Ontario prohibition referendum, 1924

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An Ontario prohibition referendum was held on October 23, 1924 on the repeal of the Ontario Temperance Act. The referendum was brought about by a clause in the Act, which permitted the possible repeal of prohibition by a majority vote.

The Ontario Temperance Act was a law passed in 1916 that led to the Prohibition of alcohol in Ontario. When the act was first enacted, the sale of alcohol was prohibited, but liquor could still be manufactured in the province or imported. Strong support for prohibition came from religious elements of society such as pietistic Protestants, especially Methodists, seeking to eliminate what they considered the evil effects of liquor, including violence, family abuse, and political corruption. Historically, temperance advocates in Ontario drew inspiration from the movement in the United States.

Prohibition the outlawing of the consumption, sale, production etc. of alcohol

Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage, transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic beverages. The word is also used to refer to a period of time during which such bans are enforced.

Contents

Referendum question

  1. Are you in favour of the continuance of the Ontario Temperance Act?
  2. Are you in favour of the sale as a beverage of beer and spirituous liquor in sealed packages under government control?

Unlike past referendums, the 1924 referendum was not a yes/no question instead, voters indicated their support for either the first statement or the second.

Results

Response to# of votes in favour% of votes in favour
Question 1585,67651.5
Question 2551,76148.5
Total1,137,437100.0

The measure passed by the smallest majority of any of the prohibition referendums. The cities of Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa and Windsor, areas where the ruling Conservative Party drew most of their support, voted overwhelmingly in favour of Question 2. Four months later, the party's throne speech announced intentions to begin debate on repealing restrictions on the sale of beer allowing the sale of a beer with a maximum alcohol content of 4.4% which was nicknamed "Fergie's Foam" after Premier George Howard Ferguson. The government also declared that referendums on prohibition would no longer take place; the issue would be dealt with by the legislature.

Toronto City in Ontario, Canada

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A global city, Toronto is a centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Hamilton, Ontario City in Ontario, Canada

Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. An industrialized city in the Golden Horseshoe at the west end of Lake Ontario, Hamilton has a population of 536,917, and a metropolitan population of 747,545. The city is located about 60 km southwest of Toronto, with which the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) is formed.

Ottawa Federal capital city in Ontario, Canada

Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It stands on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of southern Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec; the two form the core of the Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) and the National Capital Region (NCR). As of 2016, Ottawa had a city population of 934,243 and a metropolitan population of 1,323,783 making it the fourth-largest city and the fifth-largest CMA in Canada.

In the subsequent 1926 election, in which the Conservatives ran on a platform of repealing the Ontario Temperance Act they maintained a majority and increased their popular vote by 7% to over 57% of the popular vote, results the party took as justification to repeal prohibition. In 1927 the government passed the Act to Regulate and Control the Sale of Liquor in Ontario, which repealed the Ontario Temperance Act and created the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), a crown corporation that brought about government control over liquor. Brewers Retail Inc., a privately owned association of brewers overseen by the government, was created to regulate the sale of beer.

Liquor Control Board of Ontario company

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario is a Crown corporation that retails and distributes alcoholic beverages throughout the Canadian province of Ontario. It is accountable to the Ministry of Finance. It was established in 1927 on the advice of Ontario Premier Howard Ferguson, to sell liquor, wine, and beer. Such sales had been banned outright in 1916; thus, the creation of the LCBO marked an easing of the province's temperance regime. By September 2017, the LCBO was operating 651 liquor stores.

Beer alcoholic drink

Beer is one of the oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic drinks in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. Beer is brewed from cereal grains—most commonly from malted barley, though wheat, maize (corn), and rice are also used. During the brewing process, fermentation of the starch sugars in the wort produces ethanol and carbonation in the resulting beer. Most modern beer is brewed with hops, which add bitterness and other flavours and act as a natural preservative and stabilizing agent. Other flavouring agents such as gruit, herbs, or fruits may be included or used instead of hops. In commercial brewing, the natural carbonation effect is often removed during processing and replaced with forced carbonation.

While some communities would pressure local governments to limit the sale of liquor until the 1970s, and while due to the efforts of William Horace Temple parts of West Toronto did not permit the sale of liquor until 2000, for all intents and purposes official temperance in Ontario had ended.

William Horace Temple War Veteran, Salesman, Socialist politician, Temperance Crusader.

William Horace (Bill) Temple, nicknamed "Temperance Bill" or "Temperance Willie", was a Canadian democratic socialist politician, trade union activist, businessman and temperance crusader. As a youth he worked for the railway. During World War I, and World War II he was a soldier in the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Canadian Air Force. Between the wars, he was a salesman, and then he started a clothing import business. He became a socialist during this period, and joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) when it was formed. He ran for political office many times for the CCF, both federally and provincially. The highlight of his political career was in 1948, when he defeated the incumbent premier of Ontario George Drew in his own legislative seat, in the electoral district of High Park, even though the premier's party won the general election with a majority government. His tenure was relatively short, serving only one term, and was defeated in the 1951 provincial election, and went back into the clothing import business. In his later years, he successfully led the political fight to maintain the prohibition on selling alcohol in a section of Toronto's west end, winning three referenda in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. He died in the spring of 1988, a few months before another referendum on lifting the restrictions on alcohol in the area was again defeated, his "last" victory.

See also

<i>Canada Temperance Act</i>

The Canada Temperance Act, also known as the Scott Act, was an Act of the Parliament of Canada passed in 1878, which provided for a national framework for municipalities to opt in by plebiscite to a scheme of prohibition. It was repealed in 1984.

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The Beer Store

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