Montreal City Weblog

Kate 00:47 on 2023-02-22 Permalink Reply  

• DeWolf 00:51 on 2023-02-22 Permalink

  Many (most?) cities around the world have no last call, and things just kind of work out. Hong Kong has a handful of bars open 24 hours but most close at midnight or 2am or whenever they decide it wouldn’t be worth staying open any longer.

• Kate 10:25 on 2023-02-22 Permalink

  I wonder how many of our laws and customs still derive from prohibition and the attitudes around it. (People think of prohibition as a U.S. thing, but Canada had it too for a time.)

• Blork 11:47 on 2023-02-22 Permalink

  When I was growing up in Nova Scotia there were many old rules still on the books, some enforced and some ignored. For example, there were no sidewalk terraces for bars at all; in fact bars and taverns had to keep their curtains drawn because it was not legal to be able to see people drinking as you were walking by on the street. Inside the taverns there was a technicality seldom observed in which you weren’t allowed to walk around inside the bar carrying your drink. If you wanted to move to a different table, the waiter had to carry your drink. (Again though, that rule was seldom observed and most people were not even aware of it.)

  There was also a gender divide such as we had here in Quebec, but the way it worked there was that most taverns had two areas. There was the “tavern” which was rustic and had only minimal comforts and was for men only, and there was the “beverage room” that was more comfortable (better chairs and tables, cleaner, nice things up on the walls, more subdued lighting, etc.) where women and couples would go. That divide existed well into the 80s, although by the late 60s (I think) the prohibition against women in the taverns was strictly cultural and not legal. As in, women were not prohibited from going into the tavern, but it was seen as very low-class of them to do so. (And most women didn’t want to, because the tavern was dirty and smelly and full of crusty old men spitting on the floor, etc.)

  In some cases the tavern/beverage room divide was simply a wall running down the middle of the establishment with a doorway in between. In others it was two separate establishments, such as the tavern downstairs and the beverage room upstairs.

  All that stuff was thrown out the window in the 1980s, fortunately.

• Tee Owe 12:15 on 2023-02-22 Permalink

  It was similar in Ottawa in the late 70’s. There the limits were number of glasses on a table (and thereby number of people at a table), I think no moving chairs between tables, and also the no-carrying drinks around rule. There was also a no drinks without food restaurant rule. If I disremember exactly then someone please correct me.

• Blork 16:55 on 2023-02-22 Permalink

  It was a mess, and not evenly enforced. I worked as a waiter for a short time at a place that was sort of rough and known for trouble, and got raided a lot for drugs and whatnot (never when I was there). And occasionally I was told by the bartender to go “by the book” on the moving drinks from table to table thing. Possibly because they knew they were being watched by authorities or something. Meanwhile, at more popular and less troublesome places people walked around with their drinks with no problem at all.

  Side note, and a true story: when I applied for that waiter job, I had only been 19 (the legal drinking age in N.S.) for a couple of months. They hired me partially because I was a familiar face and had been something of a ‘regular” at that bar for at least three years. After I was hired and was doing the paperwork, the manager noticed my birth date. There was a pause. A sigh. And then we got on with it. 🙂

• Ephraim 09:35 on 2023-02-23 Permalink

  Didn’t NS also have these weird laws about carrying alcohol on a Sunday, even in the trunk of a car?

• orr 16:16 on 2023-02-23 Permalink

  I liked the now-gone maritime law where the beer store sold you beer, it just couldn’t be “cold” beer.

• JaneyB 09:53 on 2023-02-24 Permalink

  @Blork and Tee Owe – I remember the separate tavern and beverage room setup too, in Manitoba. My dad tells me stories of how private farms informally rented out rooms like mini-hotels and it was quite normal to stop by many of them for drinks and a meal as well. That was back in the 40s and 50s. All basically word of mouth.