Tributes
There's a Tavern in the Town
Up the Gatineau!, Volume 27, 2001
Much has been written about the hard life of the folks in the nineteenth-century backwoods of Canada, but little has been said of the social life of the day - especially of the folk who frequented the local taverns, of which there were many, in the small villages up and down the Gatineau valley.
The average distance travelled by horse and wagon was about 12 miles per day. Thus the stopping places, or the fairly primitive hotels of the day, were situated that far apart, as is evidenced by the mileage between many of the villages in the Gatineau Valley today. Incidentally, it took four days to go from Bytown to Maniwaki.
In Chelsea, for example, there were a number of hotels on the main route north from Hull. Paddy O'Neil's stage coach stop was a busy place in the 1850s. We don't know whether Paddy sold whiskey and beer then, but later on his son, Arthur, purchased Charles Kingsbury's hotel and stage stop, and his sign announced that it was a temperance hotel. His long table could accommodate 10 diners, and he had stables for horses.
Hotels, and what they sold, were important to those who ran them as businesses and the travellers who looked forward to stopping at them. The hotels also caught the eye of the local officials as places that needed regulating, and also as potential sources of a few dollars for the municipal coffers. The first bylaws that West Hull's inaugural council passed pertained to the licensing of taverns and hotels:
"Bylaw 1: For issuing certificates to retail spirituous and fermented liquors (viz. whiskey and beer). No person or persons shall obtain a license to keep a hotel or tavern to sell spirituous liquors within this Municipality unless having obtained a certificate of the Secretary-treasurer of this Municipality attesting that the parties so applying for such license are duly authorized by the Council of this Municipality to get or obtain such license.
"For such certificate, the Parties applying will have to pay to the Secretary-treasurer the sum of eight dollars as a fee, and two dollars for fee to execute and sign the said certificate."
For stores that wanted to sell whiskey or beer, yet another bylaw covered that situation:
"Bylaw 2: Bylaw for the issuing of certificates to traders to sell spirituous and fermented liquor in quantities not less than three half pints.
"No person or persons shall obtain a license to sell spirituous and fermented liquor in quantities not less than three half pints within the limit of this Municipality unless having obtained a certificate of the Secretary-treasurer of this Municipality, attesting that the parties so applying are authorized to do so by this Council to obtain such a license.
"For such a certificate, the parties applying will have to pay the Secretary-treasurer the sum of seven dollars as a tax and one dollar as a fee."
Licenses were duly issued to Henry Burrows, Charles Ethier dit Bisson, Austin Corrigan, (first name not recorded) McMullan, James Read, John McConnell, Etienne Delaurier, John Laframboise, Edward Dean, Pierre Neve and James Bourke.
It is also known that West Hull's council met at first in Ed Dean's Hotel, where liquor was available. Perhaps one of the very reasons that council decided to build its own building was that the bluestockings of the day had a taboo about booze. At least, old Ed was shrewd enough to offer the council free land next to the hotel, so he could at least be assured of their custom.
In 1876 most of the previous year's tavern owners again received their licences, although McMullan, John McConnell, John Laframboise and Pierre Neve's names no longer appear on the list. John McSweeney was a new name added, and later in the year John McConnell's widow requested and received a license.
Ed Dean's hotel prospered, as Old Chelsea became a popular stopping place for shanty men on their way north, and even for the local lumbermen who ran logs on the river. It was perhaps so popular that 18 years later, in 1893, the council of the day decided to pass a bylaw that limited the number of taverns to just one. Aside from the hotels' tendency of keeping people away from church, the hard-living loggers and teamsters were not fearful of the odd brawl, and lawlessness was probably another reason for controlling the liquor trade. Dunn's got the nod, and the others were legally prevented from selling booze.
Much to Ed Dean's consternation, he was left only with income from boarders (about $4.00 per month for room and board) and from stopover folk. And they probably went across the street to Dunn's where the bar occupied the east side of the building and beer was 5 cents a glass. In any event, it didn't really matter for long. Ed was a resourceful fellow and the liquor business went out the back door. Local legend has it that the lineups at Dean's back door on a Sunday morning were longer than the line-ups up the hill at the communion rail of St. Stephen's Church. Clearly, something had to be done, as it can only be presumed that other establishments were flouting the rules too.
The parish priest of the day, Father McNally, pushed for total prohibition in order to keep his parishioners, so in 1907, with the help of the Protestants, the municipality voted by public referendum against the sale of liquor. It was only a short time later the Ed Dean's hotel was sold and apparently ceased operation as a hotel.
The fate of other "watering holes" is unknown, but we presume that they either complied or did their best to do a little bootlegging on the side. After all, it would be pretty hard to keep custom with the hot and dry travellers on the dusty roads of summer. And in winter's cold, how could they survive without a tot of rum?
Many hotels, of course, became proudly temperance establishments, and likely stuck to it. There's an amusing tale about old Seth Cates who ran a hotel in Wakefield that was so temperance that he would not sell tobacco or even soft drinks in the days when drinking and smoking were important. His large sign proclaiming Temperance Hotel was much in evidence, and made him a marked man for pranks from the drinking crowd. It is said that one Halloween some youth removed a sign from another hotel that did sell whiskey and placed it over the Temperance Hotel sign. Early the next morning, a man went into the hotel and asked Seth for a glass of whiskey. Seth was furious and is reputed to have yelled, "You know very well that I do not sell liquor." "But, your sign says that you do," replied the visitor. Mr. Cates was appalled and quickly ripped the sign down. He was, however, never allowed to forget the prank.