MUSEUM SPEAKER BREWS UP FASCINATING LOOK AT PROHIBITION

Booze, bootleggers and baffling politics are an important part of B.C.'s
early history, brought to life in colourful style in a Lasqueti Island
author's new book.

Douglas Hamilton, author of "Sobering Dilemma: A History of Prohibition in
British Columbia," will speak at the Campbell River Museum March 5 at 1:30
p.m. as part of the museum's Brewer's Gold exhibit. His book traces the
history of prohibition in B.C., looking at its causes, effects and
inevitable failure. In a narrative style laced with dry wit, Hamilton
explores an important part of B.C.'s past that still has effects today.

The Campbell River Mirror caught up with Hamilton to ask him a few
questions about his book, prohibition's effects on Vancouver Island and
about himself.

Mirror: While researching your book, did you find any interesting tidbits
about our area related to prohibition?

Hamilton: Most of the liquor action before and after the First World War
took place in larger centres like Victoria, Vancouver and Nanaimo. But I
was interested to learn that Comox, like most B.C. communities, had its own
beer brewing concern called the Comox Brewing Company.

Curiously, it was incorporated between 1898 and 1904 - but it never
produced a bottle of brew. This company was probably a victim of the great
consolidation in the BC brewing industry that took place during the early
20th century.

First Nations liquor prohibition lasted over a century - 1854 to 1962.
Magistrate Roderick Haig-Brown of Campbell River stands out as one of the
few provincial judges to publicly deplore the inequality and unfairness of
the law.

In the late 1950s he observed, "It is not simply a question of liquor, but
of freedom, and human dignity that belongs with freedom. I am ashamed every
time it is the duty of my court to punish Indians for something that is a
crime only for them."

Mirror: How big of a trade was bootlegging liquor from B.C. to Alaska, and
were there any connections with Vancouver Island?

Hamilton: Bootlegging in the U.S. possession of Alaska was an enormous
business from 1867 until gold was discovered on the Klondike in the 1890s.
The trade was highly organized and controlled by the U.S. military
occupation, many members of whom retired after a few years with
considerable wealth.

The border was a sieve, ships and small boats were rarely inspected, and
bootleggers openly bribed and intimidated customs inspectors. The remote
coastlines of B.C. and Alaska made smuggling of all sorts a very low risk
endeavour, and communities sprung up on both sides of the border to service
the trade.

In addition to bringing in booze, "opium factories" on Vancouver Island
processed poppy extract imported from China and India, and smuggled the
resulting opium to Alaska for reimportation into the lower states. After
the gold miners arrived, all semblance of liquor prohibition ended, and a
licensing system was adopted in 1899.

Mirror: What parallels do you see with the prohibition era and modern-day
attitudes to drugs, particularly marijuana?

Hamilton: When I first started working on this book I was primarily
interested in chasing the fascinating and bizarre story of B.C.'s
prohibition from 1917 to 1921. The huge anti-liquor conventions of 1915-17,
the endless referenda and plebiscites, the hysterical name-calling and
moralizing, the farcical soldiers' vote in Europe, and the widespread
corruption and bootlegging after prohibition was finally imposed in the
fall of 1917.

As I worked on this project I was continually struck by the similar
patterns shown in various prohibitions then and now. In fact, I was unable
to unearth a single case of a successful prohibition over the long term.
These laws drive the problem underground and out of sight, but they solve
little. Banning alcohol and drugs does not remove them from the market. It
doesn't seem to matter whether the substance is addictive or merely a
social custom.

Crystal meth, cocaine, heroine, marijuana, booze, designer drugs, model
airplane glue, tobacco, tea and coffee have all had their times of
prohibition with the same effect. Artificial scarcity of a popular drug
will inevitably lead to higher prices, a black market and astonishing
amounts of illicit cash.

This, in turn, attracts the criminal element, corrupts police, judges and
law makers, and generates contempt for the rule of law. In extreme cases it
will lead to savage turf wars between dealers, and an epidemic of thefts as
users struggle to pay for the high cost of drugs.