Sit Down and Drink Your Beer
Review by Andrea Cast
Robert A. Campbell, Sit Down and Drink Your Beer (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2001), paperback, pp. x, 185, 16 b/w.
In Sit Down and Drink Your Beer Robert A. Campbell investigates the
regulation of Vancouver’s beer parlours. He describes the laws, behaviours
and customs that surrounded “decent” drinking as “moral regulation,” which he
defines as “the attempt to render natural and obvious what is actually constructed
and contested” (p. 9). Historians of drinking have long agreed that society
constructs acceptable drinking patterns. Campbell analyses these various groups
and claims that the state, the political parties, both “wet” and “dry,” the
employer’s associations, the unions, the employees and the customers themselves
all interpreted the “decency” of the drinking behaviour that surrounded them.
These groups seldom agreed but they all contributed to the regulation of public
drinking behaviour.
In 1880 Vancouver boasted one licensed bar for every thirteen people and saloons
were open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The Canadian prohibition
movement used the popularity of World War I to outlaw alcohol and legal prohibition
lasted from 1916 to 1921. After the war even the “wets” were not prepared
to return to the unregulated saloon. The negotiations between the government,
the “wets,” the “drys,” and the hotel operators resulted in highly regulated
beer parlours. They were the only legal, public drinking establishments in
all British Columbia. Authorities at all levels intended to regulate parlours
so that they promoted “decency” in the inherently indecent act of drinking;
customers could drink only beer, they could not eat, sing or stand at the bar,
but must remain seated at a table in an open and well-lit room, and unaccompanied
men were not permitted to speak with unaccompanied women. All of these regulations
were designed to instill “decent” behaviour in the largely white, working-class
male clientele. Beer parlours changed very little between 1925 and 1954. After
World War II the rising middle class had changed its mind about the inherent
evils of drink. Suddenly the rules and regulations of the beer parlours seemed
to promote indecent drunkenness rather than to hinder it. Campbell ends his
story with the resulting liberalization of liquor licensing in the late 1950s.
Beer parlours were established to control the public drinking of white, working-class
men. Campbell discusses how various groups attempted to exert their control
by regulating the access of other groups by class, gender and race. A large
portion of the debate between opponents and advocates of beer parlours concerned
whether working-class men needed to drink in order to remain healthy, contented
workers. Gender was contested along different lines. Several of the regulating
actors debated whether they should allow women in public drinking establishments
at all. Rather than discussing whether or not women needed alcohol, regulators
linked much of the debate to official concerns over the spread of prostitution
and venereal disease, for which they disproportionaltely blamed women and beer
parlours. Finally, race was a large and contentious issue. The state had to
balance its paternalistic desires and outright prejudices against natives, Asians
and blacks with its attempts uphold laws regarding equality for all Canadians.
Employers, employees and customers all worked to regulate the public drinking
of mixed race couples, natives, blacks and Asians, both for and against them.
Campbell paints a picture of various power groups attempting to regulate white,
working-class men by restricting the drinking behaviour and opportunities of
everyone else.
Sit Down and Drink Your Beer is a book about the attempts of authority
groups at every level to regulate the dominant society, for Vancouver was a
white, working-class male town. Campbell is both entertaining and informative.
He is aware that his story is only part of a much wider body of knowledge on
drinking practices and the attempt to contain conviviality to “decent” limits
on personal and collective behaviour. His work points the way for further research,
particularly into the attitudes of women, Asians, and blacks about being regulated.
He also leaves space for comparative research, both throughout Canada and the
rest of the world. However, his story is complete and accessible to those who
are not familiar with the wider literature of drinking culture. Not only does
he discuss drinking, but also he contributes to the history of gender, class
and race relations.
Andrea Cast has recently completed her dissertation on women and alcohol in
early modern England.
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