Behind the Bar - Barrels, Beer Kegs, and Bung Starters

How did small-town Saskatchewan hotels serve beer in the early 1900s? It started with the shipment of wooden beer barrels by train to the hotels, unloaded on the railway station platform. The Bulyea local history book, Between Long Lake and Last Mountain (1982), recounts a story about two local farmers who crawled under the train platform “armed with a brace and bit, a washtub, and several buckets.” When the hotel owner arrived to pick up his delivery, he was dismayed to find an empty barrel.

Barrel terminology. Source

Because they had to stand up to pressure and liquid (and the occasional tampering), beer barrels were lined with pitch and made of thicker, good quality wood. The barrel was filled by the brewery through a bung hole. Once filled, a plug was hammered into the hole, sealing the barrel. 

Source

 

Star-Phoenix, June 1, 1948

Opening the beer barrel presented a challenge to many a hotel barkeep. They used what was called a “bung starter” – a heavy wooden mallet – to drive the wooden plug, bit by bit, up and out of the bung hole. Bill Graham, head bartender at the Great West Hotel in Davidson during the pre-1915 days, told the Star-Phoenix on June 1, 1948 that he had driven many a faucet pump into a keg of beer with a bung starter. Unless you were quick, Graham recalled, beer sprayed all over the place. “I got pretty good with that old bung starter,’ he said. “People would stand around and watch me with their mouths open.” The heavy bung starter also served as an excellent weapon for a beleaguered bartender.

To keep beer cool, many small-town hotels used ice that had been cut from local lakes or rivers. For the hotel at Fairlight, for example, this meant replenishing the ice in the draft beer cabinet on a daily basis and checking the storage of beer kegs in the basement cooler two or three times a week. Other hotels kept ice in an icehouse, packed in layers of sawdust.

During Prohibition, it was not unusual for hotel owners to keep a barrel or two of booze hidden away in the basement of their establishments. In 1925, police raided the Cecil Hotel in Moose Jaw. As the officers entered the hotel, they saw the man behind the bar pull a string. “The officers darted to the basement and attacked a lock cabinet, where they found a small keg overflowing with water driven into it at high pressure,” the Regina Leader-Post reported on February 3rd. “There was, of course, a smell of beer about the place.” The hotel had installed a beer keg apparatus – alleged to have been invented to defeat liquor enforcement methods – consisting of a double spigot connected to the water main. The pulling of a string flooded the keg and removed the beer within seconds.

Regina Leader-Post, February 26, 1935

In 1935, when the Government of Saskatchewan permitted hotels to sell beer by the glass, Saskatchewan’s hotels scrambled to reopen their beer parlours. This required a major outlay of cash for the hotel owners to meet the government’s rigorous architectural and regulatory standards for licensing. In addition to building renovations and new furniture, hotels had to install new drawing systems for beer, refrigeration equipment, and draft beer cabinets. “A 25-table beer parlour will require the most modern beer pumps, a cooling system, and cabinets,” the Leader-Post wrote on December 4, 1934. “It will need 100 chairs, at least 400 glasses and an insulated storage cellar.” This equipment cost thousands of dollars per hotel. Saskatchewan suppliers did well. The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reported on April 8, 1935 that Sterling Millwork Company and Cushing’s Limited had many orders for tabletops and refrigerators, and the John East Foundry was manufacturing $8,000 worth of table bases.

Ad in the Star-Phoenix, April 30, 1935

1935 was also a boom year for beer keg manufacturers. The Leader-Post reported on May 4 that one Regina brewery acquired 2,900 kegs for its new draft beer business. Of these, 800 were steel, “the newest wrinkle in the keg business.” The remainder were wooden kegs which cost the breweries about $8 apiece; the steel kegs, which had an insulated aluminum lining, cost around $12. “Handling of the empties by the breweries entails a lot of work, the newspaper wrote. “They must be sterilized and repitched each time they go back to the brewery.”

With the outbreak of the Second World War, metal beer kegs were prohibited due to the war effort, but metal hoops and fittings were still allowed on wooden kegs.

Eventually, bottled beer became popular and draft beer sales declined. Today, draft beer is enjoying a comeback thanks to craft breweries.

A 1980s bar set-up, with bartender serving draft beer. Leader-Post, July 2, 1987.

©Joan Champ, 2019

Beer Rationing: Saskatchewan Liquor Laws in the 1940s

Image source

During the Second World War, beer parlours across Canada experienced a shortage of beer because Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King wanted Canadians to cut back on drinking. In a national radio broadcast on December 16, 1942, King announced the Wartime Alcoholic Beverages Order which reduced the alcoholic content of beer by 10%, wine by 20% and spirits by 30% for the duration of the war. King’s order also prohibited all advertising of beer and liquors, and asked the provinces to shorten the hours of operation in beer parlours and liquor stores.

Tommy Douglas. Source

Earlier that year, a delegation of temperance advocates received a sympathetic hearing from King when they urged him to reduce the traffic in liquor. King views on alcohol jived with those of a Baptist church minister from Saskatchewan by the name of Tommy Douglas. At the annual conference of United Church ministers on July 1, 1942, Douglas, leader of the provincial CCF party, called for wartime liquor rationing. Tea and coffee were being rationed, he said, so similar rationing for beer and whiskey would not be out of line. “Bottles are hard to get for milk, but have we heard of any shortage for bottles to contain beer?’ Douglas asked. He called liquor “the No. 1 saboteur of the war effort.” (“Active Temperance Federation Urged,” Regina Leader-Post, July 1, 1942) 

Prime Minister W .L. Mackenzie King. Source

King justified the alcohol restrictions, saying they were in accordance with government policy of not allowing profiteering as a result of the war. “The brewers have profited more than anyone out of the war,” King wrote in his diary* on December 10, 1942. “Indeed, the liquor interests and the newspapers have been the real profiteers.” In his CBC broadcast on December 16, 1942, he emphasized the importance of temperance during wartime. “Regardless of what one’s attitude towards prohibition may be, temperance is something against which, at a time of war, no reasonable protest can be made,” he stated. “No one will deny that the excessive use of alcohol and alcoholic beverages would do more than any other single factor to make impossible a total war effort.”  

Click here to listed to King's full broadcast from December 16, 1942.

The Government of Saskatchewan complied with King’s wishes. Starting on February 1, 1943, Saskatchewan beer parlours were only allowed to stay open for eight hours, from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., as part of the imposition of wartime temperance. In addition, beer was supplied to liquor stores and licenses premises on a quota basis reflecting the 10% reduction in the amount that could be brewed and sold.

Beer Rationing

Beer ration coupon book from Ontario.
Photo by Will S. Image source

In May of 1943, beer ration coupon books for home consumption were issued across Canada. Rationing of products like sugar or butter, gasoline or rubber, was implemented due to supply problems resulting from military conflict. Beer, however, was brewed from Canadian ingredients which were in plentiful supply. Nevertheless, in Saskatchewan in 1944, beer coupon books were sold for 25 cents and each person was entitled to only one book. The maximum quantity of beer that one person 21 years of age and over could purchase in one month was 12 bottles – six bottles in the first two weeks in a month and six bottles for the second two-week period. Beer rationing continued until January 1947.

Some of these wartime temperance measures worked to the advantage of Saskatchewan’s hotels. In Bruno, for example, Elizabeth (Pitka) Ulrich remembers that, because beer was rationed, “local people lined up on Main Street and the hotel’s stock would be sold out in approximately two hours.”(Fields of Prosperity: A History of Englefeld, 1903-1987) The closure of 72 government beer stores due to poor sales was another direct result of the liquor restrictions. Many of these stores were located in places where people could buy their beer at the local hotel beer parlour. “The tempo of hotel life in Saskatchewan accelerated,” H. G. Bowley writes in his history of the Hotels Association of Saskatchewan (1957), “Due largely to wartime travel and general wartime prosperity, receipts increased.”

Too much foam!

The breweries passed most of the burden of the beer shortage on to the beer parlours, but hotel operators were not allowed to raise the price of a glass of beer. To compensate for this, the operators reduced the size of the beer glass. In addition, some instructed their bartenders to pour less beer and more foam into the smaller glass. Complaints about “short service” started pouring in to the Saskatchewan Liquor Board. The Provincial Treasurer C. M. Fines issued instructions to his department “for cancellation of licenses of any hotel vendor who continues to serve glasses of beer with large heads of froth.” (“More Wine in Next Two Months,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, October 25, 1944)

The perfect pour. Image source

Despite all of the efforts of the arid Mackenzie King government, beer consumption rose steadily in Canada during the war years. The men who fought overseas and the women on the home front who entered the workforce en masse, rejected abstinence. Small-town hotels blossomed, due largely to the general wartime prosperity. By the end of the war, Bowley writes, hotel lobbies across the province were decked out with modern wood panelling; stairways were retreaded; rooms were redecorated and refurnished; facades were rebuilt; and beer parlours – hitherto hardly celebrated for their cheery décor – became more inviting. “At long last,” George Grant, the president of the Hotels Association of Saskatchewan, stated in 1948, “it seems, the plain, bare, uninviting beer parlor is becoming what it should be – an attractive, smartly decorated, spotlessly clean workingman’s club.”

It would be another 15 years before provincial legislation finally permitted women to enter beverage rooms. 

The Antler Hotel beer parlour, n.d. Source: Footprints in the Sands of Time (1983):

 *For the complete Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King click here

© Joan Champ 2011

Women-Only Beer Parlours: Saskatchewan Liquor Laws in the 1930s - Part 2

Getty Images, Retrofile, George Marks photograph

When the Saskatchewan government legalized the sale of beer by the glass in 1935, the question arose as to whether or not women should be allowed in beer parlours. In the end, after much debate in the legislature, Saskatchewan women were granted the right to drink beer – in separate women-only parlours.

Despite stereotypes about women as temperance advocates in the early 1900s, Saskatchewan women from many walks of life drank wine, beer and hard liquor at formal dinners, at weddings and at other gatherings. In the years since 1924, when the only places people could legally drink were in their own homes or in a hotel room, many married couples spent some of their leisure time together at home. Some might have shared a drink or two. As Craig Heron surmises in his book, Booze: A Distilled History (Toronto, 2003), “Inadvertently, government policy may have had [the] effect of breaking down the male near-monopoly on drinking and giving their wives easier access to the bottle that their husband brought home.” (p.288) In addition, the single women of Saskatchewan's cities and towns who worked as telephone operators and salesclerks, hotel chambermaids and restaurant workers, might want to enjoy a drink in their local hotel beer parlour after a day’s work. 

Getty Images, Retrofile, George Marks photograph

The thought of women in beer parlours was frowned upon by many, however. While Saskatchewan women had won the right to vote in 1916, this had not given them real equality. The prevailing conviction was that a woman’s proper role was as a wife, mother and homemaker. Many considered beer parlours to be morally compromised places frequented by morally suspect patrons. Women might drink beer at the expense of their children. Much worse, women might be lured into illicit sexual activity if they were allowed to drink beer in parlours.  

Male bonding. Source: www.oldstmaryspa.com

The issue was further complicated by the fact that a lot of men, including many hotel operators, workers and their customers, simply did not want women in what was considered male social space. Hotelmen feared that the presence of women might curtail the consumption of beer. Male camaraderie might be inhibited. Charles Hurt of Vernon, B.C. gave voice to these qualms when he said, “Certainly there are many men who cannot 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.” (Quoted in Robert A. Campbell, Sit Down and Drink Your Beer; Vancouver’s Beer Parlours, 1925-1954, University of Toronto Press, 2001, p. 56) Many females agreed that a beer parlour was not a place for women. In the 1930s, most women were too busy running the family household to visit a beer parlour. Few could even afford it, given the hard times of the Depression. Some women, however, wanted in.

For several weeks in January 1935, members of the legislature debated the new liquor act and regulations. They received representaitons from both the Saskatchewan Moderation League and the Saskatchewan Temperance League asking for beer parlour privileges for women. According to the Regina newspaper, temperance advocates argued that since men and women voted together in the 1934 beer-by-the-glass plebiscite, they should be allowed to drink together. Premier James G. Gardiner said he was opposed to parlours for women because he believed that two thirds of the women in the province did not want beer at all. “He said he had been besieged by resolutions and letters from women’s organizations and individuals opposing beer parlors,” the paper reported, “but hadn’t received a single letter from any woman asking for them.” (Regina Leader-Post, Jan. 11, 1935, p. 3 and Jan. 19, 1935, p. 1).

Nevertheless, on January 22, 1935, the legislature approved separate, women-only beer parlours for all communities in the province. In cities, there had to be separate entrances for, and no means of communication between, the men’s and women’s parlours. In smaller centres, there could be a single entrance, but separate parlours. Omer Demers, MLA for Shellbrook, condemned the whole concept. “The very fact that we are not going to allow men and women to drink together is nothing short of an admission that the beer parlor is not going to be a decent place to go,” Demers said. (Regina Leader-Post, Jan. 22, 1935, p. 8)

Reaction to the establishment of women-only beer parlours was swift. “Fancy any real woman lowering her dignity by visiting such places,” wrote James Smith of Regina in a letter to the newspaper, “especially those who have the care and training of our future citizens.” S.G. Jamieson, on the other hand, thought that men and women should be allowed to drink together. His letter to the editor stated,“I would much sooner see my family drinking together in a public place than to … sneak off in a place where they practically have to hide to drink.” (Regina Leader-Post, Feb 7, 1935, p. 4) Perhaps the most interesting analysis of Saskatchewan’s new beer law came in an editorial by the Vancouver Province, quoted in the Leader-Post on March 21,1935:

The New York Times … hears about our new Saskatchewan beer law and doesn’t know what to make of us all. … In an age of sexual equality, the women of Saskatchewan are to have their beer-by-the-glass licensed houses, as well as the men of Saskatchewan. Even in the same house, but not in the same chaste parlor. Oh, no. No man except a beer waiter may be lawfully in a women’s beer parlor in the new Saskatchewan beer dispensation. And no woman may be lawfully in a man’s beer parlor. … separate compartments (beer-tight partitions, say), and there may not even be communicating doors… . They fought over these regulations for a whole week in the Saskatchewan House, before the beer separatists won. One member said, suppose a man and his wife dropped into a beer parlor together, wanting to have a thoughtful and connubial beer together, and then found they must go their separate ways, sundered by this harsh, estranging partition, drinking their lonely and uninspiring beer-by-the-glass, he on his side of the partition, she on hers, so that those whom God had joined together had been put asunder by the beer laws of Saskatchewan – how about it, what then? And the Saskatchewan House said, all right, what about it: it would just be too bad for them. 

All of this consternation was irrelevant, however. In March 1935, Regina hotelmen announced that they had decided not to provide separate beer parlors for women. It appears that the rest of the hotels in the province followed suit. Women would have to wait until 1960 to enter Saskatchewan’s beer parlours – or beverage rooms as they became known – through the “Ladies and Escorts” door.

© Joan Champ 2011

Beer by the Glass: Saskatchewan Liquor Laws in the 1930s - Part 1

During Prohibition, too many people in Saskatchewan were drinking illegally, thanks to a proliferation of stills and home brew. Prohibition had also contributed to a marked increase in crime and violence. The new slogan became “Moderation.” In 1924, the Saskatchewan government repealed Prohibition, established the provincial liquor board, and implemented a new system of severe liquor control designed to limit alcohol consumption. 

Highly restrictive liquor regulations did not help to improve business at Saskatchewan’s hotels. For one thing, the Saskatchewan Liquor Act of 1924 did not allow the sale of beer by the glass in licensed premises. Hard liquor, beer and wine had to be purchased from government stores. There were only two places that people were allowed to drink: in their own home or in a hotel room in which they were registered. Nightly drinking parties took place in hotels, to the great annoyance of owners and other guests. 

W.W. Champ.  Family collection

W. W. (Wes) Champ, President of the Saskatchewan Hotels Association (SHA) in 1925, highlighted the problems this situation created for hotel owners.“While the liquor stores sell the desired drink and secure the profit, the onus is unpleasantly placed on the hotelmen of providing the room wherein the liquor may be consumed," Champ wrote in a statement to the press. "This is undoubtedly a complaint on the part of the hotelmen of the province that deserves the serious consideration and sympathy of all those who desire a healthy, sober community surrounded by well-kept hotel establishments.” The SHA circulated a petition in 1928 asking for legislation permitting beer parlours, or at least a plebiscite to determine the will of the electorate, and got 70,000 signatures. Premier James. G. Gardiner’s government denied the petition. (H.G. Bowley, A Half Century of Hospitality; The Story of the Hotels Association of Saskatchewan, 1906-1956, Regina, 1957)

When the Depression hit in 1929, Saskatchewan’s hotels drifted into debt and decline. As the Depression deepened in the 1930s, hotel keepers, like everyone else in the province, struggled to scrape by. They were unable to replace deteriorating furniture and equipment, or to renovate their shabby premises. Often, taxes went unpaid. Then, in 1935, the government finally introduced the sale of beer by the glass, providing a welcome source of revenue and some relief for the hotel business. 

Saskatchewan Hotel Association ad in the Regina Leader-Post, June 16, 1934.

 

Temperance ad in the Regina Leader-Post, June 16, 1934.

The SHA had managed to achieve this major concession from Premier J.T.M. Anderson’s government in 1934. A plebiscite was held during the provincial election in June which asked the question: “Are you in favor of the sale of beer by the glass in licensed premises?” A large front-page newspaper ad was placed by the SHA stating that “Bootlegging, Law Breaking, Secret Drinking, Respect for the Law, Increased Revenue for the Government – which can be accomplished by voting for the Sale of Beer on Licensed Premises.” An advertisement by the Moderation League of Saskatchewan stated, “If you have the interest of the youth of the Province at heart, vote for the sale of beer by the glass.” The plebiscite carried by 30,130 votes. The final count was: Yes - 191,722; No - 161,592. Half the majority was from Regina and Saskatoon; many rural areas voted against it. (Regina Leader-Post, June 28, 1934, p.1)

Forbidden to Sell Anything But Beer
 
The government wrestled for weeks with the framing of the new liquor act and resolutions. In the end, the rules established for beer parlours seemed designed to make them as unattractive as possible. Customers could drink only while seated, unlike in the old-time taverns. They could not carry their drinks between tables. On January 22, 1935, Omer Demers, MLA for Shellbrook, pointed out to the Legislature that, “We used to stand up and drink and when we had enough we knew enough to leave. Now we sit down and don’t know when we’ve had enough.” (Regina Leader-Post, Jan. 22, 1935, p.8) There could be no meals or sale of food, no sale of soft drinks, no dancing, no musical instruments, no playing cards, no slot machines, and no entertainment of any kind in beer parlours. The only thing they could sell in these cheerless places was beer. Women could neither work in, nor patronize, the province's beer parlours [see separate blog post]. Liquor board inspectors were sent out to watch for violations. 

By April, hundreds of Saskatchewan hotels were applying for liquor licenses. The SHA said that, out of its 480 members, 80 – mainly Chinese hotel owners – would not be able to qualify. (Regina Leader-Post, Mar. 12, 1935, p. 1) Chinese were excluded because the law required that the applicant for a liquor license had to be a person who was entitled to vote. The Chinese in Saskatchewan did not receive the provincial franchise until 1947.

New beer parlour at the Maymont Hotel, c.1935.  From Sod to Solar (1980)

"Spigots spouted suds in 22 Saskatchewan hotels on Thursday [May 2, 1935], and draft beer became legal again for the first time in 20 years," the Regina newspaper stated."Not since 1915 has beer by the glass been legal in a public way in this province." (Leader-Post, May 2, 1935, p. 1) 

In order to take advantage of this new turn of events, hotels had to spend money to build or fix up their beer parlours. The government had set rigorous architectural standards before licenses would be issued to sell beer. Only hotels that had a minimum number of guest rooms and adequate dining rooms for guests could be licensed. Most of the hotel keepers went further into debt, but it was hoped that, with the added revenue, they would be able to carry on. 

Local Option Vote

A big obstacle for many small-town hotels was the question of “local option.” The new legislation

Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, November 21, 1935

passed on January 22, 1935, allowed communities to vote on whether or not they wanted a beer parlour in their local hotel. In Carlyle, controversy raged for weeks over whether or not Jim Anderson should be allowed to apply for a beer parlour license for the Arlington Hotel. In the end, 123 voted Yes and only 7 voted No. “One old timer chuckled [that] he couldn’t find one solitary person who admitted to a ‘yes’ vote so he could never figure out where the majority came from,” the Carlyle history records (Prairie Trails to Blacktop Carlyle and District, 1882-1982). Redvers was one of the few towns that defeated the local option vote. The hotel closed, and the owner had to wait three years before he could reapply for a license. In 1939, the town voted in favour of a license, and, with the revenue from the beer parlour, the Redvers Hotel was able to start making improvements and upgrading its facilities. (Redvers, 75 Years Live, 1980) Saskatchewan’s hotel industry did not fully recover, however, until the return of better economic conditions after the start of the Second World War. 

© Joan Champ 2011