Ontario Versus Prohibition
148 ONTARIO VERSUS PROHIBITION AFTER a ten-year trial of prohibition, Ontario has ¦**¦ voted for liquor sales under government control. As a consequence the whole of Canada (the three small...
...Despite all of this, Mr...
...The popular majority against prohibition exceeded 100,000...
...It put its ministers on political platforms...
...On six occasions during the past thirty years, its people have voted "dry...
...Three different governments did their best to make the law effective...
...The public saw this...
...Ferguson with all of its wealth and power and prestige...
...Ferguson, accordingly, although himself a strong supporter of temperance, decided to abandon prohibition, and to establish a system of government shops from which liquor in sealed packages could be sold to persons having permits to buy it...
...by a growing contempt for and increased violations of law...
...Howard Ferguson, Conservative Premier of the province, who appealed to the electors with a policy of liquor sales in government shops, was returned to a legislature of 112 members with 74 anti-prohibition followers, and with three Liberals and one Laborite pledged to him...
...Their failure was represented by a sale of $5,000,000 worth of liquor under medical prescriptions...
...In 1919, a vote showed 68 percent of the people to be in favor of prohibition and 32 percent against it...
...Growing dissatisfaction with prohibition was revealed in a plebiscite taken in 1924, when the law was sustained by the narrowest possible margin...
...The Ontario Temperance Act, under which prohibition in Ontario became operative, was enacted in 1916 by a Conservative government headed by Sir William Hearst...
...in 1924, the act was supported by 51 percent, the adverse vote having risen to 49 percent...
...It became obvious then that an act supported by only half the province, a half which did not include the larger cities and towns, could nc' be enforced successfully, and that difficulties attending, its operation were certain to increase...
...The province was the cradle of the prohibition movement in Canada...
...As a consequence the whole of Canada (the three small maritime provinces being the only exceptions) has abandoned prohibitory laws enacted during the period of the war...
...149...
...and by an enormously heightened cost of law enforcement...
...The act was passed in advance of normal public sentiment, and it was never successfully enforced for the reason that public opinion was never unanimous, or even nearly unanimous, in favor of its enforcement...
...But the United Church of Canada, the most powerful religious organization in tin province, challenged Mr...
...It fought with a fury such as had seldom been witnessed in the politics of the province...
...He dissolved the legislature and appealed to the province on that policy...
...by an estimated sale of an additional $30,000,000 worth by bootleggers...
...Under the shelter of the act prohibiting open transactions in liquor there sprang up and flourished a bootleg industry which enriched the lawbreaker and was responsible for the distribution of inferior and sometimes poisonous beverages...
...They saw, too, the successful operation of the government control system in neighboring provinces, and the contrast had its inevitable effect upon popular sentiment...
...and the strange spectacle was seen of the Conservative party, overwhelmingly Protestant and Orange, engaged in a death struggle with ministers of the church that had so often thundered against clerical interference in politics...
...With the exception of a statement exposing some of the defects of the prohibitory law issued by Bishop Fallon, of London, and a further statement along similar lines by a well-known Toronto Paulist, Father John Burke, the Catholic Church held aloof from the conflict...
...Ontario's verdict against prohibition was in many respects extraordinary...
...Its adoption was, like that of similar prohibitive measures elsewhere, an expression of war-time unrest and anxiety...
...Mr...
...and it is a fortress of the United Church (Presbyterians and Methodists) of Canada, which remains militantly and uncompromisingly prohibitionist...
...The new government control law will not come into force until the legislature meets and gives it effect...
...The contest that followed was extraordinary bitter, the pulpit to a large extent being pitted against the politicians...
Vol. 5 • December 1926 • No. 6
