On July 1 of 1915 a government ban on the sale of liquor -- so-called prohibition -- came into effect in Saskatchewan, and 406 bars did not open that day. They stayed closed for nine years. But while the sale of liquor within the province was prohibited, there were loopholes. And if there were loopholes, Harry Bronfman, the owner of the Balmoral Hotel in Yorkton wasn’t shy about exploiting them.
Prohibition laws closed legal drinking establishments and forbade the sale of alcohol as a beverage. Possession and consumption of alcohol was only allowed in private dwellings. But alcohol could be purchased for other purposes, including medicinal use. And distillers, brewers and licensed producers could sell their product outside their home province.
Harry established the Canada Pure Drug Company in Yorkton, the precursor to the massive Seagram empire that dominated the liquor business in Canada and around the world through much of the 20th century.
Coming in December: the Balmoral under new ownership in the 1950s, and its eventual demise.
Booze: When Whisky Ruled the West, by James Gray, on amazon.ca.
Bronfman Dynasty, by Peter Newman, on amazon.ca.
Bronfman Dynasty on openlibrary.org
Open Library is an initiative of the US-based Internet Archive, a non-profit building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Other projects include the Wayback Machine, archive.org and archive-it.org. Open Library allows people to read books online, or "borrow" books for a short period of time.
The Bronfman Family in Yorkton: Finding the Loopholes in Prohibition Legislation, by Kathy Morell.
This very detailed account of lawsuits faced by the Bronfmans as a result of their activities in Yorkton during Prohibition was published in Saskatchewan History, a magazine of the Saskatchewan Archives (since discontinued) in spring of 2010. Kathy Morell is a former Yorkton resident who also wrote the script for The Haunts of Yorkton, a walking tour of Yorkton landmarks, complete with local actors telling stories, held in 2005 in conjunction with the provincial centennial.
Other books about the Bronfman family and Seagram on amazon.ca.
The Bronfman family on Wikipedia.
Downtown Yorkton, 1897. In front centre, the early Royal Hotel. Down the street, right side of photo, the original Balmoral Hotel before either of the two subsequent additions were added. (City of Yorkton Archives)
Historical markers tell the stories of the Balmoral Hotel, Harry Bronfman, and the area which is now City Centre Park on the south side of Broadway between Second and Third Avenues.
The historical markers, shown below, are located:
1. On the parking lot of the Cornerstone Credit Union along Livingstone Avenue, former site of the Balmoral Hotel;
2. On the south side of Broadway near the corner of Third Avenue, once part of Harry Bronfman's extensive extensive land and property holdings in Yorkton;
3. In City Centre Park.
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