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Beer rationing in the 1940s

During the Second World War, Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King wanted Canadians to cut back on drinking. In a national radio broadcast on Dec.
beer ad
Labatt's ad, 1942, states that beer "has actually proved beneficial to the war effort." Photo courtesy labattheritage.lib.uwo.ca

During the Second World War, Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King wanted Canadians to cut back on drinking. In a national radio broadcast on Dec. 16, 1942, King announced the Wartime Alcoholic Beverages Order, which reduced the alcoholic content of beer by 10 per cent, wine by 20 per cent and spirits by 30 per cent 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.

King justified the alcohol restrictions, saying they were in accordance with government policy of not allowing profiteering because of the war. “The brewers have profited more than anyone out of the war,” King wrote in his diary on Dec. 10, 1942. “Regardless of what one’s attitude towards prohibition may be,” he said during his CBC radio broadcast a week later, “temperance is something against which, at a time of war, no reasonable protest can be made.”

A Baptist church minister from Saskatchewan by the name of Tommy Douglas was in complete agreement with King. At the annual conference of United Church ministers on July 1, 1942, Douglas, a Member of Parliament and leader of the provincial CCF party, called for wartime liquor rationing. According to the Regina Leader-Post, Douglas called liquor “the No. 1 saboteur of the war effort.”

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

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 that were in plentiful supply. Nevertheless, in Saskatchewan in 1944, the maximum quantity of beer that one person 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. More than 70 government beer stores closed due to the liquor restrictions, so people headed to their local hotels to buy their beer. 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, 1987)

During the beer shortage, hotel operators were not allowed to raise the price of a glass of beer. To compensate for this, they 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. According to the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 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.”

Despite the efforts of Mackenzie King, 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. A black market in beer coupons emerged, and bootlegging became widespread.

Facing mounting complaints from Canadians that they could not get enough beer, Prime Minister King lifted the restrictions on March 13, 1944. He declared in the House of Commons that restricting the supply of beer was not “sufficiently important to the war effort to justify the risk of continuous misunderstanding and friction.”