the more respectable residential areas
south of False Creek. Greg Marquis has argued that in
Vancouver "the entire downtown was a segregated district,
insulating the more cornfortable working- and middle-class
residential areas from disreputable behaviour." His study of
gambling, prostitution, and illegal liquor concluded that the
26 fbid. (quotes); Secretary to Dominian Holdings, 28 March 1951, ibid,; BCHA notice is from GR0770, Box 5, File 199. For other examples of singing see the list of notations for the Yale Hotel ( GR0052, Box 9, File 121-367), the West Hotel (Box 9, File 121-366) , the Anchor Hotel (Box 7, File 121-310) and Marr Hotel (Box 8, File 121-335). Music initially caught the authorities off guard. The original regulations only banned games, sports, and dancing. Music and musical instruments were explicitly prohibited the next year, See FC'R Fom-th ((1925), 567 and Pifth (1926), 067. On pub swing as a fonn of popular radicalism, see Ionverth Prothero, RadicalArtrsms Wdand- (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 290-8. police and civic justice establishment were committed to managing Vancouver Vice," not eliminating it. The police knew that the underworld was "essential to Vancouverfs racial and class relationsfw as it catered to the needs of the working-class, the large Chinese community, and provided many jobs as well as civic revenue from fines. Despite what the press and reformers said, Marquis suggested that no consensus existed on vice, so the police and courts had an ongoing negotiation with it. In beer parlours this negotiation can be seen at work in the regulation of violence and bookmaking.2 7
Violence in beer parlours primarily consisted of fights among patrons, between patrons and workers, and between patrons and operators. Although the inspectors did not always identify gender, fights most commonly involved men against men. Yet it was not exceptional for women ta be involved. In one incident an undercover agent used a punctuation mark to express his disdain for a victorious woman: "one lady ?
27 Greg Marquis, nVancouver Vice: The Police and the Negotiation of Moraiity, 1904-1935,11in ~ssav~s~o~. . of,Vol. 6: The -stow of Brrtlçh , ed- John McLaren and Hamar Foster. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 267. striking her boyfriend, giving him a bloody noee." Not
surprisingly, the Board showed the most interest in fights
that were captured in the press or attended by police. One
incident involved an off-duty police officer at the Anchor
Hotel in 1953. The inspector reported that "Mrs.[A] had
thrown a beer glass at her husband and had hit a lady, Mrs.
[W] who was sitting at an adjoining table on the forehead,
which resulted in Mr. [W] getting up and calling Mrs. [A] a
name and giving her a slap." The police were called but took
no action, perhaps because Mr. W. was a police officer. When
the inspector tried to interview him, he was told the officer
was on vacation and had "apparently left the city.~'~
Encounters between patrons and workers or operators rnost
often were a result of patrons being ejected. The
consequences could be tragic. In 1948 the operator of the New
Empire parlour was charged with manslaughter after he struck
a patron who had interfered with an ejection. The operator
2 8 [Agent] to Chief Inspecter 15 March 1949, BCA, GRS2, Box 9, File 121-366 (bloody nose) ; Bruce to Director, 18 August 1953, GRS2, Box 7, File 121-310 (Anchor). On investigations sparked by newspaper accounts see, for example, Pettit to Director 20 June 1952. Box 7, File 121-316 and Pettit to Supervisor, 29 May 1952. Box 9, File 121-364; Bruce to Director, 7 April 1953. Box 8, File 121-340. 76
was acquitted. A similar incident occurred in 1953 when a man
died after being tossed from the St. Regis by a waiter. The
waiter was charged, but the charge was dismissed for lack of
evidence. 29
Deaths were exceptional in beer parleurs, and in general
the LCB expected operators and workers to control violence.
After a 1952 encounter at the Columbia Hotel in which a man
who tried to hit his wife and in turn had his jaw broken by
another man, the inspector concluded the parlour needed a
flooman "to keep better supervision as this hotel is
situated in a very tough part of tom." After a complex
incident at the Stanley Hotel the same year that involved a
woman pulling the hair of a doorman who was pushing her
husband, the operator asked the inspector what he should do.
The inspector replied that 'it was strictly a matter between
himself and the grieved party. v30
29 Chief Constable to Chief Inspecter, 7 July 1948, and list of notations, BCA, GR52, Box 8, File 121-329 (New Empire); list of notations for St. Regis, Box 9, File 121- 360. See also list of notations for Stanley, Box 9, File 121- 362,
30~ettitto Director, 4 August 1952, BCA, GR52, Box 8, File 121-323 (Columbia); Bruce to Director, 7 October 1952, Box 9, File 121-362 (Stanley). 77
The burden of regulating violence fell on the shoulders of waiters because they had the most direct contact with customers and because doormen and floormen came from their ranks. Local 676 told a conciliation board that employees deserved compensation for damaged clothing as a result of
"additional duties." Those duties included "stopping fights in licensed premises and . . . ejecting drunks and undesirables. Many a time our people wind up getting the worst of it, such as a black eye, or our clothing torn off."
Sornetimes they suffered even more. For example, in 1952 two waiters were beaten up after work outside the Princeton
Hotel. The parlour manager asked one waiter to lay charges against his assailant, and when the waiter refused, he fired him- The inspector simply submitted this report "for information purpases," and the chief inspector said "no further action will be ta ken.^"
Regulating violence put high expectations on waiters.
The first edition of the Local 676 handbook in 1949 contained
"%rie£ submitted on behalf of : Beverage Dispensers Local 676 . . ." EIRCEBU-CVA, Vol 2, File 1, p. 2 (quote) ; Bruce to Director 29 October 1952, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-3 55. The chie£ inspectorrs response is hand-written on this merno - a section on Vudo For Self Defence," which claimed that
"judo is an ideal sport for waiters." With judo a waiter could "handie any rowdyM without causing pain and with a
"minimum of fuss or disturbance." They were cautioned that the purpose of judo was to "keep the situation in hand--not drive away b~siness.'~Waiters had to know when to act, against whom, how much force to use, and when ta involve the authorities. How willingly waiters engaged in regulating violence is an open question, but their union accepted that role for them. 32
The LCB took a different approach to regulating gambling, especially placing illegal bets on horse racing, or bookmaking. Bettkg away from the track was illegal, but it was one of the most cornman vices in the city. In some cases bookmakers worked out af beer parleurs, while others relied on nrunnersm to gather bets in parleurs, The LCB worked closely with the police and the BCHA to suppress bookmaking.
=ter the Second World War the LCB took an even keener interest because the authorities became increasingly concerned that some operators and employees were actively engaged in bookmaking. In a 1948 letter the Chief Inspector
informed the Chief of Police:
The wholr matter of bookmaking has been fully discussed with the hotelmen and the Board, and it is felt that in many instances it is impossible to stop -ers operating in beer parlours- In many cases, the licensees are unaware that their staffs are working in collusion with bookmakers or runners. There are, of course, several instances where this element is more or less welcomed for the purposes of drumrning up trade, 3 3
While complaints about bookmaking involved at least a
dozen hotel parlours, the police and LCB were particularly
concerned about a handful, The one that attracted the most
attention was the Lotus Hotel on Abbott Street, In 1946 the police informed the LCB that they had received complaints
about bookmaking at the Lotus. On two occasions when police entered the parlour \'a waiter has been heard to shout an alarm or warning," and "during the past rnonth a 'look-outr
3 3 Marquis, \'Vancouver Vice," 246-7; Kaywood to Mulligan, 22 November 1948, BCA, GR52, Box 8, File 121-329 (quote), The Wef Inspectorrs concern about s~collusionwith bookmakers" was more justified than he may have realized. Walter Mulligan, Vancouver Chief of Police since 1947, was removed from his office in Octobes 1956- His departure was just before he was to appear before a public inquiry commission that examined allegations that the Chief had been accepting bribes from bookmakers for years, See Ian Macdonald and Betty OrKeef e, fMullicrari4f£airrb~ (Surrey, BC: Heritage House, L997), 11-14, 129-30. man has been standing in the doorway. . ." The police
claimed the majority of customers were reading racing
literature, and a bookmaker was "working with consent and
approval of the management." In October 1948 John Moffat, who
was not an employee, was convicted of bookmaking, and a few
days later the Lotus had its beer licence suspended for ten
days .34
Moffat was active again at the Lotus in 1950, and
bookmaking reports flowed in from the LCBfs undercover agent.
Moffat recorded bets on the back on a cigarette case, so he
could quickly rub them off if need be. In July 1951 he was
convicted of bookmaking after he took bets from two police officers in plain clothes. The Chief Inspector concluded that
"the bookmaker and his runner were known not only to the management, but also to the staff." A few days after the conviction the Lotus again had its licence suspended. 3s
-- 3 4 Corbett to Secretary 3 September 1946, BCA, GR52, Box 8, File 121-340 (quotes); Haywood to Chaiman, 24 Septernber 1952, ibid.
35 Newspaper clippings, 7 July 1951, BCA, GRSS, Box 8, File 121-340; Haywood to Chairman, 24 September 1952, ibid, (quote) - Even when parlours were not temporarily closed, the regulation of bookmaking could have serious consequences for workers and patrons. After a man was convicted of bookmaking in the Abbotsford in 1948 and a warning letter was sent £rom the LCB to the manager, a waiter was fired, Mrs. 1.R. wrote the LCB in 1950 to cornplain she had been refused service in the Royal because the operator accused her of "taking bets on the horse races while in there." No one actually saw her making book, but the operator claimed she had a bookmaker friend. She admitted that she liked ta bet legally at the track and read the racing form over a beer in the Royal. The inspecter concluded that the operator was wisely cautious as he "was making every effort to eliminate al1 possible suspects, refusing service, as in this instance. w36
LCB officials never expected to eliminate bookmaking from Vancouver parlours, just as they knew some fighting would always occur. Leaving parlours to regulate violence may have been an acknowledgement on the part of the authorities that it was best not to contest what it could not contxol. At
'%ee list of notations, Abbotsford Hotel, BCA, GR52, Box 7, File 121-307; R. to LCB, 11 September 1950, ibid., Box 9, File 121-358 (1st quote) ; Kimberly to Chief Inspecter, 18 September 1950, ibid. (2nd quote) . the same time, however, as long as violence did not attract
too much police or press attention, its main impact was on
those involved. Parlour workers, especially waiters, carried
the burden of regulating the fights that laxgely occurred
within the working class.
Bookmaking was different because the LCB believed, and
could marshal some evidence, that workers and employers
together were engaged in it. As troubling as the LCB rnight
have found this cross-class alliance in deviance, even more
important was that bookmakers provided a link between the
parlours and the cityrs underworld. Bookmaking had more
potential than fighting to undermine official authority. in
parlours al1 forms of gaming were illegal, even those that
did not involved betting. The LCB did not concentrate on the patrons who illegally played poker. but rather the gambling
that moved people in and out of parlours and made the broader
connections with crime. As Marquis suggests, regulating vice was a negotiated process, but it was not always negotiated in
the same way. 37
3 7A final card, if not played here, at least should be dealt: race, especially the historic association of Chinese with gambling. While race may have provided a subtext, the LCB had other, more explicit, concerns about maintaining its regulatory authority. Race is the emphasis of Chapter Four. During the Second World War parlours experienced a shortage of beer because of rationing and a growing population. In response some parlours poured short glasses of beer, and that action provoked a howl of protest from patrons. Labour, the parlours, and the LCB al1 emphasized the gender and particularly the class dimensions of the shortage, which also underscored the complexities and limits of state regulation.
Especially outside of British Columbia, temperance support increased during the war because dry leaders again were able to partially tie their cause to wartime efficiency and productivity. At its May 1940 annual convention the
British Columbia Temperance League (BCTL) urged the provincial govelnment to close "al1 beer saloons and places of public liquor treating and drinking during the war."
Linking parlours to "saloonsw and "treatingrr summoned images of the pre-prohibition bars during the First World War- In
October 1941 the Canadian Temperance Federation lobbied the federal cabinet to invoke the War Measures Act to stop "the sale of alcoholic beverages in taverns, beer-rooms, wine shops, etc." ks measured by polls, public opinion became more sympathetic to the temperance message particularly as the war worsened in 1942. That December the federal government reduced the quantity of beer available for sale and asked provinces to reduce the hours of retail sale.38
Even before the federal government acted against beer, the hotels had launched a campaign to defend parleurs. In a brief to the provincial Attorney General, the BCHA described the beer parlour as 'a workmenfs club," similar to a British pub. As a low-alcohol, "pure and uncontaminated product," beer caused no harm. In fact, beer drinking could actually help improve wartime efficiency by maintaining worker morale.
The BCHA also warned that "particularly among workers," there was 'irritation with regulations which they do not understand and the necessity for which as a war measure is not apparent." The Hotel Association of Canada expressed similar sentiments. It claimed that the British government had found
--- 38 VI-, 14 May 1940, p. 18 (1st quote) ; Thorson to Hart, 12 January 1942, Attorney General' s Files, RMB, Reel 371 (2nd quote) ; provm, 24 September 1942 p. 3 (polls), 17 December 1942, p.8. The Vancouver Council of Women, led by the WCTU, launched its campaign against liquor and public drinking almost as soon as the war began. See, for example, VCW-UBC, Box 8, File 3 (2 October 1939) and File 5 (5 May 1941) - that "by actual tests, that the workman produces more goods when his drinking habits are not interfered with by legislation. *39
The provincial government, however, adopted general liquor rationing before the federal government. The British
Columbia government was minimally influenced by temperance pressure, but the more immediate concern was dwindling liquor supplies and a rapidly growing wartime population. fn
November 1942 the government announced that beer parlour hours would be reduced from thirteen to eleven each day. The
LCE! also imposed a one-hour supper-tirne closing. The purpose of the recess was to encourage drinkers to go home and stay there. The LCB chairman informed the Secretary of the BCTL that "while we cannot be accused of denying the working man his right to beer if he so desires, nevertheless it [supper- hour closing] will be the rneans of breaking up the period of drinking. . . ." Early in 1943, as a result of the imposed federal Iimits, the province restricted parlours to eighty per cent of the beer sold the previous year. Parlour hours
3 9 BCHA to Attorney General, 3 October 1942, BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 199; Hotel Association of Canada to L-R- LaFleche, 26 October 1942, ibid. were further reduced to eight: 2:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M. and then 7:00 P.M. to 11:OO P.M.~'
Organized labour reacted harshly to beer restrictions, and unions and trades councils fired off complaint letters to the LCB about the beer shortage. In February 1943 the
Vancouver and District Labour Council (V&DLC), successor to the VTLC, endorsed a resolution that claimed beer restrictions were 'a clear ruling leading to class distinction. The working man needs and looks forward to his beer and in most cases does not want and cannot afford to buy hard liquor on a workerrs pay.', The next month the Council went further and protested the restrictions ". . . in a world run amock [sic] over who shall own and control the surplus values produced by the working class." The Council stopped short of supporting a "No Beer No BondsU proposal, which would have meant that unless more beer were made available, workers would not buy war bonds. 41
40 v-, 23 December 1942, p.11 (poli), 28 November 1942, p. 1-2 (rationhg1 ; Kennedy to McIntyre 3 Dec , 1942, BCA, GR770, Box 2, File 126-1 (quote); Kennedy to Belton 23 February 1943, ibid., Box 4, File 162; "Various Steps Taken-- Restrictions on Sale of Liquor, " ibid-
4kennedy to Belton 23 February 1943, BCA, GR770, Box 4, File 162; V&DLC-WC, Minute Book 1940-1946: 16 February 1943 (1st quote). 2 March 1943 (2nd quote) , 6 ~pril1943. The beer shortage in British Columbia also became an
issue at the Canadian Congress of Labour convention in Quebec in September 1943. Vancouver delegates claimed that it was often impossible to get a beer after "six or seven orclock in the evening," as parlours often quickly sold their daily allocation. A resolution passed by the convention emphasized that if "essential war workers" had more beer, Wtorale and production brought about by these workers would be greatly increased. "42
The shortage of beer inspired more specific concerns about the decreasing amount in each glass. Workers complained of short glasses caused by too much head, or foam. Contained in short glasses were operatorsr concerns about profit. Both levels of govemment increased the taxes on beer during the war. While the breweries initially absorbed some of the burden, most was passed on to the beer parlours, but operators were not allowed to raise the retail price.
Operators reacted in two ways. First, they reduced the size
4 %niversity of British Columbia Library, Special Collections and University Archives Division, International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (Canada) Box 6, Folder 3, Resolution 233; Victoria wst,r5 January 1944. of the glasses. The LCB did not legally require a specific
size, but since the 1930s it and the BCHA generally had agreed to eight ounces. During the war the typical glass shrank to 7.25 ounces, with tacit Board approval. Second, some operators told their tapmen to pour less beer and more foam, a task easily accomplished by varying the angle of the glass while pouring. 43
Short service became an increasingly common complaint.
In July 1943 the VkDLC executive met with the Secretary of the BCHA who told the labour leaders that the hotels considered the problem "a serious matter." He later sent the labour council a copy of a special warning to BCHA members about short service. Yet the BCHA had little impact on some of its members as by April 1944 the LCB was flooaed with cornplaints from workers who condemned more head than beer.
The Board told the BCHA that it simply must stop short service. The BCAA Secretary again informed his members that
"the working man . . . is entitled to his full glass of beer, as is everyone of our customers." By May the Enforcernent
43J3~wnm, 86-87 (price increases) ; V&DLC-WC, Minute Book 19404946: 16 March 1943; Kennedy to Sloan, 2 August 1934, BCA, GRl323, B2311; Neely to Bonner, 7 October 1957, Attorney Generalts Files, RMB, Reel 449. 89
Council of the federal Wartime Prices and Tirade Board had
taken an interest in short service as a possible violation of
price controls. The LCB informed federal authorities that it
had "no objections whatever to your organization prosecuting
in any case where it is justified. . . .~44
When the BCHA received this information, its President
called a meeting of the member hotels from Vancouver and neighbouring municipalities. The meeting agreed that short
service was "the most serious situation that has ever confronted the hotelmen since beer by the glass was
inaugurated." The President claimed rogue members would
"wreck the industry by serving a short glass of beer." The
BCHA then hired its own inspector to police the hotels. The organization8s Secretary rerninded members that federal price regulators also had inspectors, and a conviction would bring not only a fine and jail sentence, but "an indefinite suspension of the license by the Liquor Control ~oard.""
- *%v~J)Lc-WC, Minute Book 1940-1946: 16 March 1943, 20 July 1943 (1st quote), 21 September 1943; Kahn to Members, 12 April 1944, BCA, GR770, Box 5 File 199 (2nd quote) ; Kennedy to Brazier, 29 May 1944, ibid. (3rd quote) .
45Kahn to Members, 10 June 1944, BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 199 (1st and 2nd quotes) ; Kahn to Members, 27 June 1944, ibid- (3rd quote) . While the beer shortage was most severe in British
Columbia, short service was not confined to the province.
With liqrior still rationed in 1946, the national association
of liquor control boards agreed that the only solution was to
mark each glass with a fil1 line. After 1 June 1946 British
Columbia parlours could use only glasses with what was dubbed
a "Plimsoll Line" by the Victoria Col-. The eight-ounce
glass was suppose to yield no less than 6.5 ounces of beer,
or a glass could contain up to twenty per cent foam. From a patron's point of view, the fil1 line had entrenched short
service. The line usually marked the maximum rather than the minimum amount of beer in the glass. Not long after liquor rationing ended in 1947, the Board allowed the parlours to dispense with tide lines, although many parlours kept them.
Short senrice never again acquired the intensity that it had during the war, but it remained one of the more common cornplaints against parlours. 46
46Kennedy to Maitland 19 February 1946, Attorney Generalrs Files, RMB, Reel 371; -, 6 April 1946; BCHA to Bonner 5 December 1953, AG Files, RMB, Reel 449. Samuel Plirnsoll was a Yorkshire brewery manager who, as an MP for Derby in the 1870s, was credited with the regulation that required merchant ships to have clearly marked limit lines on the hull to prevent, ironically in the context of beer, overloading- See "Samuel Plimsoll, M.P,* Cl*, ~http://www.plimsoll.com/history.html~ (22 May 1998). 91
Al1 those involved constructed short service in explicit
gender and class terms. Many rank and file men may not have
understood the theoretical implications of surplus value, but
they knew when they were being cheated. Short service meant
being short-changed. Yet short service was also linked to the
war effort. Working men who were not at the front still took
pride in their contribution. A full glass of beer was the
entitlement of the productive working man who had done his
bit, even if he was not in uniform. A full glass was as much
a qualitative as quantitative measurement, and war workers
would not tolerate the criticism that could be read in beer
foam. As well as value and pride considerations, class
aesthetics also were irnmersed in beer foam. Althaugh his
specific example came front New York City, a Vancouver brewery
representative told the Attorney General after the war that wage workers wanted "a full glass of beer without foam." By
contrast a white-collar drinker "likes to see a good head on his beer-" Those aesthetics, however, were not consistent.
The 1950-51 Local 676 Handbook recommended that tapmen follow
the Plirnsoll guidelines, that is 'a desirable glass of draught beer should include about 20% foam." Beer foam could divide workers as well as unite them. 4 7
In the beer debates at.the VnLC, Local 676 was noticeably absent and silent, which was not surprising since short service pitted parlour workers against workers as customers. ûperators used explicit coercion against parlour workers to pull and serve short glasses. Yet workers also acquiesced to the practice because it could lengtben their paid work day. Casual workers were paid by the hour, and steady warkers technically were guaranteed only four hours work each day. When the beer ran out, parlours closed, as the delegates had noted at the Quebec labour convention. For operators, four hours of operation coincided nicely, too nicely, with the 6:00 P.M. supper recess, which may partly explain why the Board moved it to 6:30 P.M. for Vancouver in
4 8 May 1944.
47 In part this paragraph was inspired by Ava Baron, 'On Looking at Men: Masculinity and. the. Making. .of a Gendered Working-Class History," in -ts Rev~sionmm, ed. Ann-Louise Shapiro (New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, 1994), esp. 157-58; Mackenzie to Borner 28 August 1953, Attorney General's. . Files, RMB, Reel 449 (quote); HRCEBU-UBC, Box 6, Offrcial Haridbaok, 3950 - 195L , p.15; see also provj -, 18 August 1967, p. 19 ,
48 ute es of the Liquor Control Board of British Columbia, Vol. 23 (1944), p-661. On operator coercion see the For the BCHA and the LCB short service was as much about
control as it was about beer. For political reasons the provincial government did not want the price to rise, and the
La had the responsibility to make sure that parlours did not break the rules. The Board, in turn, placed the regulatory burden on the BCHA. Even with its own inspector and additional assistance from federal regulators, the hotel organization could not control recalcitrant members. Such an apparently simple issue as a full glass of beer turned out to be a significant site of regulatory contention.
From the begiming state officials assumed that the beer parlour would be what the press often called the working- man's club. As we shall see in the next chapter, those gender assumptions were mistaken, but beer parlours were predominately working-class institutions. Just as important, state officials defined them as such. State regulation was both informed by class norms, and it attempted to impose more decent norms. Decency was both proscriptive and prescriptive,
While wage workers ürank in parlours, they also worked there. letter frorn a former parlour worker to the attorney general, 14 October 1959, Attorney General Files, RMB, Reel 449. Examining the inside world of parlour workers and operators shows how class interacted with regulation. The Second World
War beer shortage, in particular, offered both a good example of the complex web of regulation and an issue that was centred in the parlours and constructed in tems of class.
We end with that war worker seated at the parlour table, furious that his glass has too much foam and ready to give the waiter a piece of his mind, if not a fist. To understand parlour regulation requires more than simple models of social control or constructions of working-class culture as resistance to the social relations of production. At the same time regulation did not negate those relations. In
Vancouver's beer parlours class still mattered. Chapter Three
Ladies and Escorta: Regulating Gender and Sexuality
In May 1925, the chairman of the British Columbia Liquor
Control Board (LCB) told a reporter that he had considered refusing service to women in the recently opened beer parlours, but, according to the reporter, "this appeared unreasonable and ungallant to the fair sex." In less than a month, though, official gallantry had given way to other concerns, In June the chairman sent a circular to al1 licence holders warning them of "the frequenting of 'Licensed
Premisesl by undesirable women, and the serious difficulties which their presence creates." He added that licence holders
"must take the consequerices of allowing such persons to be upon the premises.lr In the May interview the chairman had said that his goal was to "surround the [beer] traffic with such [a] decent environment that the least passible amount of drunkenness and economic loss may result. . . ." In his mind. the presence of some women now compromiaed the decency of
beer parlours. 1
As we saw in the previous chapter, official beer parlour
regulation was designed to curtail and reshape working-class
sociability. Yet controlling class-based sociability also
meant controlling gender relations. Parlour decency was
informed by and attempted to reinforce dominant noms about
gender and heterosexuality. Regulating decency in part also
meant defining or narning space and the people who occupied
that space. In the end, though, one must again conclude that
rather than imposition and resistance, regulation was based
more on negotiation among a variety of regulatory actors.
At one level, analyzing gender relations and sexuality
in beer parlours offers what appears to be an example of the
social construction of problems. As soon as the parlour doors
opened, state officials and parlour operators defined the
presence of women as a problem and a threat to decency and
public health. Their solution was to isolate unattached women
cDailv31 May 1925, p.1; LCB Tircular Letter No. 172," 12 June 1925, British Columbia Archives (Ba); GR770, Box 5, File 199B. from unattached men and to name many women prostitutes.
Alleged prostitutes were subject to much more rigorous
regulation, especially if they were suspecced of being
infected with venereal disease. Patrons, women and men,
responded with what might be characterized as both
acquiescence and resistance. Unfortunately, this schematic, while accurate, is also a little misleading because it does not show the web-like qualities of regulation.
Despite its almost exclusive jurisdictional authority,
the provincial state certainly was not the only regulator.
From the beginning temperance groups defined the moral limits of regulation as they had successfully discredited a saloon environment. As well, temperance groups retained political clout that influenced regulation. In the 1920s and again during the Second World War parlour operators and liquor officials used gender segregation to blunt criticism of the parlours by temperance forces. The daily press also had regulatoxy influence. Dniike the drys, though, the newspapers supported the parlours. but they were initially critical of the presence of women and promoted "EvelessM parlours, that is parlours for men only. Parlaur operators, both as individual licensees and
members of the British Columbia Hotels Association (BCHA),
also had an impact on the direction of regulation. Some
operators took the formal regulations seriously. Some paid
lip service to them, and a few defied them. Often they acted
from rnixed motives.
For example, operators pushed out alleged prostitutes,
but they did not push too hard. Prostitutes were an
attraction for some customers, and they provided additional
revenue for some hotels from the rental of rooms where prostitutes pursued their trade. Parlours and prostitutes had more of a symbiotic relationship than the operators or LCB
ever would have admitted in public. Official policy dictated
that parlour prostitution would not be tolerated, but in the end the authorities did not have the political will and probably not the power to eliminate it. Instead they helped
regulate it, particularly by monitoring venereal disease.
By the 1930s public health officiais had become more prominent than moral refonners in the anti-venereal caqaign,
Yet, as Claude Quetel notes, tlanti-venereal discourse was not merely medical but moral," In British Columbia medical
regulation was as much moral as it was scientific. Heaith officials blamed female prostitutes for the spread of venereal disease, and they put women who had sex with men in hotels in the same category as prostitutes. Michaela Freud has perceptively argued that in Vancouver "the prostitute came to be seen as the cause of venereal disease, and was constructed as the diseased body, at the same time that the definition of who was a prostitute was extended to a large number of young, single women.' Official figures showed that parlour prostitution was not a serious problem during the
Second World War, but health authorities supported the installation and perpetuation of the partitions. As we shall see, however, liquor and health officials were not always of the same mind as to the best way to control parlour infections. While not openly defiant. the BCEA also took issue with state health authorities over controlling venereal disease .2
Parlour patrons played a particularly active role in gender regulation. They challenged the dominant discourse of
2 . Claude Quetel, -tory of Swu(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1992; originally. . published as de : hj stoire de la sw3 s, Paris : Seghers, 1986) , 192 ; Michaela Freund, "The Politics of Naming : Constructing Prostitutes and Regulating Women in Vancouver,
1939-1945, Ir (M.A. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1995) , 60. decency, especially the separation of unattached men from unattached women. Their success can be measured by both the imaginative ways they side-stepped regulation and the statefs ever increasing physical and policy efforts to control them.
Parlour partitions were both a rnaterial manifestation of decencyfs expectations and a monument to the undermining of them. The patrons' successful challenge can also be read from the continuation of beer parlour venereal infections, although to use \8successful"here seerns dubious.
Liquor and health authorities could not simply decide what was appropriate behaviour in beer parlours, issue the decrees and exercise sanctions. As Nicholas Blomley has argued, law does not simply shape space; space also shapes laws. Space is not simply an external surface upon which law acts. The application of law is an interactive process. Like formal law, parlour regulation was not simply created and then enforced. It was made and negotiated in specific places .3
3 Nicholas Blodey, "Text and Context : rethinking the law-space nexus, " proweqs b Hm13 (1989): 516- 18, 520-21. For women in particular the negotiation was less than a cornplete success. They expanded the boundaries of heterosocial leisure but did not eliminate them. Parlour partitions revealed the gendered, spatial dimensions of decency. For women the partitions were walls. "Fernale" and
"decent" were linked only on the ladies and escorts side.
Even there decency was defined in narrow ways. Unattached women were often defined as or akin to prostitutes. AS
Michaela Freund has noted, naming wornen prostitutes was a powerful political device designed to "control and regulate their sexuality, and not merely the sale of self." A woman who entered a beer parlour by herself risked being treated as prostitute. In many cases women were discouraged from entering parlours at all. Some were simply barred. Despite the open parlour door and the assumption that women, at least decent women, curtailed male excesses, in many ways little had changed. Women, public drinking, and illicit sexuality remained intertwined .'
For men the partitions were more porous as male leisure space embraced female space. Porous, however, did not mean
4 Freund. "The Politics of Namhg," 10 (quote), 78-9. 102
invisible. On the Ladies and Escorts side appropriate male behaviour was tied to the Company of women. On the Men-only side patrons were freer to practice variations of traditional public drinking rituals. Some men saw the partitions as protection as they tried to re-create saloon sociability as best as they could in an institution that was designed to prevent it. Menfs sexuality was also far less regulated than women's. Men were chastised but not condemned for illicit sex, as long as their actions remained heterosexual. S *******
While the achievement of the vote neither conferred real. equality nor fundamentally altered dominant noms, the lives of women did not remain static after the First World War.
Educational opportunities improved, and many middle-class women joined their working-class counterparts in the labour market for a few years between school and marriage. After a daytswork, single women in particular were able to enjoy leisure activities that were now both more commercial and more nheterosocialllin orientation. Men and women together
or a good introduction to knowledge, gender, and space see , Daphne Spain, &&??VIS (Chape1 Hill : University O£ North Carolina Press, 1992), esp. 15-21. went to dance halls, amusement parks, and most of al1 to the movies. As Carolyn Strange has emphasized, refonners were keenly concerned about the moral problem posed by employed single women, especially working-class women. They seerned too independent and too interested in both men and leisure.
Refoxmers feared that comercialized leisure would lure them beyond their wages and into prostitution.6
These concerns were enhanced by the possibility that young women would drink in hotel beer parlours. In the spring of 1925 Quebec and Alberta were the only other provinces that permitted licensed public drinking. Quebec law banned women outright from taverns (the equivalent to beer parlours), and in Aiberta women were barred frorn urban beer parlours. In
British Columbia the only specific gender restriction was that a woman could not serve beer unless she held the
%eronica Strong-Boag, New nay Recâ) 1 ed: Jjves of Cti ris 3919 - 1939 (Markham : Penguin, 1988),. .41; Jean Barman. The,&the West: 4 tom of Br3 ush Colt- (Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1991), 243-244; on the development of heterosocial leisure see, Kathy Peiss, -~mu*ats: w~rkinawaen E& -of - the- (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), especially Chapters One and Three; Carolyn Strange, Totonta'sJ Proha: The Per- tv, 18RO- 1934 (Toronto: UTPr 1995). 10, 17 . 104
licence. Yet the regulations also stated that operators could not allow "persans of a notoriously bad character, or disorderly personsn to enter a beer parlour. This general restriction applied in particular to fernale prostitutes.7
Government officiais and parlour operators feared that the prohibitionists would use the presence of women to dam parlours as havens for prostitutes in search of working-class clientele, According to the Vancouver ~YOV- parlour operators feared "the building up of a considerable prejudice against their refreshment rooms if women are not forbidden entrante." The Attorney General shared some of their concern.
He sought a legal opinion and was advised in May 1925 that
"there is nothing apparent in the law or otherwise to prohibit such a licensee from excluding £rom his prernises any person or class of persons he may consider undesirable (e.g. women) ." The LCB passed on this information to the hotels,
7 James Gray, Theduehep- (Toronto: Macmillan, 1975) , 195; wuver Su, 16 June 1984, Al6. The original beer parlour regulations were published in the h -0rt . . ofZhe r.iauarn+rol Board of tlhe -ce of Bntlsh Cwa(IFO-), (19251, J64-67. and before the end of the month some parlours in Vancouver had posted signs saying that they would not serve women. 8
In April 1926 the Vancouver East Presbytery of the
United Church sent observers to watch Vancouver parlours.
According to them, in an hour one evening, 2396 men and 284 women entered fifty-four beer parlours; on another evening,
766 men and 143 women entered five beer parlours in one hour.
Despite the low numbers of women, the Presbytery passed a resolution Vhat we view with alarm the proportion of women patronizing the beer parlors . . . and we believe that many of the young people of our city are being subjected unnecessarily to temptation in various forms. . . ." At an anti-beer rally in July 1926, J.D. O'Connel1 (dubbed an
"ardent prohibitionistn by the provina) declared "the greatest danger was in the beer parlour, where women are permittedan The province., which supported parlours, also expressed concern about women: "there is no doubt that the presence of women makes it more difficult to conduct beer parlors in a decent and orderly mannes." In order to preserve
- 8 va,6 May 1925 (1st quote); "Memorandum for The Hon. Attorney General," 8 May 1925, BCA, GR1323, B2308 (2nd quote) ; P~ovisce,21 May 1925. P - 1 - 106
the decency of the parlours, the paper recommended that the govemrnent consider excluding women. 9
Prodded by LCB officials, the BCHA voted unanimously in late July 1926 to ban women from Vancouver beer parlours.
President J.D. Pearson announced that "many men objected to the presence of womentHand that the prohibitionists had denounced parlours for admitting women. The parlours acted to remove Vhis chief cause for criticism" because "we have no desire to give the public offense." He added that "no doubt, many women patrons will not appreciate the moveInbut he assured them that they could still buy beer at government liquor stores. The Vancouver questioned the legality of banning women, but the paper still strongly supported the move. An editorial noted that "whatever an odd woman here or there may Say about it, public opinion and particularly that part of it contributed by women, is strongly averse to women frequent ing beer parlors. "'O
9-, 28 April 1926, p.1, 23 July 1926, p.7, 26 March 1926, p. 6 (editorial).
10 vlnce, 30 July 1926, plt 29 Jdy 1926, p.1 (quotes) ; Sun, 31 Jtdy 1926, LCB Scapbooks, Vol. 20, BCA, GR62 (editorial). 107
Initially, the prohibitionists were critical of the ban,
but gender equality was not their primary concern. Speaking
at a meeting of the Anti-Beer league in July, Reverend R.J.
McIntyre, of the British Columbia Prohibition Association,
said the ban represented "the deathbed repentance of the
brewers." He criticized it for violating the idea of equal
rights. More important, he used the decency discourse against
the parlours. He claimed that the ban meant that parlcurs
were unfit for decent women, and they "made a man, for the
tirne being, unfit to associate with his own wife. It was an
admission that beer lowered a man's power to distinguish
between right and wrong, and weakened his resistance to
temptation.If Beer parlours attracted "women of the street"
and "men of like repute." The solution was to ban the beer parlours , not "decent women. 11
At the time the ban was announced, the dry forces were
trying to force another vote on beer parlours in Vancouver.
If they could close the parlours in Vancouver, they believed
the dry cause eventually would be victorious across the province. That goal, more than his assertion about equal
vi.nce, 30 July 1926, p.24- 108
rights, motivated McIntyrels comments. Both drys and wets
realized the importance of Vancouver in the beer parlour
debate. Technically; the ban on women applied only in that
city.12
On 16 August 1926 the Srin announced the opening of
"Eveless Beer ParlorsIt in Vancouver. The temptress had been
removed. In theory, however, the ban against women was voluntary. As a "gentlemenla agreementw among the parlour operators, it worked only so long as everyone agreed to abide by it. In May 1927 the Commercial Hotel began to serve women again. When the police arrived on 25 May, of the approximately 100 patrons twenty nine were women, and "a numberw of them were described as "under the influence of
liq~or.~~The LCB quickly suspended the operatorfs licence.
The chairman claimed the suspension was for serving
inebriated male patrons, but he added that III am determined that persons of questionable character shall not frequent licensed premises, and it is not always possible to guard against this condition if women are permitted." Still, by
vbce, 23 July 1926, p.7; YictoUa 30 JU~Y 1926, LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 20, BCA, GR62. Victoria. the provincial capital, had voted against parlours in 1924. 1927 liquor officiais had corne to the conclusion that the ban was not legally enforceable. The LCB reached a compromise with the Commercial Hotel, which allowed beer service to women in a separate room watched over by a security guard.
Other hotels soon followed suit. The government drafted legislation that would have fonnalized gender segregation with separate licences for men's and womenrs parlours, but it was not introduced in the House. 13
In public at least, wornen themselves had little to Say about the ban and separate facilities. At first glance particularly odd is the relative silence of the Vancouver
Council of Women (VCW), the cityrs prominent federation of womenrs groups, which was affiliated to the National Council of Women of Canada. As a middle-class, matemal-feminist reform organization the VCW had long been a supporter of prohibition and campaigned for its continuation.14
l3 m, 16 August 1926, LCB Çcrapbooks, Vo1.20, BCA, GR62; Tuley to Sutherland, 26 May 1927, BCA, GR1323, B2309 (1st wote);- provm, 27 May 1927, LCB Scrapbooks, Vol. 20 (2nd quote); Tysoe to Attorney Generai, 22 June 1927, BCA, GR1323, B2309; pro- 6 July 1927, p.28, 7 July 1927, p.1; nGovernment Liquor Act-Suggested amendment of section 27, [l927] GR1323, B23O8 .
14 Secretary to Brewster, 16 May 1917, University of British Columbia Library, Special Collections and University Archives Division, Vancouver Council of Women (VCW-WC) , Box 110
Even before the first liquor stores had opened in 1921, the VCW executive passed a resolution that said because the council was "engaged in promoting the general welfare of women and children . . . we place ourselves on record as strongly opposed to the sale of wine and beer, either in bottles or by the glass, in the hotels and restaurants of
Vancouver.', At a general meeting just before the beer plebiscite in June 1924 the members endorsed a motion that claimed beer by the glass "would practically mean a return to the Bar with al1 the evils that attend and that it would increase the temptation for the young people." For the VCW
- 1, File 1; see also, Secretary to Stevens, 30 June 1919, Box 1, File 2. On the class and ideological makeup of the VCW see Ramona Rose, "'Keepers of Morale' : The Vancouver Council of Women, 1939-1945" (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia, 1990) and Gillian Weiss, 'As Women and As Citizens': Clubwomen in Vancouver 191C-1928" (Ph.D. diss., UBC, 1983) . See also Weiss, "The Brightest Women of Our Land: Vancouver Clubwomen 1919-1928," in No? Jus+ PbAn~y: tom- of Wom m,ed. Barbara K. Latham and Roberta J. Pazdro (Victoria: Camosun College, 1984), 199-209. On the National Council of Women of Canada see, N.E.S. Griffiths, a - (Ottawa, Carleton University ~f ~~~~ Canada* 18g3 lgg3 . . press, 1993) . As a commissioned history mrndid Visi on should be read in consultation with Veronica Stxong-Boagrs more critical. f (Ottawa: National Museum of ~f Wacn of canadaanada3893 - 1929 Man, 1976) . the real issue was the parlours themselves. From the
Councilrs perspective their existence was a serious threat to women and children and thus an affront to decency. In 1920s a good possibility still existed that the parlours could be eliminated, a goal more laudable than the false gender equality of mixed drinking. IS
Some women, however, openly opposed their exclusion from the parlours. Mrs. T.D. Tattersall, who lived on Pacifie
Street in downtown Vancouver, had approved of tlbeer-by-the-glassfor women.It She said the excuse that wornen had to be banned because of "bad womenm was "the worst insult ever offered to the women of Vancouver." She made an open appeal to the women of the city: l'Our vote is threatened; let every woman in Vancouver who appreciates her suffrage get ready to protect it. This is the thin edge of the wedge.
Dontt let it go farther.Ir Many anonymous women supported Mrs.
Tattersall by patronizing the Commercial Hotel and other beer parlours. Some wornen were no longer willing to accept that public drinking was an acceptable activity for men only, and
TS Sub-executive resolution, 7 March 1921, VCW-UBC, Box 6, File 7 (1st quote) ; general resohtion, 2 June 1924, ibid., Box 6, File 8 (2nd quote) . they challenged men on their own turf. Mrs. Tattersall even
implied that a beer parlour might be a more decent place than home for women to drink because "a glass of beer served in public was preferable to a dozen bottles in the
Mr. Charles Hurt of Vernon sympathized with Mrs.
Tattersall. He reacted forcefully to a province editorial that, on the one hand, admitted that women had equal rights with men and that they had been served in beer parleurs,
"without offense to public morality, and with little disturbance of public decorum." Yet, on the other hand, according to the paper, 'these things do not count. There has corne to be an instinctive aversion in the public mind--it exists, so the hotelmen Say, among many of the men who frequent beer halls--against the idea of women in these places." Mr. Hurt countered that the hotels wanted to ban women because their presence curbed consumption. He believed that women inhibited the excesses of male camaraderie and promoted decency:
Certainly there are many men who can not be happy unless they are telling or listening to lewd stories or punctuating their conversation with a series of oaths, and such men do, no doubt, find their liberty of action circumscribed by the presence of ladies in the parlor.
, 3 1 October 1926, p - 12 - Practically al1 men have a substratum of decency and culture in their make-up, but that is no reason for the exclusion of the people whose presence makes for decency .17
For the time being the issue of women in beer parlours faded from the public gaze. The drys were not able ta obtain another plebiscite. In 1930 the LCB Chairman informed the
Alberta Liquor Control Board that legally women were not barred from British Columbia parlours, but that "many licensees particularly in large centres have voluntarily provided separate rooms for the service of women and women with male escorts in an endeavor to safeguard their licenses by minimizing the risks thereto offered by undesirable fernales." The goal was to separate unattached men £rom unattached women. Many parlours simply provided a separate area in the main parlour for solo women and women with male escorts. A few let women and men openly drink together, while others continued to ban wornen, 18
vince&, editorial, 29 July 1926, p.6, 8 August 1926, Magazine Section, p. 8 (Hurt).
18Secret- to Davidson, 7 August 1930, BCA, GR770, Box 2, File 109. Beer parlours attracted official attention again when they became indirectly part of a provincial campaign to check venereal disease transmitted by prostitutes. As a result, during the Second World War, the province ordered parlours to erect partitions to separate unattached men from unescorted women .
At the end of the nineteenth century concerns about venereal disease had exacerbated feaxs about deteriorating racial stock, and the racism of English Canadian moral reformers was a mix of hereditary and environmental assumptions. Women, or more precisely the respectable mothers of the uAnglo-Saxonmrace. had to be protected £rom the ravages of venereal disease, so they could continue to produce superior offspring. Those feus gave additional incentive to the Sromoters of Social Purity because most doctors believed "prostitutes constituted the principal reservoir of the disease." Nearly everyone tended to blarne prostitutes, rather than their customers, for spreading venereal disease. Respectable women needed to be protected, but deviant ones needed to be regulated.l3
19 Mariana Valverde, "When the Mother of the Race 1s Freet: Race, Reproduction, and Sexuality in First-Wave Feminism, in i ct * : New F-v~b Wo=>q 115
Venereal disease had become a particularly public issue during the First World War. By 1915, nearly thirty per cent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Europe was infected, compared to five per cent of the British forces, Venereal disease accounted for twelve per cent of al1 non-combat sickness in the military. The Canadian army fought the scourge with Early Treatment Centres, Ifshort am parades11
(visual inspection of the genitals), and lectures on health and tlcontinence.MThe Canadian Arrny urged the English authorities to imprison "infected womentlin order to keep thern from the troops.2 0
, ed. Franca Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde (Toronto: üTP, 19921, 3-6; Carol Bacchi, "Race Regeneration and Social Purity: A Study of the Social Attitudes of Canada's ~nglish-SpeakingSuf fragists, It in Eeadbas a C- tom:- Post - Con- - 2d ed., ed. R. Douglas Francis and Donald B, Smith (Toronto: Holt, 1986), 315-316 (originally published in astoire Sooi ald~ocblHistory 11 (November 1978) : 460-474); Jay Cassel, la su^;, ered JI ciamda. 3838- 1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 19871, 20 (quote). See aiso, Mariana Valverde, - (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991), 77-79; John McLaren and John Lowman, "Enforcing Canada's prostitution Laws, 1892-1920: Rhetoric and Practice," in Sec-cr C-ce, ed. Martin L. Friedland (Toronto: UTP, 1990), 21-87,
20Cassel, me Secret Pl-, 123, 128-131; Suzann Buckley and Janice McGinnis, l1Venereal Disease and Public Health Reform in Canadam -toW Revia 63 (September 1982) : 338-339 - On the other side of the Atlantic, in 1918 Ontario passed legislation that required a11 infected men and women to obtain treatment, and the province made it a crime to knowingly infect another person. British Colunibia passed similar legislation, the Venereal Diseases Suppression Act," in 1919. That year the federal government created a
Department of Health, and one of its ten divisions was devoted to venereal disease control. The federal government allocated $200,000 to fight venereal disease, rnost of which was to be given to the provinces on a shared-cost basis. To receive money the provinces had to open clinics that offered free treatment. British Columbia opened treatment centres in
Vancouver and Victoria. Infected people from outlying areas had to travel to the two urban centres to receive treatment.21
mile health officials urged a more scientific approach to venereal disease control, moral sentiments remained prominent. Authorities still targeted prostitutes and other
"loose womenn as the agents of infection. For many doctors,
21Cassel, me Secret Pl-, 169, 200; British Columbia, -tes, 1919, Ch.88 (Venereaï Diseases Suppression Actm), S. 3, 11- venereal disease remained a moral issue as well as a health problem. Some opposed free treatment, as they believed that the diseased should have to pay for their sins. Most doctors would not endorse the use of condoms, for the risk of disease was meant to encourage abstinence, As well, condoms were considered birth control devices and thus were illegal under the Criminal Code. 2 2
In November 1936 the Provincial Secretary amounced a new campaign to reduce venereal disease, which he claimed affected twenty percent of the population. The five-year plan, implemented in 1937, called for more venereal disease clinics, a public awareness program and increased enforcement. According to Dr. Donald HI Williams, who was
22 Cassel, Thecme,169, 190-191, 200; Buckley and McGinnis, Venereal Disease," 347-349- See also, Mary Louise Adams, "In Sickness and in Health: State Formation, Moral Regdation, and Early M Initiatives in Ontario," 28 (Winter 1993-94) : 117-30. Concerns about venereal disease, especially syphilis, were certainly. . not confined to Canada. See Quetel, &içtorv of m,esp. chapters five and eight. Allan Brandt has argued that in the United States venereal diseases were not just biological entities. They were symbols of social attitudes and values, the most prominent of which that those who were afflicted had violated the moral code. See Nn Me torv- of Ve- Dwse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 4-6. appointed the Director of Venereal Disease Control in the
Provincial Board of Health in 1938, the key ta eliminating venereal disease was Ra policy of vigorous enforcement GE law directed against commercialized prostitution. . . ."
Between October 1936 and August 1940 the Board's Vancouver office examined sixty-five "professional prostitutesu and oves seventy percent were infected with gonorrhoea or syphilis or b~th.'~
In February 1937, at the suggestion of the LCB Chairman, the Secretary of the BCHA had sent a letter to al1 rnembers warning them "not to allow men unaccornpanied by a lady, to be seated in the ladies1 part of the beer parlour.I1 He added that Ilif present conditions are not rectified at once," the
LCB might compel operators "to put in a ceiling high partition definitely dividing the ladiest section from the men's." The BCHA Secretary also pointed out that some
operators had allowed some patrons I1to become very unladylike and ungentlemanly in their conduct." He concluded by noting
23 Cassel, The Sec-, 200-201; Freund, "The Politics of Naming, " 39 ; -, 19 March 1938, p- 6; Donald H, Wiiliams, KCornmercialized Prostitution and Venereal-Disease Control, 31 (October 1940) : 465 (quote), 466. that "present conditionstr could put beer parlours Ifinto disrepute in the eyes of the public, thereby jeopardizing our franchise .
His concern was justified. In a January 1939 speech to
the Vancouver Board of Trade, Dr. Williams claimed that "in many of the mixed beer parlors of Vancouver there is at least one prostitute who plies her trade in a room in the hotel to which the beer parlor is atta~hed.~By the end of the month the LCB chairman had decided that "in view of the publicity being given to the present vice-drive in the City of
Vancouver,I1 the LCB would work even more closely with the
Division of Venereal Disease Control. Patients of public health clinics who adrnitted that llcontact was made in a beer parlour or while under the influence of liquorInwould have their liquor permits cancelled. While the ruling was technically gender neutal, the expectation was that the patients would be men who had been infected by women. 25
24 Kahn to Kennedy, 22 February 1937, BCAI GR770, Box 5, File 199 -
, 12 january 1939, p. 5 (Board of Trade); Kennedy to Wismer, 27 January 1939, BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 199 . 120
Initially at leaat, the BCIIA pledged its full cooperation with the Board of Health "in connection with the problem of prostitution and venereal disease." In March 1939, however,
Dr. Williams informed the BCHA that despite the crackdown, there were "still a considerable number of known prostitutes and known infected patients using the beer parlours in
Vancouver." He added that "the prostitute is the main root ar.d source of venereal disease in this province" and tracking infected prostitutes often took health officials to beer parlours. Williams was particularly concerned because he claimed that "alcohol £lares an almost healed gonorrhoea into full blown activity and it cancels out the value of treatment in syphilis. m26
By the fa11 of 1939 the BCHA had become fed up with williams and his focus on parlours. In October the Secretary of the BCEIA wrote the private secretary of the federal
Minister of Health in anticipation of a visit to Ottawa by
Dr. Williams. The BCHA clairned that he had "hounded and harassed the beer parlors," even though the unlicensed 'Yen cent dance hallsm constituted "the main source of [venereal]
26~illiamsto Kahn, 7 March 1939, BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 199B.
BCAA resented the harsh opinions of Dr. Williams, the parlour operators knew they had to be publicly seen to be taking action. Umost as soon as the war had started, prohibitioniste launched a campaign to curtail public drinking for the duration, and by 1942 they had achieved some support. By mid-June the parlours had the partitions in place. 28
Throughout the war the Division of Venereal Disease
Control monitored cases of disease allegedly acquired in beer parlours. To track them, the Division relied almost exclusively on interviews with infected men. In official records, women transmitted venereal disease to men: lfIt has come to the attention of this Division that five male patients who are under care for acute gonorrhoea allegedly acquired their infections £rom girls, not previously known to them, whom they met in beer parlours in this city." Unstated
2 8 Kennedy to Angelus Holding Company, 13 January 1941, BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 199B (1st quote) ; Williams to Wismer, 8 April 1942, GR770, Box 5, File 199A; Vartitions in Beer ParloursftB23 April 1942, GR770, Box 5, File 199A; Kennedy to Blackwell, 13 December 1944, GR770, Box 5, File 199B; Galvin to Kennedy, 15 June 1942, GR770, Box 5, File 199A. In 1943 the Division of Venereal Disease Control changed its letterhead slogan £rom "Prevent Prenatal Syphilis in Chilàren - A Blood Test For Every Expectant MotherIt to Venereal Disease - The 'Master Saboteurt of War Effort," 123 was that at some point these women were probably infected by men. Aiso unstated in the documents was the assumption that single women who met men in beer parlours were prostitutes, or at least women of "suspected promiscuous habits.11In one encounter at the Rainier Hotel on Carra11 Street, a man invited "a girl who was sitting alonen to join his group. The two went to his room "where the exposure occurred. No charge was made by the girl. . . ir
Despite officiai views, venereal infections allegedly acquired in beer parlours hardly constituted a threat to national defence, Between 1939 and 1944 the Division of
Venereal Disease Control attributed 562 cases of venereal disease to British Columbia beer parlours. Of those, 513 were in Vancouver, and the Halfway House in Esquimalt on Vancouver
Island accounted for nearly half of the rest. In 1939, before the war and the influx of rnilitary personnel to the province,
Dr. Williams reported that the Vancouver clinic alone treated
1600 cases each week. In 1942 the rnilitary infection rate was less than half that of the civilian rate in Vancouver, and
- - 29~levelandto Kennedy, 9 December 1942, (quotes), BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 199A; Saxton to Kennedy, 13 November 1943, Box 5, File 199B. the Vancouver News -He-U said the city "boasts one of the lowest V.D. rates on the continent.^'^
The cornplaints of the BCHA had at least some credibility, and liquor officials did not always side with their colleagues in the Board of Health. The LCB chairman agreed with the BCHA that health officiais relied too exclusively on interviews with infected men. As he told the new Director of Venereal Disease Controi in 1944, ''if a patient is too drunk to remember where he was at the time the contact was made, it is hardly fair ta accept his statement that it was in a Beer Parlor as it might just as easily have been in some other place." While he pledged the LCBfs continued cooperation, he also stated that he questioned the
"advisability of simply accepting the statement of a patient
without anything else ta back up the charge made. lf3'
Official concern about prostitution and venereal disease xernained after the Second World War. With the introduction of sulpha drugs in the late 1930s and penicillin in 1943, many
30~.~.Infections Allegedly Acquired From Persons Met In Beer Pariours, M39-1944," BCA, GR770, Box 5 File 199B; ouver Ne- -Herald , 15 October 1942, p-9.
3 kennedy to Saxton, 29 April 1944, BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 199B- people believed that theee BO-calledmiracle drugs would eradicate venereal dieease. According to the Division of
Venereal Disease Control, however, when British Columbia abandoned wartime liquor rationing in 1947, one result was an increase of venereal infections allegedly acquired in
Vancouver beer parlours. In response, the LCB, hotels, and health officials created an informal I1facilitationn committee. Within a couple of years the membership had expanded to include the police, religious representatives, and social workers. The comrnittee met quarterly to discuss ways to reduce contacts between prostitutes and potential clients in public places. The continuing battle against prostitution and venereal disease may have had little effect on either, but it broadened parlour regulation beyond the state.32
Yet state coercion also remained a regulatory tool. in
1947 the government updated the I1Venereal Diseases
Suppression Act," first passed in 1919. Infected people now could be "detainedW for up to a year if they refused or did
32 Cassel, The Secret PL-, 11, 58; Kennedy to Elliot, 3 October 1947, BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 199A; Elliot to Kennedy, 21 November 1947, ibid.; RMinutes of the Quarterly Facilitation Meeting, 18 November 1949,Ir *id. not continue their treatment for venereal disease. In addition, "as a rneans of improving the liaison between the
City Police Department and the Health authoritiesItVa "Police
Station Examination Centren was opened in Vancouver. ItEach morning al1 women in custodyn were "examined routinely for venereal disease. . . .tt 33
Analyzing gender segregation and venereal disease monitoring highlights the values of the authorities and the ways in which they attempted to regulate parlours. Yet parlour partitions are especially significant because they help show the dynamism of regulation and the negotiation of decency that occurred within the parlours.
In her study of working-class leisure spaces in 1940s
Toronto, Mary Louise Adams argued that regulation was not just the product of legislation but also the "discursive constructions of specific types of places as 'bad.'"
Reformers attempted to regulate people by regulating space perceived as immoral. As Adams noted. the reptations of
3 3 British Columbia, 2947, Ch. 95 ( "Venereal Diseases Suppression Acttr), S. 8; Winutes of the Facilitation Meeting, Ir n. d. Cl948 1 (examination centre) . places "cari have a very real, regulating effect on the people who frequent themm For example, Toronto beer parlours were heavily inscribed with social meaning, s~stof wnich was linked to prostitution. Consequently the province experimented with wornen-only beer parlours along Jarvis
Street, which were defined as less immoral space because men and women could not drink together.3 4
Parlours were suspect space in part because they were in hotels. Paul Groth has argued that as early as the 1890s
American reformers began criticize residential hotels as public nuisances. Their main concern was that hotels undermined the family as they primarily catered to single people. They were especially worried that single working women would be drawn into prostitution, Reformers censured rooming houses, which were home to those who earned a steady but low income, and particularly cheap lodging houses, which sheltered poor transients and day labourers. The condemnation of hotels is even more significant for British Columbia because working-class public drinking had been limited to
3 4 Mary Louise Adams, "Almost anything can happa: A search fox sexual discourse in the Urban Spaces of 1940s Torontom flof Socia'lfiav 19 (1994): 217-232, quote at 218, hotels since before prohibition. Many of the hotels in which
Vancouver parlours were located were rooming houses or cheap lodging houses. 3 5
From the beginning parlours were considered morally compromised space frequented by morally suspect people. State officiais defined both how such people should act and tried to regulate space so that patrons had little choice but to act the approved way. Beer parlour partitions were a physical manifestation of the discourse of decency. Yet many parlour patrons, men and women, resisted that discourse, and they influenced the direction of regulation. Their success could be rneasured by the ever more stringent attempts by the state to isolate unattached men from unattached women.
On a small scale partitions preceded the Second World
War. Encouraged by the La, in 1928 the Grand Union Hotel on
Hastings Street set aside a small area with a four-foot, six- inch partition, which the inspecter concluded was "much better than allowing the few ladies that do patronise the premises to be sitting around indiscriminately with men.', Working with the LCB the BCHA promoted these partitions, and neither body was pleased in 1931 when Mr. W.C., operator of the New Empire Hotel parlour, a couple of doors away from the
Grand Union, cut his partitions to three feet. The Chief
Inspector concluded that low partitions were "no help towards the decent conduct of the licensed premises." He told Mr, C, that he wanted the partitions raised to four feet nine inches because 'we are having considerable trouble over the women question and everything is being done to obviate disorderliness. . . .,,3=
By April 1942, when the Board ordered al1 Vancouver parlours to install barriers, the partitions had to be a least six feet high and constructed ta "permit no visibility" between the two parlours. To facilitate beer service one eight-foot wide opening was allowed, and on Saturday nights the licensees could erect rnoveable partitions to increase or decrease the area of either parlour, Soon after the war the partition height was raised to six feet nine inches, and a
36 Inspector to Hose, 7 February 1928, BCA, GR770, Box 12, File 4 (1st quote) and ca. 1928 blueprint for Grand Union; Chief Inspector to Secretary, 20 November 1931, BCA, ibid,, Box 13, File 2 (2nd quote) ; Chief Inspector to Empire Hotel, 20 November 1931, ibid- (3rd quote) . 130 movable partition now required the approval of the Board with
an explanation for its necessity,3 7
In 1947 the LCB received statutory authority to fcrce hotels to improve their facilities- Parlour restrictions became more elaborate. Higher, mare permanent, partitions moved closer to the service bar, as one bar usually served both parlours. Of some parlours the LCB demanded a partition
right to the bar or a gate between the partition and the bar.
When simple swing gates failed to control patrons, the Board asked for locked gates or those with electric devices to open and close them. The Board also required that some parlours hire floormen to guard the gated area or the increasingly cornmon separate street entrance for women and escorts.3 8
-p...- 3 7Wyllie to Sir, 23 April 1942, BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 199A; Wyllie to Chief Inspector, 30 April 1948, GROOS2, Box 9, File 121-355.
3a~ritishColumbia, autes, 1947, c. 53 ("An Act to amend the 'Government Liquor Act ) , S. Il ; m.. (1949), 9 ; See for exampie, Kimberly to Chief Inspector, 12 November 1949, BCA GR0052, Box 8, File 121-337 (partitions Ivanhoe Hotel) ; Columbia Hotel, list of notations (partition to bar) , ibid., File 121-323 ; Pettit to Director of Licensing, S August 1952. ibid., File 121-350 (gate and floorman Niagara Hotel); Stanley hotel, Est of notations (electric gate lock) , ibid., File 121-3 62. 131
Still, LCB inspectors grew increasingly frustrated with
their inability to check what they called ncrossovers" or
\'wandering." Crossing over rnost communly referred to unattached men entering the Ladies and Escorts parlour or walking from the men-only side to the mixed side. "Wandering" was often used in the same way, but it also referred to movement within a beer parlour, particularly male movement from table to table on the mixed side. Inspectors clairned that some parlour operators did little to stop unauthorized movement .39
In March 1949 the West Hotel on Carra11 Street had its licence suspended for male crossovers that resulted in venereal infections. In July the BCHA hired an obsenrer on the West's behalf who reported that a hired doorman turned away twenty-two men from the Ladies entrance on one day and thirty-three on another. In June 1951 an inspector described an unusual example of wandering in the New Fountain on
Cordova Street: "two men--un-attached--were observed carrying their table, full of beer, over to two un-attached females -"
3 9 For examples on the flexible use of \'wanderingM see list of notations for the New Empire Hotel, GRûû52, Box 8, 121-329 - According to health authorities one male venereal patient made good use of both the New Fountain and nearby Stanley
Hotel in 1953: 'during a ten day àrinking and sexual spree . . . he picked up six (6) women in these parlours, always walking direct ly into the women ' s entrance ."'O mile the Inspectorsr files are full of references to male crossovers and wanderers, occasionally women took the initiative. In May 1949, for example, an undercover investigator in the Royal Hotel on Granville Street noticed
"Ladies in the mens [sic] section. One woman standing at the bar drinking beer." From the agent's point-of-view their behaviour may have been brazen, but it was also brave. Men, properly accompanied, were expected to be on the Ladies side, but the Men's side was cornpletely closed to women. Obviously a woman stood out prominently on the menrs side. Just as important, many men wanted no women on their side. Others assumed that women who entered the menrs side were making themselves sexually available. In June 1951 the inspecter at
40List of notations for West Hotel, BCA, GR0052, Box 9, File 121-366; Haywood to Chairman, March 25 1949, ibid. ; "Report Made to B.C. Hatels Association RE West HotelrfrJuly 20, 1949, ibid.; New Fountain Hotel: Inspector to Chief Inspector, 24 June 1951, p. 1, GR0052, Box 9, File 121-349; McGugan to New Fountain, 21 July 1953, ibid. 133 the New Fountain hotel watched an unescorted woman enter "the
Mens' section to see who was there*" To him her *profession was obvious." Unescorted women who wanted male Company usually encouraged men to corne to the Ladies side where the women could exert more control. A woman who received unwanted male attention on her side could have her harasser ejected as an unattached man. 41
The most elaborate and most expensive restrictions that the LCB ordered were duplicate facilities. This process began with the requirement that a men's toilet be installed in the
Ladies parlour. A comrnon method of crossover was for a man to
Say as he moved from the Men's to Ladies side that he had merely been on the Men's side to use the toilet. By the 1950s the mode1 hotel had separate street entrances for each parlour, with both doors identified, and a third entrance for the hotel lobby. A central bar had an unobstructed view of
'In?"to Chief Inspector, 2 May 1949, BCA, GR0052, Box 9, File 121-358 (Royal); Lythgoe to Chief Inspector, 24 June i9si8 File, 121-349 (New Fountain) ; on women coaxing men see, for example, Haywood to Chernecki, 10 March 1952, Ibid., Box 8, File 121-332 (Grand Union) . For an interesting, if somewhat narrow, discussion of space , gender, and courtship see, Peter Ward, Yourtship and Social Space in Nineteenth- Century English Canada," Canadianstorical Review 63 (1987): 35-62. 134 the entire parlour area. A men's toilet was located in the
Ladies parlour, and each parlour had its own pay telephone, even if business did not warrant two phones. 42
The official regulations, however, were not always the ones imposed. For some hotels, particularly the older, smaller ones, these new standards were difficult and expensive to satisfy. The Board's acceptance of deviations from the standards was often linked to patron behaviour. For example, from 1948 on the inspectors noted that the Angelus
Hotel on Dunsmuir Street had no men's toilet in the Ladies parlour. The inspectors were patient until 1954 because 'no cornplaints have been received regarding the operation of these premises it has not been found necessary to request the
Licensees to bring it up to standard." By contrast, the New hnpress Hotel on East Hastings did not appear to have sufficient frontage to provide separate entrantes, but it had quite a problem with crossovers. The solution proposed by the
CUef Inspecter in 1949, but not implemented, was 'this is
42See, for example, the 1954 blueprints for Angelus Hotel and Bruce to Acting Director, 2 March 1954, GR0052, File 121-311. On telephones see Pettit to Acting Director, 14 Ju* 1954, File 121-340 (Lotus Hotel) . one of the premises where service to women should be disallowed. *43
Yet we should be mindful of the inspecter files. A parlour that caused little trouble wancanted little attention or record keeping. Even temperance groups, which damned a parlours £rom the beginning, had to acknowledge during the initial intense debate over them that sorne parlours were quiet, orderly places. In approximately 1930 (the document is undated), the British Columbia Temperance League compiled a list of what it called "Beer Saloons in Vancouver and
Record." For many entries the compiler included a short description, such as "A DiveM (Dominion). Yet the Waddon was described as "Decent" and three others--the Ivanhoe,
Kingston, and Martinique--were listed as "Rather Decent," and none was located in a first-class hotel ."
- 43 For Angelus Hotel see BCA, GR0052, Box 7, File 121- 3 11, "Appendix. Annual Report - -November 12, 1953' (quote) and 1954 blueprints; for New Empress Hotel, see Haywood to Chairman, 18 November 1949 (2nd quote), ibid., Box 9, File 121-348. The New Empress did eventually install separate entrantes, and in 1998 it was one of two hotels (the other was the Balmoral) that still had not removed the signs over the former separate entrances.
44 "Beer Saloons in Vancouver and Record," Alcohol Research Education Council, BCA, Add. Mss. 17, Vol. 1, File 136
Moreover, the LCB used its coercive powers to encourage parlour cornpliance. The Board worked closely, if not always harmoniously, with police and health officiais. It also had statutory authority to "suspend or cancel any beer licence for such reason as to the Board may seem sufficient." In addition, liquor authorities sent lists of interdicted perçons to parlour operators. People under interdiction orders had lost their right to purchase liquor.4 5
With full support of the LCB, parlour operators took the initiative to ban specific individuals who were considered troublemakers. More often than not those banned were women accused of being prostitutes. After a visit from the LCB inspector in December 1947, the operator of the West Hotel
I8barred 17 known prostitutes" and sent the list to the LCB.
The list assumed a paternalistic familiarity with the women as, except for two, they were identified only by their first
4s *. a,1924, c.146 ( "Guvemment Liquor Amendment ActJr) , S. 27 (5) (quote); Murray to Secretary, 22 April 1954, BCA, GR0052, Box 9, File 121-368 (interdicted list); on interdiction in general see, British Columbia, Çteutes, 1921, c.30 (%overnment Liquor ActU), ss .57-60. 137
a nickname, such as 'Shanghai Lil, "Big Betty, and
the "Logger s Queen.n46
These specific women rnay or may not have been prostitutes, but the LCB and parlour operators often named women àrinkers as suspected prostitutes, which had real regulatory effect. After the December inspection of the West
Hotel, the LCB sent an undercover investigator to watch the parlour. On 23 December 1947 he commented that *no open soliciting was seen, but the women cornpanions of the men patrons were rather of the easy virtue type." On the 29th he still saw no soliciting, but %orne of the wornen present did not corne under heading of 'LadiesJ." On 11 January 1948 he again saw nothing untoward, but '%orne of the women present looked as if their professions were more ancient than honorable." Later that year the hotel banried al1 single women from registering as guests.47
The West Hotel was not unique with this kind of regulation. In 1948 the Europe Hotel on Powell Street also
4 6Haywood to Chairman, 15 Jan. 1948 (and attached list from West Hotel) , File 121-366,
47The three investigator reports are in GR0052 Box 9, File 121-366 as is the 1948 inspectorrs report nothg that single women could not register. prevented single women from registering. After a 1952 warning from the LCB, the operator of the New Empire parlour informed unescorted women they could not longer sit near the front door of the Ladies parlour. They had to sit further back in full view of the tapman and waiters. In 1953 the LCB forwarded a Venereal Disease Control cornplaint to the operator of the Main Hotel. The manager responded that "we have been seeking recently to detemine positively which of our female clients are questionable so that we may in the future keep a particular watch on them, refuse them service, or otherwise keep them away from ou premises." In March 1954 the operators of the Roger Hotel, formerly the Pennsylvania, informed the LCB that they had 'barred from the licensed premises al1 wornen who would appear to be of an undesirable character.
Not al1 the restrictions placed on women stemmed from assumptions about alleged illicit sexuality. Some were motivated by conceptions of women as primarily responsible
4 8 Europe Kotel, 1948 "lnspectorfs Hotel Report, rf BCA, GR0052, Box 8, File 121-330; New Empire, Brandolini to Director, 10 October 1952, ibid., Box 8, File 121-329; Main, Hanawald to Director, 22 July 1953, ibid., Box 9, File 121- 341; Roger Hotel, Bruce to Acting Director, 3 March 1954, ibid., File 121-353. 13 9 for nurturing children. In 1949 the federal Department of
National Health and Welfare asked that provincial govemment liquor stores refuse to cash Fatnily Allowance cheques. The BC
LCB went one etep further and requested that al1 licensed premises refuse them: 'anything you can do to prevent the cashing of these cheques in the premises under your control will be greatly appreciated." These cheques were payable to mothers not fathers. One inference was that women needed more regulation as they might drink beer at the expense of their childxen. 49
Effective restrictions placed on male behaviour were less obvious. On the men-only side, small tables and the ban on standing while drinking usually prevented large gatherings, but in small groups men could still chat, boast, and treat- Treating remained the mainstay of beer purchase by men in groups. It reinforced male reciprocity, and opponents had long argued treating promoted excessive consumption since a man would lose face if he left before he had bought his round. Even if treating per se did not encourage consumption, men were fairly free, and more free than women, to consume
-- 49 Circular Letter No. 1028, 7 December 1949, Liquor Control and Licensing Branch Files, Victoria. 14 0 lots of cheap beer. Serving intoxicated people violated the rules, but intoxication was a subjective and gendered assessment. The real limits for men were excessive rowdiness, t its opposite, sleeping, or the loss of control over bodily
short, regulation circumscribed male sociability, but certainly did not eliminate
The public expression of masculine sexuality is only a little more cleax cut. The authorities assumed that some men, given the opportunity, would seek the services of prostitutes. Obviously the LCB tried hard to prevent unaccompanied men from encountering unescorted women--with mixed results at best. These efforts regulated women more than men and were directed to the Ladies and Escoxts side.
On the Men's side the Board made some effort to make sure male interaction remained non-sexual. By the early 1950s the Castle Hotel on Granville Street was already known as a rendezvous for gay men. What provoked the inspectors was not so much gay men drinking together but their attempts to have sex in beer parleurs. For example, in Juiy 1952 an inspector responded to a cornplaint about a hole in the wall between two toilets in the men's washroom of the Stratford Hotel on
Keefer Street. He interviewed the manager and bartender who admitted that this was actually the second hole they had found. The inspecter did not leave until a janitor had '%puta metal sheet coveriw over hole." He also warned the operators that Vhey must keep a ~haqlook out for anyone going in
Gents washroom for immoral purposes," and that he intended to notify the police. 5 O
As Steven Maynard has argued "holes made in the partitions of lavatory walls were evidence of the extent to which men who sought sex with other men appropriated public spaces for their own sexual uses.' The city of Vancouver had long been aware of such spatial appropriation. Public toilets built in the 1920s had attendant& rooms with large glass walls so that officials could xegulate the behaviour of patrons. In beer parlours inspectors paid much attention to toilets. The annual inspection forrns required that they comment on the existence and kind of male facilities in the
Ladies parlour and on the general cleanliness of al1 toilets.
Inspectors tended to conflate cleanliness with rnorality. They took a particularly àim view of what they described as
50 &ter Trower, p-cket (Madeira Park, B. C. : Harbour Publishing, 1996),166. 210 ; Pettit to Haywood, 10 July 1952, BCA, GR0052. Box 9, File 121-364. obscene writing on the walls. Yet considering both the stigma attached to homosexuality and its illegality, gay men also sought out less regulated places. Beer parlours were subject to both police observation and Lm surveillance, but
Vancouver's unlicensed cabarets and clubs were not subject to
LCB inspection,51
By the early 1950s the New Fountain on Cordova Street was also known for its homosexual c!.ientele. Yet the New
Fountain, located in the heart of skid road, appealed to lesbians as well as gays, Peter Trower8s fictional Terry
Belshaw described the parlour in 1952:
The customers were mostly women, some of thern in black leather jackets and ultra-short haircuts and making no secret of their sexual preference. I recognized Mitch the Witch with a smashing brunette. He acknowledged me with his decadent choir boy smirk. On tighter scrutiny,
"~teven Maynard, "Through a Hole in the Lavatory Wall : Homosexual Subcultures, Police Surveillance, and the Dialectics of Discovery, Toronto, 1890-1930,'8 Jnaofthe rv of Semity S (1994): 237 (quote); Margaret W. Anàrews, "Sanitary Conveniences and the Retreat of the
Frontier: Vancouver, 1886-1926," 87 (Autum 1990) : 21; "1" to Chief Inspecter, 22 Juïy 1951, BCA, GR0052, Box 8, File 121-326 (Dodson, obscene writing) . In 1963, for example, the police described the Montreal Cabaret on East Hastings as "a hangout for queers and appears unsuitable for a [liquor] licence in ouopinion." See "List of Premises Operatkg as Cabarets, etc. in Vancouver, B.C.," n.d. Cl9631 Attorney General Files, Record Management Branch (RMB), Reel 619. I saw that his seemingly-female cornpanion was a man in drag .52
The LCB considered the New Fountain one of the more notorious beer parleurs, but ita recorded notoriety was not linked to lesbians or gays. In the summer of 1951 an inspector submitted a long, detailed report on the wild conditions of the New Fountain. His antipathy toward the New
Fountain was obvious, but his concerns were prosaic by parlcur standards: drunkenness, crossovers, and prostitutes. 53
S 2 Trower, -'s Ti-, 210. Stephanie Ozard remembered cruising Granville Street in the late 1950s looking for a lesbian bar. An unsympathetic man told her she belonged at the New Fountain. Despite its location, she was pleased to find a meeting place for lesbians. See Forb- s of Leshw ves prod, Margaret Pettigrew Ginny Sikeman, dir. Aerlyn Weeissmazz and L~ne Fernie, 85 minutes. National Film Board of Canada, 1992. Videocassette.
5 3 On the New Fountain see previously cited inspecter's report dated 24 June 1951 and Chairman to Ely, 17 July 1951, GR0052, Box 9, File 121-349. The inspectors may have conflated "prostitute" with "le~bian.,~Donna Penn has argued that in Cold War United States, social "experts" tried to make lesbians more visible and dangerous by linking them to prostitutes as examples of sexual degeneracy. See The Sexualized Woman: The Lesbian, the Prostitute, and the Containment of Female Sexuality in Postwar Americatrrin Nat er in Postwar Amwa. 1945 - 1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 359. See also, Mary Louise Adams, "Youth, Corruptibility, and English-Canadian Postwar Campaigns 144
The regulatory priority in parlours was the suppression of illicit heterosexuality. Inspectors were attuned to a variety of gestüres and behaviours that brought men and women
together. Some inspectors probably did not see or were fooled by the fluidity of gendered behaviour. While a single woman entering a parlour often aroused suspicion, two women or a group of women might not, especially if they were femme rather than butch lesbians. The performance could be much more complex with women passing as men and men passing as women, They could make a mockery of the separate sections for
Men only and Ladies and Escorts, as could more transgendered people whose appearance, performance, or physical attributes defied any simple or fixed categories of "maleM or
Y emale ."''
against Indecency," Jaurnal of the aqtorv of Srwitv 6 (1995): esp, 108-115
54The concept of passing is discussed in more detail in Chapter Four. On the performative qualities of gender see. . Judith Butler, BodiesaMatter: on TheD,iscwsive TuuLs gf (New York: Routledge, 1993) ; see alsa Holly Devor. %ender Blending: When Two is Not Enoughtr (M.A. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1985). iii-iv; Vern L. Bdlough and Bonnie ~ullough,cross D~eçsina.Sand (Philadelphia: University of Pe~sylvaniaPress, 1993), 238; Leslie 1- f Feinberg, TLEUM~P~ W-s : lkikbg Eh-f 0 Arc to Ra(Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 88-89; Jonathan Ned Katz, -=te-itv (New York: Penguin, 1995) . On sexuality in general see, Gai1 Hawkes, A Much more than alcohol was regulated in Vancouver beer parlours. State officiils envisioned parlours as places where working-people would be allowed to drink provided they behaved decently. The gendered aspects of regulation stood out prominently because parlours immediately became a site of contention. While women were successful in expanding the boundaries of heterosocial leisure, decency circurnscribed their behaviour, best represented by the patterns of segregated àrinking and the naming of unescorted women as prostitutes. Official standards of sexuality differed for men and women, but they shared the expectation that desire would remain heterosexual.
State regulation was not consistent, and the state certainly was not the only regulator. Other groups had their own regulatory agendas, including the patrons themselves.
Depending on the circumstances, men and women both resisted and acquiesced to the expectations of decency, and their actions influenced the direction of parlour regulation.
Regulation on the ground was a complex, diffuse, and
(Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996) - 146 dissonant process. In practice it underscored that knowledge is more contested than given, and that decency was as much a matter of definition as a reflection of reality. Decency had clasa, gender, and sexuality dimensions that were interconnected. Those connections also extended to racial and ethnic considerations, which are the focus of the next chapter . Chapter Fout
Appearance and Performance: Constructing and Regulating Race
On 18 October 1952 a man and a woman entered the Ladies and Escorts side of the Martin Hotel beer parlour. At first the waiter ignored them, and then, according to the couple, they were told that mixed-raced couples were not served. If they wanted to drink, she could stay on the Ladies side, and the man would be served on the Men-only side. The couple left. Quite embarrassed, the woman wrote to the LCB and asked about the legality of the service refusal. She added that, on his own, her 'Hindu" friend had been served without incident at the Vancouver, Georgia, and Belmont parleurs- After confirming that the Martin Hotel had a house rule that mixed- race couples would not be served, the Chief Inspecter only informed the woman that the operator had "the right to refuse service to anybody he does not wish to serve.',' *******
fPettit to Director, 24 October 1952, British Columbia Jlrchives (BCA) , GRS2, Box 9, File 121-344; H,Y, to Sir, 20 October 1952, ibid. ; Haywood to H-Y., 27 October 1952, ibidt (quote) lO 8
Despite the long history of racial tension in British
Columbia, on the surface race appeared to be a minor consideration in the regulation of beer parlours. Until 1951 status Indians were explicitly banned, but federal law required that restriction. For the most part, provincial state regulation was alrnost racially invisible, deceptively so. Yet, as the Martin Hotel example shows, racial regulation was not far below the surface. In fact racial discourse permeated the entire regulatory process both within and beyond the state.
Beer parlour decency was quite racialized, but "racefr was sometimes, paradoxically, difficult to see because of its behavioural qualities. As Elaine Ginsberg has argued,
"cultural logicM has emphasized a biological foundation to race that shows in physical appearance. Yet racial categories are also performative, that is people can also be defined in racial terms by their behaviour. wPassingM refers to how people change their identities based on appearance, perfomance, or both. While passing can be used to discuss how a variety of identities, be they of gender, sexuality, or even class, are constructed and shed, its historical origins are tied to race. Passing is usually associated with the "desire to shed the identity of an oppressed group to gain access to social and economic opportunities." Racial definition, however, can be more complex than an individurl simply adopting a different identity. 2
For example, in Vancouver parlours defining "Indian" was rarely based on Indian Act documentation. Aboriginals who behaved "decently" could cease, for the moment, to be
Indians. They could choose to pass as whites. Yet, for their own reasons, parlour operators or state officials sometimes passed status Indians as white. Alternatively, once parlours were open to natives, "Indian" lost its legal marker, but the
"beer parlour Indian" did not necessarily disappear, As for
Asians, especially the Chinese, they were barred from working in or operating a parlour because of their alleged historic links with vice, particularly gambling and drugs, Their
2 Elaine K. Ginsberg, "fntroduction:. . The Politics of Passing, ' in &ssba and the Ficwof Identiyt, ed. Elaine K. Ginsberg (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 2-4. On the discrediting of the biological assumptions of race see Kay J . Anderson, Yancoitver8s C~to~~çi~~sein 1875 - 1984 (Montreal and Kingston: McGil1-Queen's University Press, 1991). esp Chp. One. For a good empirical study of the complexities of race passing see Graham Watson.
Tavistock, 1970) - behaviour coupled to their appearance marked them as indecent.
Racialized behaviour also had significant gender implications, Segregating unattached women from unattached men was no guarantee of decency. Mixed-race couples became targets of regulation even though no official policy excluded them. The reaction that mixed-race couples provoked emphasized the racial noms of decency. A man of colour racialized himself, that is engaged in indecent behaviour, if he were in the Company of a white woman. Yet the woman also became less white, or pure, because of her behaviour. The potential for miscegenation threatened the dominance of white men and ultimately destabilized the category of "white."
Racial regulation was also linked to citizenship. In
Vancouver parlours white, Anglo-Celtics were the standard by which others were constructed and evaluated, The seemingly innocuous category "Nationality" on the annual 'Inspector' s
Hotel ReportM is a good example. Directors and managers had to list their nationality, but "nationalityJrreferred as much to heritage as citizenship. The simple title, "Canadian," was confined to those of white, Anglo-Celtic heritage. In a handful of instances the qualifier Vewish extraction" was 151 added to "Canadian-" Sorne of the names were of eastern and southern European origin. In late 1940s an anonymous and disgruntled hotel operator asked "How do al1 these Greeks and
Dagoes obtain licences?''
One did not have to be a citizen to ârink in a beer parlour, but a patron did have to be an adult. The drinking age was the same as that for exercising the franchise, one of the rights of citizenship. For First Nations people this relationship had some particularly paternalistic qualities.
Until 1951 status Indians were in the same category as legal minors. They could not vote and they could not drink. Unlike minors, however, aboriginal people had no guarantee that they would mature and acquire the rights of citizens, despite the statefs policies of enfranchisement and assimilation.
Aboriginal people achieved the provincial franchise in 1949, but were still denied access to beer parlours. Even after beer parlours were open to them. equal access to alcohol continued to elude them for over another decade--untiî after
3The long, anonymous hotelier's report was addressed to opposition leader Harold Winch and is dated "January, 194 " [sic]. It can be found in the Ueversity of British Columbia Library, Special Collections and University Archives Division, MarusMm- C-, Box 41a, File 9. they had achieved the federal franchise. Dependency and inequality did not end with technical citizenship. For many aboriginal people, even if they did not drink, the lack of equal access to alcohol was a potent symbol of discrimination and racially-based citizenship.
The links among working in or operating a parlour, citizenship, and race were just as pronounced. To work in or own a parlour one had to be a citizen. At one level this restriction was a less than subtle method to bar aboriginals and Asians Erom participating in the parlour business. Yet the citizenship restriction was also a racialized marker of decency. State expectations of parlour workers and operators were much higher than those of patrons, The potential for undermining state regulation was more pronounced with parlour workers and operators, Hence the state required higher standards for them. To allow Asians or aboriginals in the parlour business sullied parlour decency. The flexibility of racialized citizenship was underscored with the continuation of the ban on Asians as parlour operators even after they achieved the franchise.
As with other aspects of parleurs, the regulation of race and ethnicity certainiy was not a linear process 153
dominated by the state. Particularly with regard to First
Nations people, legal authority was divided between the
federal and provincial officiais, and the they did not act
consistently or even in harmony. Moreover, natives, like
others enmeshed in racial discourse, were not simply acted
upon. They also acted and influenced the process of
regulation. Operators and patrons also had regulatory impact,
especially when race intersected with gender. *******
Racial appearance and performance came together in the regulation of gender relations of parlour customers. In many
circumstances men of colour could drink in parlours without
incident, but in the Company of white women their behaviour marked them as coloured and liable to censure from state authorities, parlour operators, and other customers.
In 1938 Mrs. Rose Law, operator of the Clarence Hotel parlour, ordered her waiter not to seme Mr. Edward Rogers, a mixed-race man described as a Negro. The LCE implicitly
supported Mrs. Low by not taking any action against the parlour. Mr. Rogers sued and in court Mrs. Low claimed that black customers had caused trouble in her previous parlour. 154
Apparently, though, m. Rogers had caused no trouble and had been denied service simply based on his appearance. In 1940 the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that a parlour could not exclude customers on the basis of race, Mrs. Low appealed, and in a split decision the Court of Appeal decided that freedom of commerce entitled Mrs. Rose to discriminate against whom she chose. A rninority report, however, argued that the refusal to serve Mr. Rogers \\because of his colour and race is contrary to the common law, [which is] founded upon the equality of al1 British subjects before the law.~~
LCB support for customer exclusion based primarily on appearance diminished after the Second World War, as official, open racism became less acceptable. In January 1946 a black man was refused 3ewvice in the St. Helen's parlour.
His colleague complained to the LCB, and the Board's
Secretary asked the operator on what grounds he discriminated against the customer. He also requested that the Chief
Inspecter look into the matter. The parlour operator soon apologized for the discrimination. He added that the waiter
vw,23 February 1940, 11; "Rogers v. Clarence Hotel et alr 1940 (2): 545-564, quote at 550. 155 responsible was a spare who did not know that the parlour did not *discriminate against serving coloured people. w5
More typically after the war, official concern was more linked to the behaviour of customers of colour. In 1953 an inspecter lamented the problems in the Main Hotel caused by, he argued, the rnixing of racial groups who drank too much. He described the customers as the "most trying clientele in the cityw and not 'a very pleasing sight." Yet he did not know what could be done because "if the hotel cracked down on the matter there is no doubt they would be accused of racial discrimination etc. v6
The LCB, among others, showed the least tolerance when men of colour accompanied white women. In two cases of alleged racial discrimination in the early 1950s, one at the
American and the other at the previously-cited Martin Hotel, the Chief Inspector had no hesitation in referring to the
5 Peter Ward, mite CamForever: Poow~=des .* ci Or it-h Cd~~bj3 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1978), 165-6; Buckley to LCB, 9 February 1946, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121- 359; Wyllie ta St. Helents Hotel, 19 February 1946, ibid. Wyllie to Chief Inspector, 20 February 1946, ibid.; Woods to Wyllie, 26 February 1946, ibid. (quote).
6Bruce to Director, 28 February 1953, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-341. 1940 Court of Appeal decieion as justification for refusing service. In the Arnerican Hotel example he even went as far as to provide a complete citation for the case. At the Arnerican a waiter had refused to seme a party that included three white men, one Chinese man, and a white 'woman. An inspector interviewed the operator and was told that Arnerican Hotel had a house mle "that no mixed couples were to be senred." At the Martin, customers had helped to determine that mixed-race couples were not acceptable. According to the inspector,
"serving beer to rnixed couples generally draws comment from surrounding tables which leads to trouble. "'
While the decision to exclude mixed-race couples appeared to be in the hands of the operators and customers, the LCB closely watched on those parlours that did not ban them. In 1950 an undercover agent at the Stratford, which had a mixed-race clientele, "noticed women patrons calling negroes into the ladies section. . . The hotel seems to have a large number of white women who cater to this type of trade." The incident sparked a warning letter to the
7Haywood to Gilder, 31 Mach 1953, %CA, GR52, Box 7, File 121-309; Bruce to Director, 27 March 1953, ibid.; Pettit to Director, 24 October 1952, ibid., Box 9, File 121-344 (quote)- operator, ostensibly for allowing crossovers, but the warning was racially constructed: "certain women patrons of your licensed premises were calling unaccompanied negroes into the
Ladies section." At the Main Hotel in 1951, an undercover agent "noticed a group of negroes and white women," and he was distxessed to hear remarks like "'Lift thern higherr and
Tou can't put a square peg in a round hole'" amidst very loud "shouting and laughter." Shouting and laughter were not necessarily violations, but the Chief Inspector ordered an inspector to the hotel. He was forced to conclude that the parlour complied with regulations. The unstated violation was the racialized behaviour of men of colour with white women. 8
In the records anci in the parlours the racializing of a
"rnixed-race couple" was narrowly defined. A mixed couple referred to a white wornan with a man Q£ colour, especially a black man. As knowledge categories of official and popular concern, women of colour with white men, or mixed-race
8 '1" to Chief Inspector, 1 October 1950, BCA, GR52, Box 9, 121-364; Haywood to Stratford, 3 October 1950, ibid. In 1948 an agent had described the ladies section of the Stratford as 'full of drunks, mixed couples of white women and male negroes ." See "?" to Chief Inspector, 3 June 1948, *id- On the Main see "1" to Chief Inspector, 14 October 1951, GR52, Box 9, File 121-341; Pettit to Supervisor, 18 October 1951, ibid. 158 couples that included no white member simply did not exist.
As real people, though, these couples àrank in beer parlours.
In particular, aboriginal women were often linked with white men and sometimes with non-native men of colour. Little emphasis was placed on the racialized coupling aspect of these relationships. Instead aboriginal women with non-native men were usually dismissed as prostitutes or concubines. 9
Virtually al1 liquor officiais, parlour operators, and the majority of customers were white men. The explicit concern about mixed-couples in which white women were participants and the disregard of those in which they were not underscored a privileging of white, heterosexual men. Al1 women had the potential to be regulated by being named as prostitutes. Yet the threat to a racialized patriarchy was the mixing of white women with men of colour, hence the concern with the nanowly defined mixed-race couple. In the
9 Edwin M. Lemert, -1 and-@we)st Co- (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), -309, 319-20; H.B. Hawthorn, C.S. Belshaw, and S.M. Jamieson, imsh. . rohu&ua: A Stria of ('!ontempoYarY 30-1 ~rl- (Toronto: UTP, 19581, 330, 380; see also. . Jean Barman. Zhe Wes+ Rwond t-stom of British ÇplylPhia, (Toronto: UTP, 1991), 170-2; Jean Barman, Taming Aboriginal Sexuality: Gender, Power, and Race in British Columbia, 1850 -1900, " TC suan115/116 (Autumn/Winter 1997/98) : 264. Company of black men white women racialized themselves, that is they threatened the purity of their race.
As far as black men are concerned, race and gender also interacted with class. When H.Y. complained about the Martin
Hotel's refusal to serve her and her *HinduW companion, she stressed that he was a businessman engaged in both the lumber and petroleum industries. She added that "after al1 a Hindu is a British subject and not a negro." The most explicitly negative racial comments in the records are about black men.
Many of those men were wage workers, probably porters on the two major railways. Both the Canadian National and Canadian
Pacific stations were in the beer parlour district. In the
1946 complaint against the St. Helents for refusal of service to a black man, his white colleague, who lived in Ontario, stressed that they regularly travelled "every province from
Halifax to Vanc~uver,~'A black man who was refused service with his white wife at the Regent sent fis complaint on letterhead of the 'Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters." In beer parlours black men had more than their race against them. Some of them were transient railway workera who were perceived to be here for a good tirne, not a long time, 10
Still, one should be careful about monolithic conclusions. In the 1940 case against the Clarence Hotel, the plaintiff was a black ahoemaker. The Supreme Court justice who originally ruled against the hotel said the case was important because Vancouver was the terminus of two railways and the "home of many colored men." He spoke of the "honesty, intelligence and kindnessw of black railway workers and the need to "consider their rights and the rights of their colored brethren with the greatest care." This justice had more sympathy for black men than his colleagues on the Court of Appeai or at the Liquor Control Board."
aians, especially the relatively large population of
Chinese, stood out prominently in Vancouver. Popular and official assumptions about the impossibility and desirability of Asian assimilation translated into policies
10H.Y. to Sir, 20 October 1952, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-344; Buckley to LCB, 9 February 1946, (St. Kelens); Lawrence to Wyllie, 9 March 1950, GR52, Box 9, File 121-357 (Porter letterhead) . of exclusion from the dominant society and concentration, both geographically in segregated areas and occupationally in menial jobs. Yet it was their alleged behaviour, the historie association gambling and drugs, that racialized them in
Vancouver beer parlours. Their exclusion from important parlour operations reinforced the policy goal that these new facilities had the potential for decency. 12
At first glance Asian exclusion in parlour regdation seemed non-existent. Yet the original 1925 regulations required a parlour licensee to be: 'a person who is registered or entitled to be registered as a voter in some electoral district of the Province." This citizenship requirernent was quite racialized. Since Asians were denied the provincial franchise until after the Second World War, they could not obtain licences. When Mary Rosen applied for her beer licence for the Stratford Hotel in 1948, she said she was not registered to vote but was eligible because she
l2 Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo, -a Gond: rlaw a AB67 - 1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 75-8, 121-2. On the long history of anti-Asian hostility in British Columbia, see Ward, mi.. -3.r. and Patricia Roy, A mteMa8 s Prov~e~ Jmese (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1989). 162 was "over 21 years of age, residing for more than six months, not Orientais [sic]
The Chinese received the provincial franchise in 1947, but that did not alter their inability to obtain beer licences. In January 1952 the lawyer for a Mr. P.C. asked the
Chief Inspector "of the policy of the Board as to Canadian born Chinese holding the licence of a beer parlour?" The next day the Chief Inspector replied that "an application £rom a
Chinese is not favourably looked upon by the Board as it has been found . . . that Chinese are not able to handle this type of business." The loss of the franchise façade forced the Board to be more racially specific. Despite logal eligibility for licences, Chinese would not be allowed to compromise parlour decency .14
U ort of the 1 or Comrol Roud of . * theProvinceofBrltiçhumb& (-, (19251, 566, (first quote); "Application For A Beer Licence," [Stratford Hotel] 6 December 1948, BCA, GR48, Box 15, File 2. On Asian licensing exclusion before prohibition see Mimi Aj zenstadt , "The MedicabMoral Economy of Regulations : Alcohol Legislation in B .Ca,1871-L925<' (Ph.D. diss., Simon Fraser University, 19921, 111-112-
14 Ba=, mmhe-, 363 ; Bradshaw to Haywood, 9 January 1952, BCA, GR52, Box 8, File 121-340 ; Haywood to Bradshaw, 10 January 1952, ibîd. Official exclusion extended to working in parlours.
Printed on every annual beer licence was the warning that,
Wo person shall be employed in any service in connection with the sale, handling, or serving of beer in, on, or about the prernises in respect of which this licence is granted, unless he is registered or entitled to be registered as a voter in some electoral district of the Province." The citizenship restriction thus eliminated Asians as parlour waiters and tapmen, Even after Asians received the vote, obvious Asian surnames did not appear on the list of parlour employees. Local 676 had never shown any interest in organizing them, and the union was consistently silent on the issue,l5
Yet regulating Asians was more dynamic than racialized citizenship requirements. Despite exclusion, Asians, again particularly Chinese, worked around and in beer parlours. In
1944 the LCB Chairman informed Rev. McIntyre that "Orientais" operating hotel rooms was a practice "followed for a great number of years," a practice he dismissed as beyond the
'S-h 'S-h AR, (1925), 566. The LCB required that parlours submit lists of employee names and where they were eligible to vote. jurisdiction of the Board. Two hotels after the war, the
Lotus and the Main, had Chinese owners. Both of these hotels also had Chinese room managers, as did the Pacific, Broadway, and New Empire Hotels. The Travellers Hotel had a Japanese room manager in 1954. At the New Empire in 1952 an inspector thought it important enough ta note that the Chinese room manager nsupervises the clerks, who are white persans."
Finally, between 1947 and 1954 at least fifteen Vancouver parlours employed Chinese as janitors. 16
The Chinese permeated parlour regulation in other ways.
Like non-Asians, they sometirnes were engaged in the illegal liquor trade that was linked to hotels. In 1948 the Chief fnspector informed the Vancouver police chief that "in many hotels the clerks form a syndicate to supply liquor to hotel guests without the knowledge of the [beer parlourl licensee. . . ." Neither the police nor LCB appeared able to stop the bootlegging, and in 1953 the "Chinese operators of
f6Kennedy to McIntyre, 2 September 1944, BCA, GR770, Box 5, File 2 (126) . Hotels that employed Chinese janitors : Ambassador, Arnerican, Balmoral, Carlton, Castle, Commercial, Grandview, Drake (Haddon) , Main, Marble Arch, New Fountain, Regent, Royal, St. Helenrs, and Stanley. The references are al1 taken from the Inspector Files £rom the GR52 collection at BCA. For the comment of the inspector at the New Empire. see Bruce to Supervisor, 5 May 1952, GR52, Box 8, File 121- 329. the rooms in the Lotus Hotel' pleaded guilty to "keeping liquor for sale.#' Ari inspector told the Chief Inspector that
"bootlegging at the above hotel has been carried on for some considerable tirne," and he had informed the police. The Chief
Inspector8s response was to scribble an assurance to the LCB chaiman that the beer licence was "held by Occidentale, not
Chinese." Chinese vice may have compromised the hotel, but not yet the decency of the parlour. 17
As we saw in Chapter Two, the LCB took a noticeably firm approach to regulating illegal gambling or bookmaking, and race likely provided at least a subtext for that fimess, In
British Columbia the Chinese had long been constructed as a moral threat as habitua1 gamblers. The worst parlour offender, the Lotus Hotel, bordered Chinatom, and the owners of the building and operators of the hotel rooms were
Chinese. Yet Vancouverites of Chinese origin tended to gamble in their own establishments, not beer parlours . In 1951, for example, the Attorney General refused a club licence for the
Chinese Dernocratic Society because in his opinion it would
17Haywood to Mdligan, 30 March 1948, %CA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-368; Bruce to Director, 17 April 1953, ibid., Box 8, File 121-3 40. The Chief Inspectorf s hand-written comment is on this rnemo, exist to "enable gambling to take place." Moreover, while many of the references to parlour bookmakers are neutral in regard to race (and gender), any eumames mentioned are non-
Asian. Still, the historic link to gambling marked the
Chinese as a threat to parlour decency and a reasoa to exclude them from parlour operations. 18
While the LCB prevented Asian Vancouverites from obtaining beer licences, no officia1 effort was made to prevent them from drinking in beer parlours. Asians, however, did not appear to have been a significant presence.
Inspectors often generalized about the class composition of parlour patrons, and occasionally they commented on the racial mix of certain parlours. No parlour stood out as one that attracted a predominately Asian clientele. =ter the war, the only period for which consistent records exist,
28On the Chinese and gambling see, Kay Anderson, tom, 101-4; Ward, White Fo~orex,9- 10; Roy White mfsProvim, . . 16-17; David Chuenyan Lai, Towns Wj thin C~tiesin Cd(Vancouver : UBC Press, 1988), 195, 229-30; Greg Marquis, "Vancouver Vice: The Police and the Negotiation of Moality, 1904-1935, " in tom qf British,. . ed* John McLaren and Hamar Foster. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 248-51. On the Chinese Democratic Society see p-, 1 ûctober 1951, p-17- 167
Vancouver's Japanese were still dealing with the aftenath of
the forced diaspora of removal and internment. While the
Chinese preferred the nearby haunts of Chinatown, they did at
least occasionally drink in beer parleurs. For example, in a
1951 fracas at the Stanley that involved a dispute between a
white couple and the parlour doorman, an inspector noted that
the couple had been drinking with a male Chinese friend, who
did not appear to be part of the dispute. Chinese men
occasionally appeared more prominently as part of mixed-race
couples, which, as we have seen, attracted a great deal of
popular and official attention.19
The conceptual tie between alcohol and First Nations bas
a long history in North America that dates ta at least the
seventeenth century- The link is best encapsulated in what
Joy Leland called the "firewater tnyth," the belief that
aboriginal people were "more constitutionally prone to
develop an inordinate craving for liquor and to lose control
over their behavior when they ckink." This myth was powerful
19 Pettit to Chief Inspecter, 7 February 1951, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-362 (Stardey) . because Europeans used it to constnict various images of the
Indian. "20
In a study of natives and alcohol in early America Peter
Mancall argued that "many researchers have demonstrated that
there is no single response of Indians to alcohol." Moreover.
no genetic trait leads them to drink excessively, and
aboriginals metabolize alcohol at the same rate as non-
natives. European stereotypes about native drinking revealed
European concerns about excessive drinking in general and the
place of aboriginals in society in particular. The
stereotypes were more based on the assumption of the
"unalterable inferiority of Indians" than on observation. In
European discourse natives suffered from liquor because they
were not yet civilized, and the implication was they probably
never would be civilized .+'
20Joy Leland, -ter Mu:Nom 1- Q- ct ign (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1976), 1. See also, Mimi Aj zenstadt and Brian E . Burtch, "Medicalization and Regulation of Alcohol and Alcoholism: The Professions and Disciplinary Measures, '' -+j O& JO- 0-w and tq13 (1990): 139-42-
21 . . Peter C. Mancall, m-we - I&iaw and AlcohoL 1(Ithaca: Corne11 University Press, 19951, 6 (1st quote), 28 (2nd quote). .See . also, Reginald G. Smart and Alan c. Ogborne, Nor+hen Snm+n: A so~ikltlistoyof , 2d ed. (Toronto: ~ddictionResearch In Canada, as John Tobias has noted, legal policy directed at aboriginal people emphasized protection, civilization, and the eventual elimination of special status through assimilation. Part of the civilizing process was to deny natives any access to alcohol- Based on previous colonial and provincial legislation a wide variety of liquor prohibitions were incorporated in the federal fndian Act of
1876. The only authorized way for a native to use or possess alcohol was to become "enfranchised," that is, to become a
Canadian citizen and legally cease being a status Indian. 2 2
Foundation, 1996), 106, Many years ago Judge F.W. Howay argued that "the Indian O£ the Northwest Coast had no inborn desire for or knowledge of intoxicating liquor, and his first reaction to it was one of disgust." See F.W. Howay, The Introduction of Intoxicating Liquors Amongst the . Indians. of the Northwest Coast ," in Yson Br3 t 3 Qh m,ed. J, Friesen and H.K. Ralston (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976), 46. More recently, Jan Noel has argued, "we still do not know very much about the ways in whicb alcohol transformed native cultures. The evidence of traders, missionaries, and settlers on the deleterious effects of drink, at least in the early nineteenth cent-, tends to be overwhelming." She goes on to add that natives and sailors had similar drinking patterns, and "Indians were not the only ones, though, who fell prey to fiery fluids." See Jan Noel, Canadammecees before era+lnn (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 199S), 183 (1st quote) 187-188 (2nd quote).
22John L - Tobias , \'Protection, Civilization, Assimilation: An Outline History of Canada's Indian Policy," înkh ve Stu-, ed, Ian A-L. Getty and Antoine S. 170
In British Columbia legislation pertaining to liquor and
natives had been on the books since the 1860~~but the
primary emphasis of provincial regulation was to uphold
federal law. The Goverment Liquor Act of 1921 denied liquor
permits to individuals under the juridiction of the Indian
Act. Legal paternalism placed aboriginals somewhere between
minors, those under twenty-one years, and interdicts, those
denied access to alcohol because of excessive drinking.
Unlike chronological minors, however, no guarantees existed
that natives would shed their dependent status. As late as
1959 Chief Charlie Walkem of Spences Bridge lamented, "My
dear people, are we going [to bel under age for al1 our
lives? Are the fndians always going to be under
In popular discourse interdiction was often referred to
as 'siwashing, " a corruption of "Salish," which designated an
-- - - - Lussier (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1983) 41,. 44; . Megan Schlasse, 'Liquor and the Indian Post W.W.11,' prit1 nh Co- tort& News 29 (Spring 1996) : 26-
23 "B. C . Laws pertaining to liquor control, " Attorney General Files, Records Management Branch (RMB), Reel 372; BrFtish Columbia, -tesf 1921, c.30 ("Government Liquor Acttr),S. 11, 36, 57-60; on Drunkards' legislation see Reviseda. , 1897, c. 66 ("Habitua1 Drunkards Actn ) and c.124 ("Liquor Traf fic Regulation Act") , S. 8-10; mouver Sm, 14 October 1959 p.21 (Walkem quote). aboriginal language group. When the hotel association banned women from beer pariours in 1926 R.J. McIntyre of the British
Columbia Prohibition Association (BCPA) claimed the action assaulted the decency of women because it ". . . 'Siwashes,' them, placing them in the class with fndians and habitua1 drunkards . m24
Temperance supporters had long invoked the firewater myth. At the 1925 annual convention of the BCPA, Rev. J.
Pearce claimed that unless the illegal liquor traffic was stopped, "26,000 indians [sic] would soon be wiped out.
Latex the convention passed a motion that blamed liquor for the problems of natives and called upon the federal government to "strictly enforce the law regarding supplying liquor to Indians." In 1940 Rev. McIntyre warned the Liquor
Control Board (LCB) about licensing another beer parlour within the vicinity of a reserve in Alert Bay. He added: "It would appear that Indians have little difficulty in getting
24 *.O Reginald E . Hose, Prnh&aL&,--Exol? : Ce ce with t OT Prabkm- 1991- 1927 (New York : Longmans, Green and Co., 19281, 64; VictoriaTimes, 3 August 1926 (quote) . liquor these days. There ought to be a closer check on this thing in Vancouver. "25
Some aboriginal people did àrink in Vancouver beer parlours. Since the early 1930s the York Hotel on Howe Street had warned its employees that \\no minors or Indians are to be served, and this must be strictly adhered to." In 1939 someone unnamed was convicted of supplying beer to a native in the Dominion Hotel parlour. The LCB cautioned parlour operators to use "the utmost precaution in senring liquor to
Minors and Indians." By the Second World War the LCB was forced to admit that natives illegaliy secured liquor permits, which allowed them buy liquor and enter beer parlours. In 1942 the Board persuaded Ottawa to stamp
"Indian" on the back of National Registration Certificates issued to natives. During the war these certificates were required to obtain liquor permits. The Board advised parlour operators to ask to see the Registration Certificate "when in dollbtWabout natives. 26
- ZS\\~enthAnnual convention," p. 2 (1st quote), 3 (2nd quote) , BCA, Add. Mss 17, Alcohol Research Council, Vol. 29, File "Minutes of Meetings 1925-1926n; McIntyre to Kennedy, 13 July 1940, BCA, GRWO, Box 2, File 27 (126), (3rd quote) .
26"~egulationsGoverning ail Employees in Beer Parlours Operated by Company, " BCA, G-2, Box 9, File 121-368 (1st 173
Yet officia1 documents say little about how aboriginale were defined and assessed in beer parlours. As James Frideres has argued, "Indian" was a legal category under the Indian
Act that changed many times. It did "not reflect social, cultural, or racial attributes," and it did not express how
First Nations people defined themselves. In beer parlours waiters and operators did not generally rely on identity cards. The only natives who had any incentive to offer documents were those enfranchised and thus eligible to drink.
"Indiamess" was a constructed assessment based on appearance and behaviour. For example, in r948 a Mrs. Kefwho was not a legal Indian, was denied service in the Regent Hotel because she looked like one. Her friend complained to the LCB, and the Secretary replied that "Mrs. K. is partly of the Indian
Race and her facial characteristics are such as to place a miter in a beer parlour on his guard." He suggested that
~rs,K. obtain an official letter 'to the effect that she is
-- - quote) ; Wyllie to Dominion Botel, 4 July 1939, ibid, , Box 8, File 121-327 (2nd quote) ; Kennedy to McIntyre. 3 Decernber 1942. ORï70, Box 2, Pile 126-1 (3rd quote) . 174 not deemed to be an Indian within the meaning of the Indian
Act. . . ." 27
In November 1949 a RCMP constable spotted a status
Indian known to him drinking beer in the Pennsylvania Hotel.
As a consequence a waiter later pleaded guilty to illegal service. In the waiterrs sworn staternent he claimed he "had no reason to suspect that he was an Indian." The waiter thought the aboriginal àrinker might have been Mexican. His lawyer corroborated that testimony: "1 was looking at the
Indian chap and 1 must confess that 1 would not have taken him for an Indian myself. . . ." The Chief Inspector recommended that the licence not be suspended, in part because of the man's alleged non-native appearance: "the
Indian in question dresses in a very highly respectable manner .tr
27James B. Frideres, mtive Pe~01e in Canada: co~fllcts. (Scarborough: Prentice Hall, 19831, 6- 9 (1st quote); Wyllie to Peterson, 21 September 1948, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-357 (2nd and 3rd quotes) .
20Statement of NE, 30 November 1949, Ba, GR52, Box 9, File 121-353 (1st quote) ; Branca to Haywood, 5 December 1949, ibid. (2nd quote); Haywood to Secretary, 8 December 1949, ibid. (3rd quote) . Behaviour, however, was just as importance as appearance in defining Indians. Aboriginal people, even status Indians, who drank quietly and moderately might never be bothere9 i~ a beer parlour. They could pass as whites. Asseseing the uctent of individual passing is impossible. Natives who fooled parlour workers and inspectors were not captured in the records generated by the state. Yet passing was not just trickery; it could also be a more negotiated process of racial definition. In 1950, for example, an LCB undercover agent claimed he saw, among many infractions, "an Indian girlwdrinking in the Dodson Hotel. He did not link her to any of the other problems with the parlour. In the warning letter sent to the Hotel, the Chief Inspector never mentioned the woman. She had not caused any trouble and thus, for the moment, was accepted as white,29
With the end of the Second World War the presence of natives in Vancouver beer parlours acquired more official attention for two related reasons. First, the RCMP
29 #1 to Chief Inspector, I November 1950, BCA, GR52, Box 8, File 121-326; Haywood to Dodson, 3 November 1950, ibid. A similar rack of official interest was shown at the Stanley in July 1951; see #1 to Chief Inspector, 27 July 1951, GR52, Box 9, File 121-362 and Haywood to Secretary, 30 July 1951, ibid. 176
intensified its efforts to catch Indiana in beer parlours,
which often brought it in conflict with provincial liquor
authoxities. Second, liquor infractions became more prominent
as aboriginal people began to campaign for equal drinking
rights with non-natives as part of their national carnpaign
for equality without assimilation.
After the war the RCMP appointed a constable to patrol
VancouverOs beer parlours. The federal police worked with their city counterparts and with LCB officiais. The RCMPts enthusiasrn for enforcement, though, often caused friction with the LCB. The Board's reaction was not motivated by particular sympathy for aboriginal drinkers. Provincial regulators believed the federal police over-reacted to the point of setting up or entrapping parlour workers and operators. The tensions between two agencies of the state enhanced the complexities of racial definition and regulation in the parlours .3 0
In March 1948, for example, the RCMP arrested a status
Indian who was drinking with an enfranchised native in the
30On city police enforcement see Wyllie to Regent, 29 May 1946, Ba0 GR52, Box 9, File 121-357 and Campbell to Secretary, 24 September 1947, ibid., Box 9, File 121-362. Marr Hotel, and a waiter later pleaded guilty to illegal service. The Chiai Inapector did not recommend a licence suspension because ail was well until the RCMP showed up. He failed 'to understand why the police just happened to be there when this man was served especially when he was in the
Company of another Indian not protected by the [Indian] Act."
From the Chief Inspector8s view, had the RCMP not appeared, the status Indian would not have existed, since his behaviour had not racialized him, 31
A similar incident at the Melbourne in April 1949 highiighted the fluidity of racial definition and enforcement. Two status Indians joined two enfranchised natives who were àrinking beer. The RCMP arrested the status
Indians, and a waiter was later convicted of illegal service. fis fellow waiters were angry because the two atatus Indians did not order any beer and because one of the two was an employee of the RCMP. Waiters from other parlours began to contribute fifty cents each to appeal the case. The chie£
Inspector did not recommend a licence suspension because it
31See Kimberly to Chief Inspector, 19 March 1948, BaI GR52, Box 8, File 121-335; Kimberly to Chief Inspector, 23 March 1948, ibid.; Chief Inspector to Secretary, 30 March 1948, ibid. (quote) . was "a borderline case." He also criticized the RCMP constable because "he should have informed the licensee instead of returning to the Police Station to get other police to corroborate the drinking." Technically the RCMP officer had acted appropriately, and legally nothing was borderline about the case. Status fndians who even set foot in beer parlours violated the liquor act. Yet in this case at least, since they did not drink and one was an agent of the state, the LCB was willing to let them pass. 3 2
Later in 1949, in the November incident at the
Pennsylvania Hotel, the Chief Inspector went further in his criticism of the RCMP: not wishing criticize another Government Department 1 am of the opinion that the enforcement of this Indian Act is not being carried out in the correct rnanner. . . .If He said the priority of the
3 2 Kimberly to Chief Inspector, 30 April 1949. BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-345; Agent to Chief Inspector, 2 May 1949, ibid.; Chief Inspector to Secretary 6 May 1949. ibid. (quote); British Columbia, ,=,I,1947, c. 53 ("Government Liquor Amendment Act, 1947" ) , S. 16. The province abandoned the use of individual liquor permits in 1947, which meant that restrictions against status Indians had to be more precisely defined. Thus the government outlawed even their presence in beer parlours, On the demise of permits see my
O Privatbapion (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1991), 96-97, constable was to "obtain a conviction instead of seeing that the Indian was evicted from the premises prior to receiving any service." Thus, punishing aboriginal drinkers was the emphasis of the RCMP. For provincial authorities, however, this issue was only one aspect of the cornplex regulatory process. From the Chief Inspectorrs perspective, the narrow focus of the RCMP provoked unfortunate and unnecessary consequences, Therefore he was willing to accept much more latitude in regulating aboriginal drinkers, to the point of violating the liquor act. Defining natives thus also included enforcement priorities, and the beer parlour Indian was not a consistent state construction.3 3
The RCMP enthusiasm for enforcement interacted with a post-war campaign by First Nations for eqpal access to alcohol. During the war aboriginal people served in the armed forces where they drank in foreign canteens on the same terms with non-natives. As Mary John of the Stoney Creek reserve nec Vanderhoof remembered: When those who survived the war returned to Canada, the Native ex-servicemen found that undex the Indian Act they were still forbidden to drink alcohol
33Haywood to Secret-, 8 December 1949, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-353. anywhere in their own country/ Pressured by aboriginal groups, the federal governent passed a series of amendments to the Indian Act in 1951. As a result status Indians could
àrink in a licensed public premise, if specifically authorized by the province in which they were resident. In
British Columbia the only licensed public premises were beer parlours, and they were opened to al1 natives on 15 December
1951. Beer parlours, however, provided the only legal access to alcohol for natives. They could not buy liquor at government stores. Private clubs, ironically even licensed veterans' clubs, were still closed to them, and reserves remained off icially dry. "
Aboriginal leaders irnrnediately criticized the inequality of the changes. Chuck Thorne, a Cowichan Chief, captured the sentiments of many: Ttfs not right to open the breach a little bit. It should be wide open, same privileges as for whites and same penalties." Andrew Paull, President of the
North American Indian Brotherhood, echoed that thought:
3 4 J.R. Miller, ws~~idethe ~eavens: A E~&QKY e xev- ed- (Toronto: UTP, 1991), 220-222; ~ridgetMoran, v-l: The Story bf (Vancouver:. Tillacum. Library, 1988), 106-7; Hawthorn, af Rnt~9h Co-, 331-332. 181
"Indians should have al1 privileges under B.C. liquor laws
and, of course, the aame penalties as anyone else." He added
that the new regulations could actually prove to be "a trapw
for natives because intoxication on a reserve was still prohibited. 3S
Once Vancouver beer parlours legally opened their doors to aboriginal people, status Indians no longer had to pass as whites. Yet the 'beer parlour Indian" did not disappear from the official record. For example, in April 1953 an inspector noted that too much beer (the limit at the time was two per person) had been served to a table 'at which five Indians were seated" in the Melbourne Hotel. The Chief Inspecter wrote a blistering letter to the operator citing the
wexcessive amount of beer on a table where five Indians were seated. . . ." In his letter of apology the operator admitted
'an excessive amount of beer was being served on the table where £ive Indians were seated." Yet the legal infraction was over-service, not over-service to Indians. Too much beer and native people remained a tenacious conceptual link. 36
3 5~ov~ce,, 13 December 1951, p.17 (quotes) .
3 6Bruce to Director of Licensing, 18 Aprll 1953, BCA, GR52, Box 9, File 121-345 (1st quote) ; Haywood to Melbourne Hotel, 22 April 1953, *id. (2nd quote) ; Brandolini to Initially at least, the press played on the apparent problems. On Christmas Eve 1951, less than two weeks after parlours were opened ta natives, the Vancouver Province carried a page one story under the headline, "B.C. Indians
Roll Out Beer Barrel." The story described a "howling disorder" in Srnithers after '200 district Indians made first visits to the village's three beer parlors." With semiotic, if vicious, adroitness the reporter claimed: "Squaws carrying paposes [sic] on their backs were battling with braves." The
RCMP also argued that opening the beer parlours only increased the problems for natives- The Assistant
Cornmissioner claimed that "wherever there are Indians in quantity, close to beer parlours, considerable damage is
-- - Haywood, 14 May 1953, ibid. (3rd quote) . For a similar example from the Stanley see Bruce to Director, 18 April 1953, GRS2, Box 9, File 121-362
In communities with large native populations the firewater myth continued to be invoked. The most spectacular example came from Burns Lake, west of Vanderhoof. In 1952 the Tweedsrmir Hotel, the only parlour in tom, banned al1 natives, status and enfranchised, from its premises. See Lythgoe to Director, 15 May 1954, BCA, GR52, Box 10, File 121-386.
Popular historian Barry Broadfoot remembered drinking in one of the Squamish beer parlours in the 1950s where a separate area, bordered by a white line, existed for native drinkers. Personal communication, March 4, 1997. being done, not only frorn a general but an economic standpoint .n37
Assessing the intoxication of aboriginal people for law enforcement purposes was a subjective process. A non-native
MLA for Prince Rupert said that police and magistrates in his comrnunity determined native intoxication simply by the presence of any breath odour of liquor. He added that the new regulations actually reinforced stereotypes about natives and liquor because legal drinking could only take place in parleurs, and any consequent problems were quite visible.
Mary John remembered that "people would drink as much as they could before closing tirne, because they knew that once they left the beer parlor, the only place they could drink was in some back alley or beside the railway tracks ."'O
Two scholarly studies in the 1950s both argued that the partial lifting of liquor restrictions had done nothing to decrease the bitterness that natives felt because of the lack of equal treatment. Edwin Lemert of the University of
vmr24 December 1951, pl; ~awthorn. rndians of col-ia, 332 (RCMP quote) , 382. California intenriewed natives on the mainland coast and
Vancouver Island. He concluded that they felt "a deep sense of injustice because they are fined and sent to provincial prison for drinking, a pleasure which white persons enjoy with imp~nity.~'For many natives ndrinking has become associated with political consciousness and has grown into a symbol of native solidarity." A study sponsored by the federal government and led by UBC anthropologist Harry
Hawthorn reached a similar assessment: "There can be no doubt that many fndians strongly resent the denial to them of full liquor privileges. . . ." This study recommended "that the
Indian of British Columbia should be in no different a position from the White citizen of British Columbia in respect to liquor la~s."'~
3 9 Lemert, A-hol, .356 . (1st quote) ; 346 (2nd quote) ; Kawthorn, msof Rn tish Co-, 332-3 (3rd quote) , 382 (4th quote). In 1954 the government of Manitoba appointed a commission to study liquor issues in the province. Its 1955 report recommended, "on a two year trial basis, that "Indians in Manitoba be legally permitted to enter licensed prernises and to purchase and consume liquor therein and that they be allowed to purchase liquor for off-premise consumption in a residence other than where prohibited by federal law." The assumption was that liquor equality would promote, in the words of a unnamed "prominent official of the Indian Health Services in Ottawa," the "complete assimilation of the Indian.. . . -" See, ~anitoba,mort of ae Cr~mmi,ss7 on . Part 2 (Winnipeg, 1955) , 615, 614, 185
While either of these books could be crlticized for its assumption that liquor equality would facilitate assimilation, neither blithely accepted the firewater myth.
Both stressed that aboriginal people, like non-natives, had diverse drinking patterns and attitudes towards alcohol. Some natives oriented to temperance saw the opening of beer parlours as a WhiteN trick to demoralize and bankrupt them.
Many others drank to excess for a variety of reasons, while some incorporated alcohol into traditional activities, ~t first Mary John enjoyed meeting her husband and friends in the Vanderhoof beer parlour. The novelty wore off in 1957 after a young couple were killed in a train accident in which alcohol was a major factor. She never had another drink,
Andrew Paul1 was one of the rnost vocal advocates for the end of drinking discrimination, but he had no persona1 interest in beer: "1 am not a beer drinker-hate the stuff." Yet he strongly believed that natives themselves should decide what tar where to, and whether to drink. British Columbia First
Nations achieved full liquor rights in 1962, nearîy fifteen years after they had received the provincial franchise and two years after the federal franchise.4 O
40Lemert, CO&^ 321-22; Hawthorn, rndians, 380-81; Constructing and regulating race in Vancouver beer parlours was an intertwined process based on appearance and performance. The physical cues of race were important social markers, but race was also defined by behaviour. In some cases, "passing" best described that behaviour. In beer parlours passing was most closely associated with status
Indians. They were the only group completely barred on the basis of racial definition. Appropriate behaviour allowed them to act as whites or at least enfranchised natives, who were permitted to drink in parlours.
Yet racial behaviour often was more negotiated, or at least interactive, than simple passing conveys. The proscription against status Indians was not consistently enforced by provincial and federal authorities, as they did not always share the same priorities. Consequently "Indian" was defined more by context than legal text. An aboriginal
Mosan, =&V!&W~108-9; -, 14 May 1954, p. 2 (Paull) , 4 July 1962, p.1; Barman, The West Revend the West, 363. Based on the stories of seventy-£ive people, Brian Maracle has written a fascinating account of the experiences of aboriginal people with alcohol and other drugs. See ces on qddictnd. Recovenr (Toronto: Penquin, 1993). 187 person who did not necessarily pass, or did not even try to, might still be passed by some state officials.
To a certain extent parlour decency was linked to the behavioural reputation of Wians, especially the Chinese.
Because of their alleged ties to vice, Chinese were not eligible to operate or work in beer parlours, even after they won the franchise. Their absence, or invisibility, signified respectability for parlours. Yet, with the toleration if not blessing of the state, Chinese permeated the rnargins of parlours as janitors and hotels as room operators and owners. In a regulatory sense, these people were less racialized because their behaviour did not directly compromise the parlours.
The racialized gender relations in beer parlours often brought behaviour and appearance together. While some parlours discriminated simply on the basis of appearance, such discrimination officially was less acceptable after the
Second World War. Thus men of colour could àrink in some parlours without too much difficulty--unless they were accompanied by white women. That behaviour racialized both the man of colour and the white women. Much official and popular antipathy was directed at mixed-race couples. Mixed- 188
race couple was a narrow construction based on the fear of
miscegenation and the sullying of whiteness. The antipathy
toward them underscored the privileged status of
heterosexual, white men. Despite reality, a mixed-race couple
that did not include a white woman did not exist as an
official category of concern.
Finally, citizenship was closely linked to race and
regulation. Franchise requirements were directed at both
Asians and aboriginal people. Citizenship requirement were not only racialized but also elastic. The formal conferring of the franchise certainly did not guarantee equality, or even access to the parleurs, whether as patrons, workers, operators. Citizenship was a very political process that was tied to concepts of parlour decency. It is to the politics of regulation that we turn in the next chapter. Chapter Five * Reconfiguring Decency: The Politics of Regulation
Interviewed in hia room at the Hotel Vancouver in July
1949, British journalist Noel Monks commented on his unsuccessful attempt to order a beer while standing at the bar in a beer parlour. He said that Canada was "a trernendous, virile country and 1 know from personal experience that your fighting men can match the finest in the world. Yet youfve apparently let yourselves be legislated into a state of adolescence when it comes to the use of alcoh01.~~Monks described such regulation as "just one step from making you stand out in the rain and hold up your am and shout, 'Heil
Ottawa."' Battle-tested virility had given way to impotent adolescence because of the fascism of beer parlour regulation. Something had changed in the post-war discourse of liquor regulation. 1
fiancouver provipce 12 July 1949, p .2. MoPks had been refused service in a London, Ontario beer parlowf- =ter the Second World War beer parlour regulation became part of a larger political debate on public drinking
in British Columbia that culminated in a new licpor act in
1954. From one perspective, politics can be seen as a state- centred process of, in this case, first a plebiscite, then a commission of inquiry, and finally new legislation in response to a variety of interest groups. The obvious conclusions are that wet opinions prevailed, and the state certified them with additional licensed public facilities to compete with beer parleurs. This perspective on politics is worthy of discussion because public drinking regulation did change. At the same tirne, though, it offers only a narrow view of how regulation worked. The dynamics of regulation are better understood with a broader vision of politics.
Politics can also be seen as contests over knowledge about public drinking that went beyond the state. Parlour regulation had always been as much about naming space and the people who occupied that space as it was about controlling drinking. Regulation was a way to order reality through the power of naming. Regulators also created knowledge in order to use it. Decency not only defined people but was the rationalization to act on the basis of class, gender, and 191 race. Yet regulation involved many actors, including those regulated, who promoted their own versions of decency.
After the war one can se- a reconfiguration of the discourse of decency, what might be called a new knowledge of public drinking . Particularly promoted by the press, restaurants, and cabarets this knowledge emphasized the respectability of public drinking, as long as it occurred in a decent environment that encouraged moderation. That environment, however, was no longer the beer parlour, if it ever had been. This new knowledge condemned parlours as indecent, corrupt, working-class centres of excess. Moreover, the state stood out for particular reproach. An antiquated liquor act and inefficient, indeed corrupt, administration retarded decency by confining legal public drinking to beer parlours .
Promoters of this new knowledge offered the cocktail lounge as a post-war, modem counterpoint to the beer parlour. Lounges catered to a middle-class clientele, and beer parlour patrons were neither expected nor welcome. As the respectable haunts of the middle class, lounges required less forma1 regulation, less surveillance. The clientele could be expected to regulate themselves to a far greater 192 extent than parlour patrons. When lowges opened in Vancouver in 1954, they operated with fewer formal constraints. For example, women and men could drink together. Yet formal and informal methods still regulated gender relations, and women continued to be more xegulated than men.
While beer parlours remained, they were now more morally marginalized facilities. Moral marginalization was closely linked to class, but the class implications can be read in more than one way. On the one hand, one can emphasize the failure of beer parlours rather than condemn the people who frequented them, After all, many wage workers themselves were decideùly unhappy with the parlours, and some considered them as sites of excessive consumption. Moreover, as hostile as the inquiry commissioners were towards beer parlours, they were sympathetic to the existence of some sort of
"workingman's clubM for the moderate consumption of draft beer, The daily press, some of the strongest champions of cocktails, even appealed to the myth of the British Pub, which was constituted as a homey environment where respectable working people gathered for sociability and a 193
On the other hand, from the day they opened their doors, parlours were constructed as suspect space patronized by suspect people. The defenders of parlours argued that the right environment would prornote decency among the working- class patrons. Implicit in that defence was the assumption that without regulation working people would not conform to decencyrs expectations of moderate consumption, appropriate cornportment, and sexual propriety. Parlour patrons charnpioned their own definitions of decency, but eventually at a cost.
=ter the war critics argued that parlours had failed because they had not been able to remould working-class drinkers. *******
Compared to the First World War, the 1939-1945 conflict was decidedly wet. The drys were at best only partially able to link their cause to the war effort. The first war had acted as a catalyst for a rnovement growing in popularity. By the beginning of the Second World War, prohibition had not only been dead for nearly twenty years in British Columbia, it had also been spectacularly discredited in the United
States, which abandoned it in 1933. Moreover, liquor ifiterests on both sides of the border embarked on public relations campaigns that included raising fears about the return of prohibition. The most important liquor wartime restrictions in British Columbia were the result of shortages and rationing, not the continued efforts of temperance groups. Even many non-drinkera bought their meagre allotment of alcohol to sel1 or give away during rationing. Moreover, young men and women learned to drink in military canteens.
After the war, with the return of military personnel, continued prosperity, and the end of rationing, liquor consumption soared. The dry years were a generation in the past .2
Yet beer parlours remained as the material legacy of the prohibition era. They were the only licensed facilities where the general public could legally drink. Vancouver parlours had largely remained unchanged since they first opened their doors. They still offered no food, no entertainment, and no beverage except beer, not even soft drinks. If anything parlours had become even more restrictive during the war with
- 2These issues are discussed in more detail in Robert A. Campbell, qolof rlt-1-sh. . CO a Fra Proh~b3...Fian ta Pr (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1991) , 82, 86-90, 92-93, 191- 195 supper-hour closings and the installation of partitions to isolate unattached men from unattached women. As well,
Vancouver parlours tended to be quite crowded as rio additional ones had been licensed.
Post-war critics condemned the parlour as a promoter of the excessive consumption it was designed to curtail. The first to gain prominence in the press was the Rt. Rev. Harold
E. Sexton, Anglican Bishop of British Columbia, who was a strong supporter of liberalized drink reform. In the summer of 1945 he criticized the liquor act for herding people "into beer parlors where they may do nothing but guz~le.~~The
Vancouver ~OV- echoed these sentiments by describing beer parlours as "those dismal and melancholy resorts" and later as "sterilized filling stations." Provincial politicians fuelled the criticism. Herbert Gargrave, the Cooperative
Commonwealth Federation member of the legislatue from the northern constituency of Mackenzie, claimed that what people wanted from beer parlours was "an eveningts entertainment, an eveningts sociability." Instead, "what do they get? Just plain drunk very often." His colleague, Nancy Hodges
(Coalition Victoria) , said beer parlours should be closed because "first, last and foremost they are aimed at the
encouragement of drinking for drinking8s sake. . , .a13
Rather than close the parleurs, the more common
suggestion was to open additional licensed public facilities,
especially cocktail lounges. Here spirits and wine could be
served by the glass in an elegant environment enhanced by
food and entertainment. In 1947, the year that Ontario began
to allow cocktail lounges, the chairrnan of the Liquor Control
Board (LCB) sent a list of suggested changes to the Attorney
General. The suggestions included licensed hotel lounges and
restaurants. A 1949 national Gallup Pol1 claimed that support
for cocktails was the strongest in British Columbia.
According to the poli lounges were most popular with "White
collar" and "Business and profess." people. Independent
Labour MLA Tom Uphill said cocktail lounges "would be
discrimination against the workingman," High prices, attire
requirements, and comportment expectations would discourage
wage workers from patronizing thern. For their supporters,
though, cocktail lounges were invoked as a new definition of
3 v~nce,6 August 1945, p. 20 (Sexton), 21 July 1945, p.4 (dismal) 21 November 1946, p.4 (sterilized), 22 March 1946, p. 9 (Gargrave) ; Victoria -, 4 March 1947 (Hodges). decent public drinking. Cocktail lounges would be the domain of the respectable middle-class whose moderate consumption of spirits would contrast the excessive beer swilling of the parlour clientele. 4
The most organized pmmoters of cocktails were the restaurants and cabarets. For decades restaurant owners had argued that eating places provided an ideal place for liquor service because of the moderating effect of food. As one restaurant official put it: "Temperance in the consumption of alcoholic beverages can best be helped by serving of liquor by the glass along with food." The restaurant owners also raised the more self-interested consideration that if hotel restaurants obtained cocktail licences, then fairness dictated that al1 restaurants should be eligible for them, 5
men more prominent with their demands were the a unlicensed cabarets, which had operated for years in the
4 Kennedy to Wismer, 17 February 1947, Attorney General Files, Records Management Branch (RMB), Reel 371; Dmm 93; provw, 15 July 1949, p. 36 (poll), 22 February 1947, p. 9 (Uphill)-
'canadian Restaurant Association to Wismer, 14 February 1947, Attorney General Files, RMB, Reel 371; -, 29 February 1952, p.38 (quote). city. The Commodore Ballroom had opened on Granville Street
in 1929, and the Cave on Hornby in 1937. Mter the war,
cabarets became even more popular. In Vancouver people regularly drank in them despite the law. Patrons brought their own bottles of liquor, stored them under the table, and bought expensive "set-upsn of glasses, ice, and mixer. The newspapers often referred to these cabarets as "bottle clubs." The central downtown clubs, such as the Cave, the
Palomar Supper Club on Burrard, and the Panorama Roof in the
Hotel Vancouver, al1 appealed to a middïe-class crowd. Yet periodically the police raided the clubs, selzed bottles, and occasionally arrested revellers. By the late 1940s cabaret owners claimed they welcomed such raids as part of their attempt to show that the liquor laws were unenforceable and
"antiquated." Their proposed solution was to licence cabarets to sel1 cocktails by the glass. Licensed cabarets, they argued, would promote moderation as people would have a few
&inks by the glass rather than draining entire bottles.6
6On cabarets in general see, Jeff Bateman, "Big Bands," in G~v~ancouverk:,An~cv~~opae~, ed, Chuck Cook (Surrey, BC: The Linkman Press, 1997) , 698 and Mark Leiren-Young, Y?istory of Entertainment, " in ibid., 719- 22. See dso, Plravincg, 4 January 1949, p - 9, 29 May 1950, p. 1-2; cal ou,5 Januasy 1949; 18Therers always Somebody who The push for cocktail loungee was aleo motivated by
criticism of the legal fiction of private clubs. Since the
1920s private clubs had been licensed to allow members to
keep and consume their personal liquor. Technically not open
to the general public, clubs could offex food, some
entertainment, games, and even accommodation. In 1947 the govemrnent licensed clubs to sel1 liquor to members and their guests. The result was a rapid expansion of cheap memberships
in downtown Vancouver. For example, the PaciEic Athletic Club on Howe Street had some 3,000 "membersfrby 1948. The
Vancouver Syn decried the hypocrisy of clubs and said "the sensible thing to do would be to legalize the sale of liquor by the glass in cocktail bars or night clubs, as they do in civilized communities." Civilization was only a short drive away, Neighbouring Washington state had allowed beer and wine in restaurants since 1934, and in 1948 the votexs there approved an initiative in favour of the cocktail ~roorn."'
wants the Liquor Law ~hanged!'~. B.C. Cabaret Owners pamphlet, 1949, Attorney General Files, RMB, Reel 371.
7British Columbia, Sm-,1947, c. 53 ("An Act to amend the 'Government Liquor Actrtr),s.9; Haywood to the Chaiman, 21 June 1948, RMB, Reel 619; Vancouver Sun, 18 June 1948, p. 1, On Washington state see, Norman K. Clark, me Dy d Social -air in,rev. ed- (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 19881, 243. 248-50. 200
Early in 1952 the Attorney General announced that a
plebiscite on liquor would be held at the next general
election. The language of the plebiscite framed the debate:
"Are you in favour of the sale of spirituous liquor and wine by the glase in establishments liceneed for such purpose."
Votera were aeked if they wanted a legal alternative to
licensed public drinking in beer parlours. 8
Opposition to the plebiscite was organized by temperance groups. The way the \'non side constructed its case showed how much the discourse on public drinking hact shifted. In the
1920s and 1930s temperance groups had championed another plebiscite on public drinking. After the war they argued for a commission of inquiry, which would help prevent uninformed voters from making the wrong choice. In 1950 the British
Columbia Temperance League suggested that "the present state of public information is not such that a socially useful answer would be likely to result from a plebiscite. . . .II
~ustbefore the govemment released the text of the
8 23 January 1952, p.1; Audrey Marilyn Adams, "A Study of the Use of Plebiscites and Referendums By the Province of British Columbiam (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia, 1958) , 134 plebiscite, the League urged the Attorney General at least to establish a 'research committee to present factual material to the citizena of the province [that would enable] them to vote with full knowledge of the case.lfg
Temperance leaders also were careful to re-order their knowledge of public ârinking. The word "temperance" no longer elicited much moral fervour, so the drys opted for the post- war language of science. In cooperation with the Vancouver
Council of Churches the League created the Alcohol Research
Council to spearhead the "noM campaign. The choice of a scientific-sounding name was quite intentional. The chair of the Leaguefs policy committee emphasized the importance of objectivity and "finding out the facts and allowing them to speak for themselves." The President of the BCTL, who became the Executive Director of the new Council, resigned his temperance position so that the "yes" side could not argue that Council was "merely a camouflage organization working for the militant 'drys-
9 Small to Wismer, 15 March 1950, Attorney General Files, RMB, Reel 372 (1st quote) ; "BCTL Executive Meeting, 10 March 1952, British Columbia Archives (BCA), Add- Mss . 17, Vol. 2, File 20 (2nd quote) .
10 "Report for 1952," BCA, Add, Mss, 17, Vol. 20, File, "1952"; BCTL Executive Meeting," 10 Mach 1952, ibid,, Vol- The myesm side was just as careful as to how it organized its campaign to construct a new knowledge of public drinking. Under the direction of the former advertising director of the Vancouver Sun, supporters of cocktails created the Citizens' Committee for a Common Sense Liquor
Law. Once again Washington state probably had some influence.
Supporters of the successful 1948 cocktail initiative had called their proposal, wThe Common Sense Bi11 ." In British
Columbia the yes side stressed that the current liquor law was \\outdated,"and they sought to \'modernize it in the public interest." A yes vote was defined as not just a vote for change but also one for a "saner system for the sale of liquor.' The rhetoric was powerful. Those \'citizensu who were
\\modernnand governed by "cornmon senset' supported cocktails.
They would restore sanity and respect for the law by replacing an antiquated system of licensed public drinking
2, File 20 (1st quote) ; Cowley to Linton, n.d., ibid, , Vol. 3, File 25 (2nd quote) . The Temperance League was the product of an earlier name change, After the United States abandoned prohibition in 1933, the B.C. Prohibition Association renamed itself the B.C. Temperance League. dominated by beer parleurs. The a itself blamed the regulatory statua quo for 'lawlessness and depra~ity.~"
On 12 June 1952, British Columbians cast 316,266 ballots in favour of the plebiscite and 204,761 against. In Vancouver nearly 65% of the plebiscite votes were for the "yesN side.
The General Secretary of the Canadian Temperance Federation, who had been in the province to help the *noN side, managed to find something encouraging in the results. He said the voters were "not satisfied with the present set-up, - Le.
Beer Parlours. They want a change for the better." Because of a quirky ballot system, the provincial election resulted in a temperance-leaning government led by W.A.C. Bennett whose first action on public drinking was to appoint a full commission of inquiry. 12
Ll Sun, 22 April 1940, p.18; provju, 5 May 1952, p. 5 (1st quote), 6 May 1952, p. 3 (2nd quote) ; Clark, The Drv Yss, 248; Sun, 10 June 1952, p. 4 (editorial). On post-war modernism and consumerism see Doug -am, at ue Riqhf;
B&v O Room Ge-atm (Toronto: UTP, 1996) , 75-9 and Joy Parr, "Shopping for a Good Stove: A Parable about Gender. Design, and the Market," in Div~rm O* 1945- 3984, ed- Joy Parr (Toronto: UTP, 1995), esp. 82-90,
UT tat te ment of Resdt of Liquor Plebiscite--June 12, 1952," Attorney General Files, RMB, Reel 373; "The Canadian Temperance Federation Minutes of the Executive Meeting," 24 June 1952, BCA, Add. MSS- 17, Vol. 3, File 26 (quote). Before the commission the status quo had little support.
The majority of briefs supported the licensing of additional
public facilities. Temperance groups sought to limit new
outlets, but they also wanted more restrictions on parlours .13
The strongest defender of beer parlours was Local 676,
the Beverage Dispensers Union. The union had long claimed
that the existing regulatory system worked well, and it had
actively campaigned against the plebiscite. Local 676 leaders
argued that additional facilities would threaten the wages
and working conditions of their members. The most change the
union was willing to accept was a limited number of hotel
cocktail bars and liquor service in cabarets. 14
In the aidst of the 1952 liquor hearings Local 676
decided to become actively involved in the March of Dimes
charity campaign. The union wanted "to bring forth to the
U On temperance groups before the commission see Alcohol Research Council to Commission, 19 November 1952, BCA, Add, Mss. 17, Vol. 20, File "1952;" provm, 9 October 1952, p. 23; Çun, 20 November 52, p. 2.
1kiils to Wismer, 8 March 1950, Attorney General Files, RMB, Reel 371; province, 9 June 1952, p.3, 16 October 1952, p-21, public that we can raise money for charitable purposes,
bringing goodwill and good fellowship before the public eye."
Parlour workers inaugurated what became the Bartenders Blitz,
an annual fundraising event. Their choice of üress was
significant. They wore a stylized "old time bartenders
costumeM while they collected donations in beer parlours.
Traditional saloon titles and garb now invoked nostalgia
rather than condemnation. They had a more positive resonance
than the white coat and black tie uniform that parlour
workers normally wore. Moreover, the charity, formally called
the Mothersr March of Dimes, was appreciative and content to be associated with workers whose main purpose was to sel1
liquor. Maternai reformers of the early twentieth century
likely rolled over in their graves. 15
Existing beer parlours mustered only lukewarm support from other sectors of organized labour. Soon after the war the Vancouver and District Labour Council gave a slight nod in favour of hotel cocktail lounges, but it particularly
l.5 Local 676 Executive Meeting, 9 November 1952, University of British Columbia, Special Collections and University Archives Division, Eotel, Restaurant Culinary Employees and Bartenders Union, Local 40 (HRCEBU-UBC) Box 6, Minute Baok 25 May 1952 to 14 February 1955 (quotes); see also, Local Joint Executive Minutes, 7 January 1959, ibid., Box 7, LJEB Minute Book, 8 January 1958 to 2 January 1974.
207 run, tightly regulated, and continuously inspected. The problems experienced by the parlours were largely beyond the contwol of the operators. The association recommended that parlours be allowed to sel1 snack foode and soft drinks, as well as provide wired music or television as distractions
£rom drinking. Most significant, though, the BCHA claimed the parlours were still important to their patrons. The brief described the beer parlour as "the poor man's clubrr and "the only social club for most people of average means." The parlour was the place where "anyone may spend a sociable hour or two at a very small cost and one that does not interfere with the support of home and family.""
While the commissioners claimed to have open minds on the subject of liquor, their critique of parlours was consistently prominent. After the BCHA representatives presented their brief, they were "bombarded with questions from conunission members about the conduct of sub-standard hotels." Some parlours, the chairman claimed, were "not hotels in any sense of the word. Theyfre a disgrace to the community." Late in November 1952 he and another commissioner
17The BCEA submission was reprinted in province, 20 November 1952, p- 13. 208
toured four Vancouver waterfront parlours. The chairman said
he "saw hundreds of absolute drunks. I saw men staggering in
dumping dom in chairs and getting glasses piled up in front
of them.mle
The conmllssioners did not place the entire blame on the
hotels. They also criticized the province's brewers and the
Liquor Control Board. Vancouver area brewers were called before the commission to explain bank loan guarantees on behalf of parlours. The commissioners doubted the brewerif assertion that the purpose of the loans was for renovations.
Vancouver Bweweries, for example, had loaned $30,000 to the
Raddon Hotel on Powell Street, a place the chairman described as "a row of rooms in a shack, rooms eight by ten--in fact 1 was in one about six by eight." The real purpose of the loans he argued was to make sure that a parlour use only its benefactorfs draft beer. Breweries that guaranteed parlour
, 19 November 1952, p. 21, 3 December 1952, p.1. The three-member commission consisted of Hon. H.H. Stevens, former MP and President of the Vancouver Board of Trade; George Home, Secretary of the British Columbia Federation of Labour, and The Very Rev. Cecil Swanson, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral- The four hotels toured were the Stanley and Manitoba, on Cordova St., and the Haddon (later Drake) and Princeton, on Powell St. 20 9
debt could exert power over individual parloure beyond the
forma1 regulations.19
While loan guarantees were another form of parlour
regulation that went beyond the state, the state facilitated
that regulation. Many jurisdictions outlawed so-called tied
houses, that is, brewers and distillers were not permitted to
have a financial interest in licensed premises. The British
Columbia Government Liquor Act, however, did not explicitly
ban tied houses. Moreover, while in theory a parlour could
sell whatever üraft beer it chose, LCB policy dictated that
it could sell only one brand at a tirne, and an operator had
to file an application with the Board to change brands. This
restriction encouraged a parlour operator to become tied to a
particular brewery. 2 0
The inquiry commission also held the LCB partly
responsible for conditions in beer parlours. The commission
pointed out that the LCB was in reality a "one-man Board,"
which resulted in "obvious faulty administration." The
14 British Columbia, Reno* of the L&wr (Victoria: Queen*s Printer, 1953 ) , 11; prnvj-, 3 December 1952, p. 1 (quote) 210
commission accused the Board and the inspectors of ignoring
the regulations against serving drunks and minors. In
addition, inspectors were %ot unaware of the deplorable
conditions that mark the day-to-day operations of the beer parlours. . ." The commissioners said the "charitablew
explanation was that the inspectors were "grossly
incompetent." The "alternativeftexplanation was that the
inspectors' actions stemmed from "sinister disregard of
dutymn This statement was as far as the commissioners were
willing to go in assessing the extent of corruption in the
LCB. They concluded it was not their duty to "delve into the
reasonsM for the administrative problems of the Board. 21
"Liquor regulation" and mcorniption" had been linked
rhetorically since the implementation of government control
in 1921. Yet what constituted corruption was certainly open
to interpretation, Most commonly corruption was associated
21Ibid., 7. William Kennedy served as the Chairman and only formal member of the Liquor Control Board from 1932 until his death in August 1951. He was replaced by Col, Donald McGugan, who had been employed by the LCB since 1923- - He did not retire until 1969- In practice the Chairman was assisted by the LCB Secretary and the Chief Inspecter. See =nm, 80, 122, 129.
212
The daily newspapers offered themselves as a moral opposition to this less visible regulation. After the government licensed private clubs to sel1 liquor to members and guests in 1947, the press attacks on corruption became more pointed. In June 1948, for example, Sun reporter Jack
Webster found he could buy ârinks in most Vancouver clubs, even though he was not a member of any of them. His lurid account was published under the headline, "Club Bars 'Open to
Ail.'* Beside it was a front-page editorial that invoked the discredited language of prohibition to condemn "The Speakeasy
Mentalityu of public drinking. More seriously, the newspapers alleged that the real locus of regulation was not the LCB offices in Victoria but the electoral riding of Vancouver
Centre, a Liberal stronghold long held out as a den of corruption. Their critique was supported by a disgruntled, anonymous parlour operator. In the late 1940s the operator sent the leader of the opposition a scathing seventy-page critique of liquor regulation. He charged that a Vancouver cabal, based in the Quadra Club on Seymour Street, controlled al1 aspects of formal parlour regulation including licensing, 213 beer purchases, suspensions, and required improvements. His report, however, was never made public. 24
Newspapers, though, had a more symbiotic relationship with alleged corruption than it would first appear. The daily press operated in a cornpetitive market increasingly dependent on advertising revenue than links with any particular political party. Sensational accounts of liquor corruption attracted readers and thus advertising dollars. Moreover, the press used corruption to order their knowledge of public drinking. The Vancouver papers in particular were strong advocates of liberalized public drinking. In the above example £rom the Sull on club drinking the paper concluded that the lesson learned was that "the law should be changed."
~ccordingto the paper licensed cocktail lounges or nightclubs would "comply with the moral standards of the people as a whole." With a moral nudge the paper suggested
-, 2.-, 2 April 1951. p-4; m, 18 June 1948, p.i (quotes). The disgruntled operator's account, previously cited, can be found in University of British Columbia Library, Special Collections and University Archives Division, -~ac~nniw MediifBox 41a, File 9, On the Quadra Club see m. 16 January 1986, p. A3, 214 that, 'an honest government wouldn't debate the matter for a second. ""
While the liquor commissionts report did not specifically comment on corruption and patronage, its general recommendations emphasized honesty and accountability in liquor regulation. ft specifically called for the end to tied houses and recommended that al1 beer parloure and many
"private" clubs have their licences cancelled. As a fresh start, al1 would have to reapply and adhere to the requirements of the new act once it was passed?
The comrnissioners still saw a future for the beer parlour, but in an altered form. They had no patience with many existing Vancouver hotel parlours, which they believed promoted "debaucheryN rather than offered a "cornfortable and decent" place for refreshment. Yet they accepted the argument that beer was "the least offensive of al1 alcoholic
25Sun, 18 June 1948, p.1. On the links between political parties and newspapers see, Paul Rutherford, A Victoy- r3 tv: The n eteenth- Ce-qv Pa- (Toronto: UTP, 1982). For a lively discussion of the competitive world of Vancouver's three daily papers in the 1950s see, Ian Macdonald and Betty OrKeefe, The M- r: Tan Con a t& Tak (Surrey, BC: Heritage House, 1997) , 42-55, beveragesm and that an Uoverwhelming demandtf existed for the
w\workingmanrsclub' type of beverage-room." They recommended that beer by the glass, snack foods, and soft ürinks should be sold in public houses "whether associated with a hotel or not .rn2'
The commissioners were also wary of the "exotic, dimïy lighted, voluptuous type of cocktail bar which creates a delusive impression of social distinction." Mainly to satisfy the demands of the tourist industry, they were willing to accept some "beverage lounges," primarily in upscale hotels.
They also recommended a limited number of licensed restaurants and cabarets. 2 8
Symbolically at least the government responded quickly to the criticism of beer parlours raised in the report. In
January 1953 the Attorney General ordered that only one beer at a time be senred to a customer, Parlour workers were unhappy with the order because it increased their workload and customers objected to it. After meeting with a delegation
27 Ibid., 8-9,
28 Ibid., 17, 23 (quote). from the Beverage Dispensers Union, the Attorney General
agreed to restore the two glass limit, provided the second
glass was actually requested by the customer. At the eame
time he announced that parlours would be required to sel1
snack foods and soft drinks. He said these changes would
prornote moderation in the parlours. 29
Because of an intervening election, a year passed before
a new Government Liquor Act was proclaimed in January 1954.
Beer parlours were to be replaced by so-called 'public
houses." They were still limited to selling beer, but no
longer would they necessarily be attached to hotels. The
actts regulations placed additional emphasis on making
parlours brighter and less crowded. Moderation was to be
promoted with diversions from drinking, including packaged
food, radio, and television. Licensees were specifically
prohibited from treating, although customers could still
treat among themselves.3 O
29 Beddome to Bonner, 22 Ja1uary 1953, RMB, bel 448 ; Mangles to Premier, 23 January 1953, ibid. ; Province 3 0 January 1953, p.1.
30British Columbia Bill 21 ("Government Liquor Actm), nExplanatory Notes, p. 1; Reb~xtaf t& itish. . Col- (D 33irdAR) , (1954), 38- 217
The overall parlour environment actually changed little.
Patrons still had to eit at tables and leave for at least an hou at supper time. The segregated sections remained, and women continued to be banned from serving beer. Parlour workers had expressed much anxiety among themselves about the possibility of women servers, and Local 676 lobbied the government to maintain the ban. The officia1 concerns were that women servers might be difficult to organize, would drive dom wages, and cost men their jobs. Yet women servers were also an affront to the work culture of the parlour employees and their union. According to the union, it was
"the oldest in the city and the strongest . - .," and the rnembers feared women would sap that vitality. Sorne continued to criticize the presence of any women in parlours. Jack
Johnson, at seventy-five still a waiter in the Princeton
Hotel parlour, remembered his days in the old saloons. He claimed, "there wasnrt half the trouble there is today.',
Saloons were better than parlours "because there were no women allowed in the bars in those days .w31
31Ibid., 7-38; Galloway to Borner, 11 October 1953, RMB, Reel 449; Special membership meeting, 11 October 1953, HRCEBU-UBC, Box 6, Minute Book, May 1952--February 1955; Provu, 23 November 1954, p. 3 (Johnson). 218
Vancouver parlours also remained in their existing hotel locations. The new act allowed old licences to continue in force untii the end of 1954. In June the Attorney General informed the chairman of the Manitoba Liquor Inquiry
Commission that the government would confine parlours "as far as circumstances will permit to operating hotels." The government had been persuaded by the parlour operators' argument that they had made huge investments in hotel facilities that should not be jeopardised unnecessarily. The government also had no interest in licensing what the
Attorney General referred to as "taverns , f ree - standing drinking establishments that offered nothing else to their communities.3 2
Even before the year ended, the government was severely criticized for its administration of the new liquor act. Two of the former inquiry commissioners said the government had ignored on many of their recommendations- As well, the chairman of the "Yes" committee argued that restaurants outside of hotels had been discriminated against because they
'4a-d a(1954), p. 5; Borner to Bracken, 21 June 1954, Attorney General Files, RMB, Reel 449; Provia 20 October 1954, p-14, 21 December 1954, p.34 . 219 could serve only beer and wine with meals, rather than the more popular and profitable cocktails. Neither cabaret operators nor their workers were happy with the severe licensing restrictions placed on their facilities, which discouraged owners from even applying for licences. In
January 1954 the New,s -IIeraid had titled one editorial 'At
Last, A Civilized Liquor System in BC/ By March it resorted to cold war language with an editorial headlined, Wow--A
Cocktail Curtain?If in reaction to the paperrs inability to find out who had applied for cocktail licences. The headline of a Province editorial in June lamented, "This Isn't What the People Voted for.^'^
Despite these criticisms, however, the newspapers recognized cocktail lounges as a significant shift in licensed public drinking. Hotel lounges, which opened in
Vancouver in July 1954, were designed to make "possible respectable drinking in respectable places," according to the
W. In cocktail louiges decency was not explicitly linked to entertainment, food, or membership, as in cabarets,
33 Victoria w, 20 October 1953, p.1; province, 10 Asri1 1954, p. 1-2; mws -Herald , 21 January 1954, pl, 13 March 1954; -, 2 June 1954, p.6. 220
restaurants, or clubs. Decency was defined by naming public
space and the people who occupied it. Both lounges and beer
parlours were places to drink. Yet the design of a lounge
intentionally and clearly set it apart from the beer parlour.
The regulations actually required a semice bar with chairs
for lounge patrons . The -a7d - found this feature noteworthy enough for a front page story headlined "Bars Back
in BC After 3 Decadeseu Public drinking at bars had not
legally existed since the parlours had opened their doors in
1925, 3 4
Lounges were also decent places to drink because they discouraged working people from patronizing them. Draft beer, the cheap workers8 drink, could not be sold in lounges. ft rernained confined to beer parlours and was the only alcoholic beverage exempt from sales tax. In lounges bartenders poured mixed drinks that cost at least five times as much as a glass of ten cent draft beer. Launges also had comportment expectations that discouraged workers. Dress codes were common, and even drinking itself required special knowledge as cocktails could be quite cornplex drinks. As Joseph Lanza 221
has noted, cocktails were linked to class-baeed images of the
good life: "By the fifties cocktails became a talisman for
urban sophisticates on the move."35
The class implications of cocktail loungee were not lost
on observera. As much as it supported lounges, the provbce
said not only 'flossy cocktail bars" should be licensed. Its
explmation was offered in explicit class terms: ". . . there
are thousands of British Columbians who want to be able.to
have a drink in their working clothes and they would hardly
feel at home in such surroundings. . . . We want some \pubst
in the British tradition." As well, Vancouver labour leaders
claimed that lounges did little for mthe workingmantt because
they were Yoo high-priced for him. m36
vbr~,14 October 1953, p. 1-2; on cocktails see .** Lowe11 Edmunds, The Sj 1- Bu1 let : The MM ivim... (Westport, Corn.: Greenwood Press, 1981), 66-70; James Gray, Bacchanalia&. . Western Canada's Booxv tn oci id BA= (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books,. 19821,. 54-7; Joseph Lanza, me Cocktail: T- o-Irits on Psy- (New York: St . Martins, 1995), 77-
36 Province, 4 September 1953, p -6 (1st quote) , 1 October 1953, p. 6, 3 October 1953, p -45 (2nd quote) ; see also Sun 20 November 1952, p. 2 for the comments of a hotel representative grown tired of references to British pubs. In a cocktail lounge class and gender were closely tied.
Lounge clientele did not have their semiality regulated as
closely as parlour patrons. For example, while women could
not serve liquor in lounges, men and women could drink
together. No segregated drinking areas were required. To a
certain extent these changes were a reflection of less
proscriptive attitudes in general after the war, especially
toward alcohol consumption, leisure, and gender interaction.
Yet lounge regulation was also a consequence of conceptions
of lounges as respectable, middle-class facilities. in
working-class beer parlours the separate sections for men and
ladies and escorts were required for nearly another decade. 3 7
Still, in lounges the spatial regulation of sexuality
did exist. Lounges were prohibited from having stalls or boxes, what were more colloquially known as 'necking booths."
AS well, as in parlours, women were more regulated than men, but not explicitly by the state. men the first lounge opened
in Victoria in 1954, a reporter observed that the bar stools
3 7 James Gray has described the looser attitudes toward alcohol,.. gender, and leisure after the war. See Bacchanalia ev~site& 93 -98 . Yet, as Doug ûwram has cautioned, in Canada "the 1950s were [still] a conservative age." See Born at the ht Th, 90 (quote), 19-23. 223 were occupied only by solitasr men. Women sat only at the tables. By the late 1950s the lounge in the Sylvia Hotel,
Vancouver's first, banned solitary women as a house rule. 3 8
The new governrnent liquor act can be read in a number of ways. In a literal senee beer parlours ceaeed to exist, as they were replaced, in statutory terms, by "public houses."
Yet parlours changed only a little. A new government bowed to what the press regarded as interest group pressure and largely left existing parlours alone. Moreover, licensed public drinking remained mainly in the domain of hotels. Even the press, however, admitted that hotel cocktail lounges were very different from beer parlours. In the new liquor act, parlours are best read in relation to cocktail lounges.
Lounges emphasized a new definition of decency and public drinking, which was class based and had its own gender distinctions. Parlours remained and rernained popular with many of their patrons, but the ambivalence about them that had always existed became more pronounced. *******
38m33rd W (19541, p.39; Victoria m, 2 ~tdy1954, plS. A former Sylvia bartender informed me of the loungers policy. As of December 1963, parlours were allowed to remove their partitions. See m, 3 December 1963, pl, 224
At one level the politics of licensed public drinking refers to an important state-centred process. The govemment held a plebiscite on cocktails, appointed a commission to make recommendations as a result of the \'yesM victory, and eventually produced a new liquor act that created additional licensed facilities and slightly retooled beer parlours. ~f the administration of the new act did not live up to the its written expectations, the variations could be explained by a variety of influences: the inconsistent policies of a temperance-leaning government , interest group pressure, incornpetence, and even corruption.
Yet to understand the varied power of regulation, politics must also be considered as contests over knowledge.
If anything is revealed by analyzing these contests, it is that utruthrrcan be a flexible commodity indeed. For example, in the 1920s it was argued that food and entertainment promoted excessive consumption as they were reminiscent of a saloon environment- After the Second World War the truth of these items was that they encouraged moderation, particularly in beer parlours, where they acted as distractions frorn consumption. As well, before the war drys argued that public opinion could be revealed with another plebiscite on liquor- 225
By the end of the war, as their political support continued to wane, they dismissed that option as one that would show only the extent to which the public lacked knowledge.
After the war various wet groups were successful at ordering their version of the reality of public drinking.
They condemned the beer parlour as a centre of working-class excess and offered the cocktail lounge as a respectable alternative. In part their success can be explained by their ability to appropriate knowledge. From the drys they seized well-honed descriptions of beer parlour debauchery but used them to define cocktail lounges as respectable counterpoints.
Moreover, cocktail supporters invoked the discourse of decency for similar purposes. Public drinking was acceptable in a respectable environment, but that environment was now the lounge. The apex for the power of wet knowledge was the plebiscite campai-. Power was located in the domination of mcommOn sense, " 'modern, " and "citizen. "
Despite the new lounges, parlour operators, workers, and some state officials had some success in contesting this new knowledge of public drinking. They were assisted by their unintentional allies in the temperance movement who shifted to scientific discourse to argue that more places to àrink 226
would not result in lese drinking or fewer problems. The
liquor inquiry commission also showed little enthusiasm for
the widespread licensiag of lounges and cabarets. In the end
parlours underwent only minor changes and the most accessible
lounges were confined to hotels. Still, the site of decent public drinking was now centred in the cocktail lounge. Chapter Six
Managing the Marginal: Beer Patlours, the State, and Regulatioa
At first glance the beer garlour seemed like a simple,
if odd, solution to a vexing problem. State officials sought
a compromise between wets and drys on the issue of licensed
public drinking. Even though temperance groups were unable to
sustain prohibition, they had successfully discredited the
saloon environment as one that nurtured indecency and
undermined society. On the wet side a loose coalition of
hotels, veteransf groups, brewers, many workers, and some of
their organizations lobbied for the return of at least beer
by the glass. After measuring public wariness with a
plebiscite, the governrnent negotiated a deal with the hotels
in 1925. Former hotel saloons legally could sel1 real beer as
long as that was al1 they served- Once again people could
drink in public, provided they behaved decently. For the next
thirty years the beer parlou stood as the only licensed premises available to the general public- It was a coaxse
experiment in alcohol regulation. and some would say an
example of ham-fisted state regulation. 228
Yet one did not have to sit long (standing, after all, was prohibitedl in a Vancouver parlour to realize that more than alcohol coneumption was being controlled. Parlours also regulated class, gender relations, sexuality, and race. As
Jack Blocker has noted, alcohol historians have adopted two broad explanatory approaches to analyze drinking. The first emphasizes social control in which the state and allied elites "define the conditions under which ordinary àrinking takes place." The second is a "cultural modelm that
"ernphasizes the power of group noms in determining individual drinking behaviour, whether the group is defined by gender, nationality, social class, ethnicity or race." He argues historians must use both rnodels to understand drinking and its regulation. Without a doubt, though, social control has been the dominant perspective, 1
A simple social control mudel is inadequate to understand the regulation of Vancouver beer parlours. The state and its allies were not the only regulatory actors, and
1 Jack S - Blocker, "Introduction, " ut05ye, +O= 27 (Novernber 1994) : 229-30; see also, Patricia E. Prestwich, "The Regulation of Drinking: New Work in the Social History of Alcoh01,~m- nw~roblemg 21 (Fall 1994) : 369-71. regulation was not a linear process of domination and
resistance. More helpful has been the literature on moral
regulation, which blends control and cültural approaches to
regulation. Ta a certain extent wmoralM here refers to
def ining and distinguishing between "goodtr and "bad ." "Moralw
contains both prescriptive and proscriptive elements, and
"good" and "badWare not fixed categories.
The analytical potential of moral regulation, however, goes beyond goodness, badness, and contests over them. Moral regulation renders certain behaviours obvious and taken-for- granted. For those who lean to Foucaultrs thoughts on governance, the potential of moral regulation is, according to Joan Sangster, that it shows "how discourses define immorality and expert knowledge normalizes certain behaviors, producing disciplinary power that crosses the boundaries of state and civil society." Moral regulation is thus closely linked to the creation of knowledge, not the knowledge of fixed truths or absolutes, but the knowledge of ordering and naming. Hnowledge creation is a contested process, and it is not just in the hands of the powerful. This kind of analysis moves beyond the state and decentres power, pushing it into
Foucault's capillaries of society. Rather than the hammer of 230 social cantrol, moral regulation is better visualized as a net. Power is diffused. The mesh is quite encompaseing, but much gets through the holes.2
In the beer parlour moral regulation can be seen at work in the official knowledge of public drinking, the discourse of decency. It defined moderate consumption, appropriate cornportment, and heterosemial propriety. Decency was informed by arid reinforced official knowledge about class, gender and sexuality, and race. Not only was more than alcohol was regulated, in practice regulation involved a variety of actors, including those who were its objects.
From the beginning beer parlours were conceptualized in class terms, and class permeated the entire discourse of regulation--£rom beer as the working man's drink to
2 Joan Sangster, "Incarcerating 'Bad Girlsr : The Regulation of Sexuality through the Female Refuges Act in Ontario, 1920-1945," 7 (1996): 242 ; see also, Mariana Valverde, comp., &&,,pl i y ~ethinkinp-: W-p &port (Toronto: University of Toronto Centre of Criminology, 1994). On the net metaphor, see Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo, -9 -Law Mo- n inCanada. 1867- 1939 (Toronto: UTP, 1997), 5-6; Loo and Strange, "The Traveling Show Menace: Contested Regulation in Turn-of-the-Century Ontario, ' 1,aw & Society Bevica 29 (1995): 662-665; Tina Loo, "Dan Cramer's Potlatch: Law as Coercion, Symbol, and Rhetoric in British Columbia, 1884-1951, " Canadian HB-1 R~viey73 (1992): 165; Foucault, Eawer/Knowledcre, 39, 98- 231
behavioural expectations of patrons and workers. While class
is fundamental to understand parlour regulation, the way it
worked in parlours undermines any simple notions of social
control. As so-called workingmen's clubs parlours were
designated as suspect space occupied by suspect people.
Regdation was both informed by class noms and attempted to
impose them. Parlour supporters originally claimed that
tightly regulated space would curb the excesses of working-
class camaraderie.
Opponents doubted that potential and for good reason
since much of the regulatory burden fell upon parlour
operators and workers. They had the responsibility and often
the power to define who was white or Indian, unattached or
escorted, dtunk or sober. Their priorities did not necessarily mesh with those of the state. Illegal singing
inspired beer sales, and bookmaking had appeal for both workers and patrons. On a daily basis operators and workers also had to consider the desires and actions of their custorners. As the union handbook reminded tbem, waiters were to keep patrons under control, but they had to be careful not to drive away business. The beer shortage of the Second World
War highlighted many of the complexities of class and inconeistencies of regulation, including pitting parlour workers against workers as patrons.
Gender relations and sexuality also etood out prominently in beer parlours because public drinking immediately became a site of gender contention. Liquor officiale, parlour operators, and workers, and mariy male patrons were motivated for different reasons to keep public drinking homosocial. Some women challenged those views and were successful in expanding the boundaries of heterosocial leisure. Still, decency circumscribed their behaviour, best represented by the patterns of segregated drinking and the naming of unescorted women as prostitutes. Women were condemned for illicit sexuality, while men were onïy chided, as long as their actions remained heterosexual. Dependhg on the circumstances, men and women bath resisted and acquiesced to the dominant discourse. More important, their actions help shape parlour regulation, alrnost literally when one considers the installation of partitions.
Beer parlour decency was also quite racialized. While necessary, it is not sufficient to Say that white, Anglo-
Celtics were the standard by which others were judged. As well as appearance, race was also demarcated by behaviour or 233 performance. For example, the narrowly-constructed mixed-race couple, a man of colour with a white woman, racialized both pecsle and potentially destabilized the category "whiteM through fears of miscegenation. Race thus included the dominance of white men over women and other men of colour. In
Vancouver parlours Vndianf was rarely defined by the Indian
Act. Aboriginals who behaved decently could pass as whites or even be designated as such. Yet after "Indian" lost its legal marker as far as beer service was concerned, the beer parlour
Indian remained. In a similar manner, Mians, especially
Chinese, were defined in part by their alleged historic links to vice. Such definitions had real regulatory impact as one of the indicators of parlour decency was the lack of Asian operators or workers -
By the end of the Second World War both wets and drys agreed that parlour regulation had done little to enhance the respectability of parlours or their patrons. Some went further and argued that parlouts promoted the excesses they were created to curtail. mile wets were not of one mind, their views dominated public discourse. What emerged after the war was a new knowledge of public àrinking, one that linked decency to different venues of drinking, especially 234 cocktail lounges that catered to the middle class. Cocktail supporters argued that lounges and their patrons would be more respectable and in need of lese regulation than parlours and their patrons. Beer parlours withstood the effects of a plebiscite, a commission of inquiry, and legislative changes that produced more licensed facilities, including cocktail lounges. In a slightly altered form beer parlours remained as working-class facilities, and their regulation continued to be contentious. Yet they existed as more morally marginalized facilities.
Carolyn Strange and Tina Loo have described moral regulation as 'a way of managing the marginal, whether that rnarginality was conferred by race, class, or gender." While the behaviour of people was important, it was so because behaviour categorized individuals. Much of the power of regulation was derived from defining people and space, and regulation was closely linked to status and place. An unescorted woman buying milk in a food market provoked different regulatory definitions tha.the same woman who entered a beer parlour by herself. Wage workers who drank in beer parlours did not necessarily consume more alcohol than their middle-class counterparts in cocktail lounges. Yet 235 because of who they were and where they drank, they received more regulatory attention. Take two working-class men who
knew about martinis, put them in suits and a cocktail lounge,
and they could pass as professionals. 3
Most of the regulatory initiative came frorn state officials, but Strange and Loo emphasize that state success was often less than spectacular. The "lofty goals and high hopes" were well-nigh impossible to achieve, and regulation often Tailed by its own standards ." Moreover, regulation was expensive, complex, and tirne consuming. In the end negotiating morality often proved to be cheaper and easier than eliminating vice. 4
By both design and accident, depending on the circumstances, regulatory targets were not clear. On the one hand, for example, health officials claimed that their main interest was retarding the spread of venereal disease, but they ended up defining appropriate sexuality for women in general. On the other hand, the ban on food and entertainment in the original beer parleurs, regulations seriously intended
3 Strange and Loo, Makina c-od, 149 -
4 Ibid,, 149-51. to deflate saloon ambience and curtail consumption, left
patrons little to do but dtink. Finally, of course,
regulation often met much tesistance from those regulated who
acted according to their own views.
Indeed, Vancouver beer parlour regulation was a more
complex process than can be articulated through a linear
mode1 of social control dominated by the state. Regulation
involved a number of actors and operated at different levels
simultaneously. The state neither controlled al1 these facets
nor were state officiais necessarily even aware of the al1
combinations and permutations of regulation.
Still, one still must conclude that the state remained a powerful manager of the marginal for at least four reasons.
First, and most generally, parlours existed within
capitalistic economic relations. Most state theorists long
ago abandoned the idea that the state acts at the behest of
capital. Rather the state acts on behalf of capital, that is,
it defends the long-term interests of capital, In order to do so, the state needs a fair amount of autonomy. The relative autonomy of the state, the ability to regulate, helps "save the bourgeoisie £rom itself." State regulation attenuates class conflict, facilitates accumuiation and enhances legitimacy-of the state and capitalism. Obviously capitalism
in Canada did not rest on the success, failure, or even
existence of Vancouver beer parlours. Yet if a regulatory
state did not exist, capital would have to invent it. s
Second, state regulation did not require complete
success. Although the records often indicate a connlusion
that the parlour was bedlam born of beer, the impact of the
state regulation should not be dismissed. Orderly parlours
where patrons sat where they should, with whom they should,
drank moderate amoünts of beer and acted as expected, sirnply
did not warrant much comment. The silence can be read as a measure of decency's achievement. Well-behaved patrons could be construed as regulation by internalization, or government
of the self. The state could not control this process, but
internalization upheld the values of the state and enhanced
legitimacy. While internalization was the ideal, in the end
the state required only acquiescence to achieve many
5 This paragraph takes its lead from the venerable and durable overview by Leo Panitch. See "The role and. . nature of the Canadian state," in The Canadian State: Political ECO- , ed. Leo Panitch (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977) 3-27, quote at 4. For a more recent review of state literature, see Rainer Baehre, "The State in Canadian history," Acadiensis 24 (Autumn 1994) : 119-33. 238 objectives. No doubt in many cases etate officiais conflated
acquiescence with internalization. Yet from an inspectorls point of view the more important feature of a quiet parlour was that it required less paperwork, which was close enough to the lofty goals of regulation.
At the same tirne, however, acquiescence should not be confused with consent. As Philip Coxrigan and Derek Sayer have argued, cornpliance does not always mean incorporation or internalization. A collective xesponse is not necessaxily a tmitary one. People may act the same way for a variety of motives. Mark Leier went a step further. He argued that whenever the reality or threat of "unpleasant consequences" exists, "whether these be overt or implied, material or psychological, it is impossible to distinguish between consent and coercion." Coercion operates both formally and informally, and what passes for consent "may be manipulated in a number of ways." Reward and punishment are two sides of the same coin. Leierfs intent was to declare that \'al1 authority is illegitirnate," but his argument reveals some of the subtleties of coercion-6
-- 6 Phillip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, II+uralitjon (London: Basil Blackweil, 1987), 197; Mark Leier, adFlap & T-e: Thft 23 9
Coercion is the third explmation for the power of the state. While liberal States have developed a variety of means to negotiate what appears to be consent, the state still has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. in Vancouverts beer parlours the statefs authority was fragmented, and the outcomes of regulation were not necessarily predictable, consistent, or even the ones sought. Still, regulation was not a process that engaged equals on a level playing field.
The state could draw upon a variety of coercive resources.
Officials arrested people, had them barred or fired, and ruined reputations. Parlour operators had their licences suspended or cancelled. In geneial Foucault was wise to shift our gaze away from power as state-centred repression.
Certainly the state risks legitimacy if it resorts to coercion too often or too intensely, Yet state coercion used judiciously and creatively is an effective means of reguiation. 7
a- of a T- B- (Toronto: UTP, 1995), 36-38, quotes at 37-
7On coercion and consent see Colin Hay, Be -Statipq (Buckingham: Open University Press, l996), 25-27. 240
Finally, the state remained a powerful regulator because it also produced knowledge. The state ordered reality and made truth. For example, in Vancouver the state defined drinking space as public or private, the result of which was different forms of regulation. Certainly the state did not initiate or even control al1 of this regulation. It did not offer "membershipsMin private clubs or mandate the purchase of "set-ups" in cabarets. Yet it named the space that allowed different forms of regulation and regulators to flourish.
State knowledge also permeated racial regulation. In her study of Vancouver's Chinatown Kay Anderson, relying on
Edward Said, arwed that "social reality is constructed not democratically but within a hegemonic framework that is rarely questioned." She concluded that "politicians and bureaucrats" used their 8smoral and legal authority" to "give the race concept its remarkable material force and effect, embedding it in structures that over time reciprocally reproduced it." In beer parlours state officials promoted white -10-Celtic males as the standard by which others were constructed and judged. Their lack of consistency, in both 241
promotion and succeas, should not obviate the significance of
the standards they set, 8
A more vivid example of the state as knowledge producer
cornes from the 1952 liquor commission of inquiry. Peta
Sheriff has argued that commissions are "part of the
legitimation function of the state such that their
contribution to policy formation is less important than is
their contribution to social hamony.?* Moreover, Adam
Ashforth has examined commissions as theatres of power which are fundamental to the legitimation of the state. They
"produce a discourse celebrating a marriage of truth and power in the modern State through rational identification of a purportedly objective Common Good." Commissions transform
"contentious matters of political struggle into discourses of reasoned argument. " They create the "truth" that a common good exists to be discovered. Thus, even when a commission appears to undermine the state, such as finding evidence of liquor corruption and patronage, the legitimacy of the state
8 Kay JI Anderson, Vancouver's -tom: Racial PiscwxSe inCanada,1875- 1980 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1991), 20, 24; on Said see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978); see also, Gyan Prakash, "Orientalism Now, " &is+oq md T- 34 (1995) : 199-212. is upheld. Fxposing corruption is part of the discovery of
the common good.
Understanding the state requires going beyond structures
and institutions and placing more emphasis on processes.
Colin Hay has argued that the state is a 'constantly changing
network of relationshipe and institutional practices and
procedures. " The state is not an object, but rather a process
of rule embedded in material relations. From this vantage one
neither attributes a single mentality to the state or its
institutions. Philip Cornigan and Derek Sayer emphasized that
the power of the state is not just external and objective,
but also interna1 and subjective. The state "works through
us." It helps ta organize individual and collective
representations. The results are not necessarily consistent,
but the effects help keep the state a powerful regulator, as
seen, in this case, in Vancouver's beer parleurs.10
9 Peta E. Sheriff, 'State Theory, Social Science, and Governmental Commissions," &p+icyist;26 (~ay/~une1983 ) : 672 ; Adam Ashforth, 'Reckoning Schemes of Legitimation: On Commissions of Inquiry as Power/Knowledge Forms," Journal Sac- 3 (1990): 4, 12; see . L also, Frank Burton and Fat Carlen, ~sc~urse: t icati-. ideal- fit- (London: Routledge, 19791, 7-14.
10 Hay, PRçtatincr- 5-8 (quote) ; Corrigan and k Sayer, The Great w, 180. See also, T. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities, " America Hi storickl Review 90 (1985): 588; Philip Abrams, "Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977), " Journa3 of Histarical Socidnq 1 (March 1988) : 82; Bruce Curtis, True-b W.3 . ._Inçaer+iQp, West (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 19921, 9-10. vemitv- of British. C
Hotel, Restaurant and Culinary Employees and Bartenders Union Local 40 Vancouver Council of Women Vancouver and District Labour Council Angus MacInnis Memorial Collection International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (Canada)
Hotel, Restaurant and Culinary Employees and Bartenders Union Local 40 Vancouver Council of Women Pacific Press News Clippings (Series 1 and II)
GR0048 B.C. Liquor Control Board, Beer Licence Files GR0052 B.C. Liquor Control Board, Inspector Files GR0062 B.C. Liquor Control Board, Scrapbooks GR0770 B.C. Liquor Control Board, General Collection GR1323 B.C. Attorney General Correspondence, 1902-37 Add. Mss. 17, Alcohol Research and Education Council (B.C . Temperance League)
B.C. Liquor Control Board, Minutes of Meetings
LCLB , Clippings File
Attorney General Correspondence, 1938-1965 Please note: These records have been transferred to the British Columbia Archives and are now included in:
Attorney General Correspondence, GR1723 (ca. 1938-52) GR1724 (ca. 1952-59) GR1725 (ca. 1959-6s) GR1726 (ca. 1959-72)
Access, even to the full finding aids, is now quite restricted under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
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