BOTEL BEER PARLODRS: REGULATING PUBLIC DRINKING AND Robert Allan Campbell

282 Pages·1999·13.9 MB·English

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~oberAt. Campbell 1998
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
September 1998
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iii
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 w i t h 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.
Y e t 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
.....................cc....................
Acknowledgements 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--.-.*-...-.....4.6
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 w i t h 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 t o 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 h i s t o r i a s interested i n 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. m o n
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 - s t o W 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
. .
W o w s C-t i a T ewrmce Union,
m. md R e f o O, 1874 -1930 (Montreal
a
and Kingston: McGill-Queenfs University Press, 1995)
[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).