Ontario Adopts State Control.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18903, 19 January 1927, Page 10

Ontario Adopts State Control.

We print a letter to-day. from our Vancouver correspondent containing the first full account of the. change made in Ontario by the poll taken on December 2nd. It was clear enough from the brief cable message printed in The Press on December 4th that the result of the poll was a very severe set-back to Prohibition, but it is only this week, when in addition to letters we have the Canadian and American newspapers published after election day, that we are able to see the situation as it really is. And the position, in a sentence, is this: that Ontario, which contains about one-third of all the people of Canada, has voted so strongly for State Control that it is difficult to believe in any recovery by the Prohibition party; that it has made a similar change by the Maritime Provinces, the only remaining dry area, almost a foregone conclusion; and that it has seriously disturbed the Prohibitionists of tho United States. For it has to be remembered that Ontario has had Prohibition for ten years, is the stronghold of Canadian Nonconformity, and has been regarded both by Wets and Drys as the pivotProvince on. the Prohibition question outside Quebec. But now we have this collection of facts:

British Columbia adopted Government Control in June, 1921. Manitoba returned to Governmentcontrolled sales in June, 1923, after seven years' trial of Prohibition. Alberta voted for State Control in November, 1923, after eight years of Prohibition.

Saskatchewan voted for Government sales of liquor in July, 1924, after having been dry for several ycara Quebec has never had Prohibition, or shown the slightest inclination for it. Ontario, the wealthiest and most populous Province of all, rejected Prohibition six weeks ago by almost two to one, after ten years' trial, the stout [support of three successive GovernIments, and—in the early stages at

least—enormous referendum majorities in its favour.

Xor can it be doubted that the explanation is that expressed'so clearly by the Vancouver Sun:

The fundamental issue was not liquor but tolerance. It was not Prohibition but the spirit that lies behind Prohibition. . . Ontario's switch to the wet column is nut evidence of any growing appetite for liquor. It is simply a popular protest against autocratic domination of morals and behaviour.

The people of Ontario have simply shaken themselves free, like the people of Norway a month or two earlier, from a law that they felt to be foreign to their nature. They have broken from a bondage fanatically assumed, or at least accepted, under the stress and excitement of war. But they have also—aud it is this fact which so much disturbs the entrenched Yolstendians across their border—rescued the law itself from contempt and mockery. For in Ontario, as in New Ycrk and California, Prohibition never had that hold on the reason and moral sense of intelligent people which could alone make it effective. Actually the people of Ontario do not desire a return to the unrestricted sale of liquor at the open bar. They desire, and have voted for, escape from a tyranny which classed perfectly gwd men as criminals.