Chemical Warfare Comes to Vancouver

Lake Erie Chemical Company brochure. City of Vancouver Archives, Vancouver Police files, series 197, 75-E-7, file 3.

After the First World War, chemical weapons manufacturers looked to law enforcement as a new market for their wares. Writing in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology in 1935, Seth Wiard explained that research and development of chemical warfare munitions had shifted to weapons designed for use against “civilians under conditions where only temporary blocking of their activities would be required, rather than the permanent removal of such civilians from the scene of action.” In other words, police needed weapons that would neutralize strikers and protesters without killing them. 

Seth Wiard was the Technical Director of the Lake Erie Chemical Company. Even though it appeared in a scholarly publication, his article was part of an aggressive marketing campaign to sell police departments on the idea that tear and nauseating gases were effective alternatives to clubs and guns for quelling strikes and riots. Lake Erie and its competitor in the tear gas business, Federal Laboratories Inc., were already making handsome profits selling their wares in Latin America. One salesman confessed that “the unsettled conditions in South America has been a great thing for me … we are certainly in one hell of a business where a fellow has to wish for trouble to make a living.” The wave of labour unrest in depression-era North America represented a potentially lucrative peacetime market for chemical weapons and the Vancouver Police Department was the first in Canada to oblige.

Federal Laboratories metal tear gas canisters, from a display at the Vancouver Police Museum.

During San Francisco’s 1934 “Big Strike,” representatives from Lake Erie and Federal Laboratories were on the scene demonstrating the effectiveness of their weapons in an actual riot situation in order to try and drum up business. 5 July became known as “Bloody Thursday” because two workers were killed that day. One of them was killed by the Federal Laboratories rep, who reported back to his bosses: 

I might mention that during one of the riots, I shot a long-range projectile into a group, a shell hitting one man & causing a fracture of the skull, from which he has since died. As he was a Communist, I have had no feeling in the matter & I am sorry that I did not get more. 

Even though the final tally reached six dead workers in San Francisco, Chief of Police Quinn felt confident that the body count would have been much higher if tear gas hadn’t been used.

Tear gas gun and projectiles, from an exhibit at the Vancouver Police Museum.

Tear gas was supposed to be a non-lethal alternative to firearms. The problem with police using guns against crowds of civilians, according to Seth Wiard, was that “whatever the provocation may be [use of firearms] is always accompanied by a very severe amount of criticism even if justifiable.” Tear gas was therefore a more PR-friendly weapon for police than guns.

Moreover, while gunning down strikers could bring a protest march or demonstration to a quick halt, it was hardly an effective conflict resolution technique. This revelation dawned on the authorities during a Communist-led strike of furniture workers in Stratford, Ontario in 1933, the last time the military was called out for strike duty in Canada under its “aid to civil power” mandate. Short of shooting the workers, there was nothing they could do to resolve the situation and so the strike just dragged on. 

The Vancouver Police Department was undergoing an extensive “modernization” in 1935, and incorporating WWI technology such as machine guns, tear gas, and intelligence systems into the police arsenal was an integral part of the process. 

Besides tear gas, police also used more traditional methods during the Battle of Ballantyne Pier. City of Vancouver Archives #371-1127

Under the leadership of Vancouver’s new chief constable, Colonel W. W. Foster, the immediate goal of police modernization was to rebuild the city police into a force that could be used to put down strikes, protests, and, if necessary, insurrections. Previously, the RCMP, BC Provincial Police, militia units, private police, and vigilantes were looked to for this purpose rather than city police. Since unionizing in 1918, rank-and-file police were not trusted by higher-ups to police strikes because it was presumed their loyalty ultimately lay with their fellow workers. 

The impetus for Colonel Foster being brought in to reform the police department was the fear that the spectacular 1934 maritime strike that shut down San Francisco as well as ports all along the American coast was going to be repeated in BC, beginning in Vancouver in the spring of 1935.

A woman jeering police during the Battle of Ballantyne Pier. City of Vancouver Archives #371-1126

Local Communists had been elected to the leadership of the longshoremen’s union, and had taken the lead in organizing the unemployed in relief camps across the province. Labour spies reported that the Communists’ strategy was to try to orchestrate a general strike that would include longshoremen and unemployed workers and which could become be a catalyst for revolution. But when the 1700 unemployed workers who had been in Vancouver for two months protesting relief camp conditions left on the On-to-Ottawa Trek in early June, it was obvious that the general strike scheme wasn’t going to materialize any time soon. The newly equipped Vancouver Police Department, along with back-up units from the RCMP and BC Provincial Police, would have to settle for a demonstration of striking longshoremen on 18 June to show their stuff. 

At a mass rally two days before the demonstration, Ivan Emery, one of the Communist leaders of the longshoremen, outlined the union’s plan:

We have heard the rattle of machine guns. I believe we have enough ex-servicemen on the waterfront who are prepared to listen to them again. We are going to elect a delegation and we are going to send it down to Chief Foster, asking permission to go to Ballantyne Pier peaceably to talk to the strikebreakers. If they [the RCMP] will turn their guns on us; if they will shoot us down, then you will know that fascism in Canada has taken off the mask and we are up against a stark reality

Longshoremen and their supporters en route to Ballantyne Pier, 18 June 1935. Victoria Cross recipient Mickey O'Rourke is on the bottom left carrying the Union Jack.

Respectably dressed and led by WWI hero Mickey O’Rourke, protesters headed down to the waterfront where scabs were busy unloading cargo. When they reached the police line at the foot of Heatley, Colonel Foster ordered the demonstrators to turn back. They refused and Foster signalled his forces to attack, triggering what became known as the “Battle of Ballantyne Pier.” 

Police line guarding the entrance to Ballantyne Pier at the foot of Heatley, 18 June 1935.

Demonstrators being dispersed by tear gas on Heatley Street, 18 June 1935. City of Vancouver Archives #371-1132

Machine guns were ready, but were not used against the initially peaceful crowd that day. Instead, police on horseback chased protesters around the waterfront district in the East End, beating them and firing tear gas canisters anywhere they saw demonstrators taking cover.

Hastings Bakery at 716 E Hastings during the Battle of Ballantyne. The gas cloud likely indicates protesters ducked inside the store to evade police. City of Vancouver Archives #371-1128

The longshoremen’s headquarters at 633 East Hastings was targeted for special treatment, and was raided and gassed twice that day. BC Workers’ News reported that female supporters of the strikers had set up a makeshift first aid station there. Soon after, the longshoremen’s union moved their strike headquarters to the Bow and Arrows Hall at Heatley and Powell.   

633 East Hastings was the headquarters of the longshoremen's union in 1935. It was raided and gassed twice during the Battle of Ballantyne Pier, even though it was being used as a first aid station. The police had their own first aid station at the Coroner's Court on Cordova Street.

Protesters retaliated with rocks and whatever other projectiles they could find to throw at police. The fighting lasted for about three hours and ended with dozens of police and protesters in the hospital and several arrests. Leonard Binns, a 21-year-old who happened to be making a delivery in the area, was hit in the back of his legs with birdshot from a police shotgun. Chief Foster insisted that the only guns fired that day were tear gas guns, but Binns was nevertheless paid compensation for his injuries. 

Police chasing protesters, 18 June 1935. City of Vancouver Archives #371-1125

The Province headline the next day blared “Tear Gas Bombs Halt Strikers”: 

When the tear gas bombs were shot it had an immediate effect on the rioters. Many were seen wiping their eyes as they ran. Few in the crowd had seen tear gas bombs used before and they were certainly effective … Royal Canadian Mountain Policemen and city police on horseback were located on Alexander Street, one block from the pier and, following the throwing of the bombs, they swept down on the crowd using their sticks. Many were knocked down. The crowd retaliated by hurling bricks and stones. The police were hooted and jeered at. 

The use of chemical weapons was not without its glitches for the police. Even before the riot, a tear gas canister was accidentally discharged in the police station. During the riot, several officers were forced to dismount when their horses were affected by the gas. 

Mounted police going after demonstrators, 18 June 1935. City of Vancouver Archives #371-1131

Prior to the battle, Colonel Foster had sent some of his officers to Seattle for training in tear gas use. He no doubt had knowledge of the lessons learned by police in California in 1934 regarding tear gas use, and as a WWI veteran, he would have had at least some familiarity with chemical warfare. He may have also been swayed by the Lake Erie Chemical Company brochures that can still be found in the police files at the City of Vancouver Archives. The Vancouver Police Museum has a display that includes Federal Laboratories Inc. tear gas canisters that appear to be from the same era. 

Lake Erie Chemical Co. brochure, pitching their weapons to police departments. City of Vancouver Archives, Series 197, 75-E-7, file 3.

Lake Erie Chemical Co. brochure. City of Vancouver Archives, Series 197, 75-E-7, file 3.

In his history of the Great Depression, Pierre Berton describes some other tear gas moments in Canadian history that followed the Battle of Ballantyne Pier. In the Regina Riot, which crushed the On-to-Ottawa Trek less than two weeks after the Battle of Ballantyne Pier, protesters threw tear gas canisters back at police. This wouldn’t have been possible if police used Lake Erie’s throwback-proof Jumper-Repeater Instantaneous Chemical Warfare Gas Candles. This is what police in Vancouver used to clear the Art Gallery and Post Office of unemployed sit-downers in 1938, according to Berton. During the 1937 auto worker strikes in Ontario, Premier Hepburn was in possession of the same Lake Erie brochures Colonel Foster consulted two years earlier. 

Lake Erie Chemical Co. brochure. City of Vancouver Archives, series 197, 75-E-7, file 3.

As violent as the Battle of Ballantyne Pier was, it was not as bloody as the American strike the year before. Although the Vancouver strike was eventually defeated, longshoremen in both countries continued to organize, and eventually formed into the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) under the leadership of an Australian Communist named Harry Bridges. 

Tear gas has since become a mainstay in the police arsenal, along with other “less lethal” weapons such as tasers and pepper spray, as well as the VPD’s latest aquisition, an MRAD sonic gun that doubles as a public address system. In light of controversies over the use of tasers, the zealous use of pepper spray at the APEC conference, and the massive tear gassing of protesters at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, it will be interesting to see what weaponry police in Vancouver will favour for crowd control and demonstrations during the 2010 Olympics.

Street Fighting Men

The Rolling Stones kicked off their Exile on Main Street tour at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver on 3 June 1972, with Stevie Wonder opening. It was not the Stones’ best performance, but it was significant for other reasons. For one thing, it was the group’s first North American show since the infamous 1969 concert in Altamont, California where four people died, one of whom was killed by the Hell’s Angels who had been given beer to do security.

The police were not likely looking forward to the Rolling Stones playing Vancouver. The last time they played here was at the Forum in 1966. At that show, the band started 90 minutes late and the crowd was pretty wound up. In a misguided attempt to calm the fans, the cops pulled the plug five minutes into the show. Mick Jagger responded by pointing his finger and then thumbing his nose at police Inspector Bud Errington, to the delight of the crowd. The show eventually resumed, but only lasted half an hour.

Inspector Bud Errington on stage with the Rolling Stones at the Forum, 19 July 1966. Photo: Vancouver Police Museum

Errington later said that “we are specifically concerned about this group reappearing in Vancouver due to their lack of cooperation.” Police ejected 36 people from that concert, fans attempted to crash through police lines, and an officer’s hat was stolen. At the first Stones show in Vancouver just seven months earlier, seven people were arrested for drunkenness and causing a disturbance.

The band wasn’t the problem in 1972. In some ways (but not others), Altamont sobered the Stones. The Sun emphasized how good natured Mick Jagger seemed during the Vancouver show. Keith Richards was reportedly packing a .38 revolver on the tour because of rumours of an assassination plot by the Hells Angels as revenge for the lack of support the Stones showed them in the aftermath of Altamont. Conspicuously absent from the set list was “Sympathy for the Devil.”

The first sign there might be trouble came more than a month before the show when $5000 worth of sound equipment was damaged at Empire Stadium by a youth gang on the morning tickets went on sale for the Rolling Stones. The show sold out, but on the night of the concert scalpers were outside selling real and fake tickets for between $6 (face value) and $20.

"Here Come the Rolling Stones," Georgia Straight cover, June 1972

The mêlée started around 8:45 when people without tickets began pushing against the 100 or so police guarding the doors around the Coliseum. Someone set off firecrackers and the crowd began jeering the police. Then someone threw a bottle that broke the glass above one of the doors. About 200 people took off and ran around the building kicking the doors and shouting at police. When they finished circling the building, a line of about 30 police in riot gear were blocking the main entrance. Bottles began flying and police were smashing them with their riot sticks. Sergeant Stan Ziola was the first police casualty when a bottle broke his sternum.

Rioters lobbed projectiles, police charged, and the rioters retreated. This repeated for an hour and a half. There was very little hand-to-hand skirmishing between police and the 2500-strong crowd outside the Coliseum. Seven officers were on horseback, going from place to place as needed.

Rioters outside the Pacific Coliseum during the Rolling Stones concert, Vancouver Sun, 5 June 1972

By 10:30 the riot was simmering. Around 11:00, a Molotov cocktail exploded at the rear of an RCMP cruiser that was driving past on Renfrew Street. It was followed by another Molotov, and the seven mounted police charged at the crowd, which dispersed between nearby houses.

By the time the 17,000 concert-goers streamed out of the Coliseum at 11:30, it was all over. In the final tally, 31 police were injured and of those thirteen required hospitalization. Thirteen people were arrested that night and another nine rioters were identified and arrested in the days that followed. Most of those charged were young men in their late teens or early twenties, including a 16 year-old boy who assaulted Sgt. Bernie “Whistling” Smith with a chain.

Superintendent Ted Oliver, commander of the 285 officers policing the riot, said “there is no way, ever, that I want to have to ask my men to go into a situation like that again.” He was “proud of every one of those bastards I had working for me. They were cool and they were very, very brave.”

Despite the injuries they sustained, the Vancouver police ultimately benefited from the affray. Their handling of the Rolling Stones Riot was praised in the media and was contrasted with their performance the previous year at the Gastown Riot, for which they were roundly criticized for brutality. The Stones Riot was thus an opportunity for the Vancouver Police Department to redeem itself, as well as to argue that it needed more riot gear.

Police suspected that the obviously premeditated riot was orchestrated by the Clark Park Gang. At the time, youth gangs based in city parks were a preoccupation of the city police. Using the alias Ken Bell, Constable Ken Doern had infiltrated the Clark Park Gang and warned his bosses three weeks before the Stones concert to expect trouble, including weapons.

While undercover, Doern was part of a contingent of parents and youth from the Clark Park area that brought grievances of police harassment and increased surveillance of youth to Alderman Harry Rankin. “Police may think they are trying to get at the hard core but have succeeded in antagonizing a great number of kids,” Rankin said. A police spokesman denied they were doing anything differently around Clark Park than anywhere else, but acknowledged that “the East End wants us out and the people in Dunbar want more of us.”

Cop injured at the Rolling Stones Riot. Vancouver Sun, 5 June 1972

Some people suspected that off-duty police officers were moonlighting as vigilantes in order to retaliate for the Rolling Stones Riot. An activist group called the Volunteers was circulating a leaflet describing incidents of harassment and assaults around Clark Park that they claimed were probably committed by members of the police force.

Another target was a house at 1955 Templeton, the headquarters of a revolutionary Marxist group called the Youngbloods, who were suspected of being involved in orchestrating the Rolling Stones Riot. On numerous occasions rocks were thrown at the house. One of the Youngbloods’ slogans was “Today’s Pig is Tomorrow’s Bacon.”

Province, 22 July 1972

A Province newspaper article entitled “Gangs, Glue, and Mao” includes excerpts from an article on the Youngbloods that appeared in the alternative newspaper The Grape in April. It describes a Joe Cocker concert at the Coliseum where the Youngbloods “were on hand to gauge the possibilities of gate-crashing” and to propagandize the crowd that was mulling about outside because they were unable to get tickets. To the Province writer, it sounded like the recipe that was used at the Stones concert.

They mingle with knots of people outside the red doors, showing them the paper, discussing specific articles, glancing behind doors to determine police strength. The Youngbloods have had some success at helping those without tickets to push their way through a weakly-guarded door, notably at the rock-and-roll revival last fall. It’s just the sort of lesson they wish to teach – that if enough people can pool aggressive energies, small victories can be won. But actions like these tread a fine line – balanced by PNE security on one-hand, mood of the people on the other.

According to the Province, activist groups like the Youngbloods were sometimes seen as radical social workers: “They have tried to switch the traditionally tough neighbourhood groups away from the mind-killing effects of glue-sniffing and have tried to lead youths out of the glue cycle with the more benign marijuana or a revolutionary tract.”

Glue-sniffing was thought to be helping fuel the juvenile delinquency problem in 1972. The Vancouver Health Department issued a report early in the year outlining the anti-social behaviour caused by sniffing glue, including property damage, theft, larceny, shoplifting, rape, homicide, erratic driving, and a “general dissolution of inhibitions.”

Cover of the The Grape, 21-27 June 1972, with a cartoon showing police retaliating for the Rolling Stones Riot.

According to Mason Dixon, writing in The Grape, the Youngbloods

regard the youthful ‘lumpen proletariat’ as a strategic key to revolution…Lumpen is a Marxist term taken from German, meaning ‘rags’ as it refers to that impoverished group which is completely outside the economic system of production. It is neither workers nor capitalists, but typically welfare recipients or other marginally or sporadically employed.

By the time the Province article was published in July 1972, the Youngbloods had already disbanded. As for the Clark Park Gang, the police took care of them with a special baseball bat-wielding unit called the “Heavy Squad.”

From its violent beginnings in Vancouver, the Exile on Main Street tour went on to become the most legendary tour in the annals of rock ‘n roll. Violence erupted in several other cities, including a bomb that destroyed a van full of the band’s gear in Montreal. Meanwhile back in Vancouver, City Council voted at an in-camera meeting to deny a permit allowing Led Zeppelin to play here out of fear of more violence.

Freemealin’

On the morning of Saturday, January 13th, 1923, ten men entered Leonard’s Café on Hastings Street near Granville. They took their seats, ordered breakfast, and asked the waitress to put it all on one bill. There was nothing unusual about these guys. They were fairly well dressed and groomed, and café staff assumed they worked on the waterfront. When asked, one of them said they worked “out back here,” jerking his head towards Burrard Inlet. A police constable who happened to be standing outside the window while the men ate also assumed they were probably just another group of longshoremen.

Leonard's Cafe at 716 West Hastings in the 1920s. Unemployed men, deceptively dressed like regular people, dined here for free in 1923, for nourishment and to protest their plight. City of Vancouver Archives #1399-390

“They made no disturbance whatever,” the owner explained to a reporter from The World. They “talked good-naturedly among themselves and with the girls … they certainly did not look unemployed to me.” After their meal, the men filed out the door while one took the bill up to the cashier. “Give that to Mayor Tisdall, with our compliments,” he said, then left with his friends.

By the time Inspectors Jackson and McIntosh arrived, the men were long gone. When asked who was going to pay the $4.45 bill, the police told the owner to keep it as a souvenir. Later that afternoon, Leonard’s unwittingly fed several more unemployed men free of charge.

This wasn’t a one-off dine-and-dash. The evening before, seventeen men ate “four bit” dinners at Allen’s Café on East Hastings without paying. Fifteen others dined for free at the Oaks Café on Abbott, and another group did the same at the Good Eats Café on Pender. Groups of men tried to get rooms at Hotel Canada and the St. Regis, but left when the police were called. Earlier in the day, the unemployed protesters marched to police headquarters and demanded to be taken into custody and given food and shelter.

A representative from the Worker’s Protective Association told the press that the protesters were a splinter group that broke away at a meeting the day before because they felt the the organization wasn’t addressing the needs of the unemployed. The Canadian National Union of Ex-Servicemen (CNUX) similarly reported that these were not their members, although a number of unemployed men were sheltered at the CNUX hall.

By 1923, the postwar recession was winding down. A major waterfront strike at the end of the year marked the end of one of the most volatile periods of labour unrest in Canadian history that included the famed 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.

Allen's Cafe at 27 West Hastings (the white building on the right) was another cafe targeted by the unemployed in 1923. Vancouver Public Library #20986

As with the Winnipeg General Strike and other strikes, governments in the postwar period treated protests of the unemployed as threats to the social order, but none of the three levels of government was willing to take full responsibility for the unemployed. Vancouver complained about being burdened with more than its share of the unemployed. For the jobless, the city’s moderate climate meant it was the one place in Canada where you had a chance to starve to death before freezing to death. The situation was always made worse when seasonal workers from the logging and mining camps around the province flooded into the city for the winter. Many of them ran out of money before it was time to go back to work in the spring. Consequently, Vancouver became known as ”the Mecca of the unemployed.”

With an estimated 5600 people out of work, the City of Vancouver cut single men off relief in the spring of 1921 except those who were physically unable to work. Then it stopped issuing rooming house tickets for 180 ex-servicemen engaged on work projects. Six hundred men marched on City Hall in protest. The government prepared for an all-out revolt, expecting the worst on May Day, which was fast-approaching. Lt-Col Richard Bell-Irving organized a volunteer force prepared to assist the authorities. A local defence committee was formed, consisting of senior officers of the RCMP, the army, navy, and air force. Resources at the committee’s disposal “in case of an attempted revolt in British Columbia” included:

100 naval personnel with six machine-guns, 200 permanent force with 10 machine-guns in Victoria, and 162 RCMP with four machine-guns. Also available were 700 reinforcements from the Prairies and about another 400 from Winnipeg, although it was noted that the latter might well be needed there. In addition, the DCC [Defence Committee of Canada] recommended that the Canadian Naval Squadron be retained on the west coast, that all government arms be called in or protected, that the Air Force be prepared to supply aircraft, and finally that all militia units be asked what units would be available.

Stonemason Jimmy Cunningham is normally credited with building most of the Stanley Park seawall, but he had help from hundreds of relief workers in the 1920s. Photo by Fred J. Spalding, VPL #31639

The hoopla proved to be unfounded, and May Day that year was an orderly affair. A few thousand did march through the city, but in an orderly fashion and with the required permit, although “some kept time by whistling the ‘Red Flag.’” By the fall, the RCMP reported that “‘revolutionaries’ had given up trying to import weapons and ammunition,” but the Mounties nevertheless kept their guard up. The local RCMP boss wrote to the Commissioner in Ottawa that

The situation, as far as we are concerned, would be to repress any demonstration. In short notice a company of the Princess Pat’s machine gun section and the available flying force could be mobilized … In the meantime, I am having our own men and horses constantly practiced and kept in shape.

A few months later he reported that “the men are being quietly trained for any disturbance that may arise.” Having formed in 1920 out of the remnants of the Dominion Police and the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, the RCMP was still just carving out its niche in the early ‘20s. The perceived threat of labour agitation was key to justifying the force’s continued existence. Specifically, the RCMP was shaping itself as the premier intelligence body in the country, and it flourished in this role until it was stripped away after the Vancouver Sun began reporting on its methods in the 1970s.

The unemployed didn’t fare as well as the RCMP in the early 1920s, and a variety of schemes to deal with the problem were proposed and attempted. The head of the military in BC suggested rounding up a few dozen agitators and locking them up for the winter when the problem was at its worst. Someone else suggested buying a farm where the unemployed could be put to work growing their own food. One idea the City did act on was to hire people to travel to towns and cities throughout the west posting stickers declaring that there was no work in Vancouver.

A camp was set up at Hastings Park where the unemployed were put to work building a golf course and cutting fire wood in return for food and shelter. By the end of December 1921, the camp had 621 inmates, who were subjected to military discipline. Officials complained that agitators from CNUX and the Council of Workers were trying to disrupt the operation of the camp. The men in turn complained about things such as the distance of the camp from the employment offices downtown, which meant they either arrived too late to get work that was posted, or missed out on a meal back at the camp.

Aerial view of Ballantyne Pier in the 1940s. Major public works projects like the construction of Ballantyne Pier dramatically reduced the numbers of unemployed. The new pier opened in 1923 and was one of the most technologically advanced on the coast. Photo: City of Vancouver Archives #Air P29.3

Despite a ban on mass meetings at the camp, hundreds of inmates staged a protest march. As usual, authorities prepared for the worst, but the march was orderly, did not disrupt traffic, and displayed the Union Jack, as required by a city by-law. The protest helped get at least one concession for the unemployed: an end to the policy of not re-admitting men who had left the camp.

While relief recipients worked on small projects like breaking rocks or building the seawall in Stanley Park and other park infrastructure, it was ultimately major public works projects such as the construction of Ballantyne Pier, the University of British Columbia, and the Hastings-Barnet Highway that resulted in a “sensational drop” in the numbers of unemployed.

As for the “freemealers,” Chief Constable Anderson and Mayor Tisdall regarded them as loafers “who had been around here for years past and had created trouble before.” They were “men who on account of sympathetic treatment in the past were hoping to loaf here through the winter at the city’s expense.” To encourage them to move on, the chief promised that any laws broken by the unemployed would be fully enforced and anyone caught begging would be arrested. Meanwhile, City Council was looking at starting up a new “civic rock-pile” to be broken by the unemployed men who had marched to the police station demanding to be housed in the city jail.

(Much of the information in this post was taken from Patricia Roy, “Vancouver: Mecca of the Unemployed, 1907-1929,” in Alan F. J. Artibise, ed., Town and City: Aspects of Western Canadian Urban Development (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1981):393-413.

Local Origins of the Drug War

34 Market Alley. This alley was once a commercial strip named after the market that operated on the ground floor of the original City Hall, just south of the Carnegie Library, and where the Asiatic Exclusion League had their rally before rampaging through Chinatown and Japantown in September 1907. The owner of an opium factory at 34 Market Alley received $600 compensation from the federal government for lost business in the days following the riot, which inspired Mackenzie King to draft Canada's first drug prohibition legislation.

Situated in one of the grubbier Downtown Eastside alleyways, 34 Market Alley is a popular stop on local historical walking tours, and for good reason. An opium factory that operated here in 1907 inspired Canada’s first drug laws.

After the September 1907 rampage of the Asiatic Exclusion League through Chinatown and Japantown, the federal government appointed Deputy Minister of Labour and future Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to head a commission to investigate losses sustained during the rioting. Two of the largest claims of $600 each came from opium manufacturers. One was submitted by King Fung Co. at 517 Carrall Street, now the parking lot for Jack Chow Insurance. The other claim was for 37 Dupont Street (now East Pender), where Lee Yuen operated an opium factory, probably in the building on the rear of the lot designated 34 Market Alley.

Because Canada was trying to cultivate good diplomatic relations with Japan, King dealt with Japanese claims first, in October, the month following the riots. He rented Pender Hall at the corner of Howe and Pender for $5 a day and placed a notice in the News-Advertiser and World newspapers (but not the Province because it supported the Conservative Party and he was a Liberal) announcing that he would be taking submissions for damage claims.

Windows broken at 201 Powell Street in Japantown during the 1907 Asiatic Exclusion League Riots. Although there was significantly more damage done in Chinatown, Japanese claims for government compensation came much quicker because Canada was trying to build diplomatic relations with Japan. Japan's victory over a European power - Russia - in 1905, led other European states and Canada to treat it as a serious player on the international stage, unlike China or the rest of Asia. Photo: Library and Archives Canada #C023555

Besides claims for damages, King heard numerous opinions during his time in Vancouver. Chief Constable Chamberlin explained that the Japanese “had endeavoured to exaggerate the disturbance … they had a complete organization, and were prepared to shoot down whites if attacked; that he had to give orders through the police to have the Japanese pickets dispersed. They were standing at the corners with buglers, etc.” But though Chief Chamberlin apparently had sufficient men to disperse the Japanese, he told King that he was too short on manpower to handle the white rioters: “He thought the police force of the city inadequate for its size, and said that for a time, on the night of the 7th [September 1907] was unable to handle the situation, but subsequently got matters in hand,” King wrote in his diary, and observed that Chamberlin “seemed to share the anti-Japanese feeling.” Nevertheless, the Vancouver police did perform better in 1907 than during anti-Chinese riots in 1887, when they “strangely and persistently refrained from enforcing the law” and the provincial government had to send over special constables from Victoria to police Vancouver.

King wrapped up the Japanese portion of his Commission and approved a little more than $9,000 in compensation. It hadn’t yet been decided to give the same treatment to the Chinese, so King left the city. “Personally,” he wrote in his diary, “I would be much better satisfied with having only the Japanese claims to deal with.” But putting his own feelings (or laziness) aside, King believed that unless all claims were dealt with, “at some future time the matter will do harm to the Dominion.”

The Acland-Hood Hall, popularly called Pender Hall, at 804 Pender Street was where Mackenzie King conducted his investigation into compensation claims stemming from the 1907 anti-Asian riot. Less than two weeks earlier, Rudyard Kipling addressed the Canadian Club here. In 1910, Emily Carr exhibited her paintings at the hall, and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra played its first gigs here in 1915. From the 1920s until 1969, Pender Hall was owned by the Marine Workers and Boiler Makers Union. A mural painted in the 1940s by Fraser Wilson once graced the building, but now hangs in the Maritime Labour Centre. Photo by L. Frank, 1947, City of Vancouver Archives Bu N209

Mackenzie King finally returned to Vancouver in late May the following year to deal with Chinese claims and went through the same process. Compensation paid out to Chinese claimants was around $27,000. King rejected compensation claims for firearms, ammunition, and fire protection equipment that were purchased in case there were more attacks because he believed they were unnecessary safeguards.

Because much of the groundwork had already been done in the first inquiry, King had some extra time to delve a little deeper into the opium issue when it arose.

With Anti-Opium Leaguers as his tour guides, King visited the Carrall Street and Market Alley factories and found they were doing a booming business. One had been operating for ten years, employed ten people, and grossed $180,000 in 1907 alone, with a net profit of $20,000. The other operator had been at it for 21 years, employed 19 people, and grossed between $170,000 and $180,000 in 1907, netting a cool $15,000 for the year.

King learned that there was another opium factory in New Westminster and three or four more in Victoria. But the real shocker was that taxpayer money — in the form of compensation for lost business — would be going towards the production of opium, which was being “sold to white people as well as to Chinese and other Orientals” across the country.

William Lyon Mackenzie King was Deputy Minister of Labour in 1907 when he was appointed Commissioner to investigate compensation claims stemming from the Asiatic Exclusion League riots in Vancouver.

Opium had been a non-issue on the Canadian political landscape until Mackenzie King used his report on compensation to raise the hue and cry:

Regarding it as an anomaly that the Government of Canada should, under any circumstances, be held bound to make good pecuniary losses in an industry so inimical to our national welfare, and having regard to the discretion given me by my commission, I feel it my duty respectfully to submit that the operations of the opium industry in Canada should receive the immediate attention of the parliament of the Dominion, and of the several legislatures, with a view to the enactment of such measures as will render impossible, save in so far as may be necessary for medicinal purposes, the continuance of such an industry within the confines of the Dominion, and as will assist in the eradication of an evil which is not only a source of human degradation but a destructive factor in national life. This industry, I believe, has taken root and has developed in an insidious manner without the knowledge of the people of this country. Its baneful influences are too well known to require comment. The present would seem an opportune time for the government of Canada and the governments of the provinces to co-operate with the governments of Great Britain and China in a united effort to free the people from an evil so injurious to their progress and well-being. Any legislation which may be directed to this end, will have the hearty endorsement of a large proportion of the Chinese residents of this country, who, as members of an Anti-Opium League, are doing all in their power to enlighten their fellow citizens on the terrible consequences of the opium habit, and to suppress, as effectually as possible, the traffic which, for so many years, has been carried on with impunity.

King followed up that report with another specifically calling for anti-opium laws, in which he elaborated on the concern that opium use was not limited to Chinese users, a fact he felt would “appal the ordinary citizen.”

“The Chinese with whom I conversed on the subject,” King wrote,

assured me that almost as much opium was sold to white people as to Chinese, and that the habit of opium smoking was making headway, not only among white men and boys, but also among women and girls. I saw evidences of the truth of these statements in my round of visits through some of the opium dens of Vancouver.

The opium factory in Market Alley may have awakened Mackenzie King to the extent of the opium industry in Canada, but the real impetus for the war on drugs had more to do with international trade and politics than moral indignation or local concerns. China’s efforts to curb the opium trade began as early as 1729, but Britain, in its ambition to force China to open up to international trade, quashed those efforts by way of the Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century. The United States became interested in the suppression of opium later in the century, in part because it inherited its own opium problem when it took over the Philippines in the Spanish-American War.

A police constable in Market Alley, 1925. Photo: City of Vancouver Archives #SGN 386

More significantly, the US was eager to tap into Chinese markets, partly for economic gain and partly because it would allow them to compete head-to-head with their imperial rival, Britain, in the Chinese marketplace. The Americans had been shut-out of trade relations with China in retaliation for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the brutal treatment Chinese émigrés were subjected to in the United States. President Roosevelt was advised that “the best way of re-establishing trade relations would be to show the Chinese government that America was sympathetic to the addiction problem and wanted to help resolve it.” The result was a series of international anti-opium conferences beginning in 1909 in Shanghai.

Whatever Mackenzie King’s personal feelings about drug addiction or white girls being corrupted by Chinese traffickers, he was above all a savvy politician who saw in his investigation into the Vancouver riots an opportunity to ingratiate himself and Canada with the nascent international war on drugs. King’s efforts resulted in the first significant drug prohibition laws in Canadian history, which were enacted in time for the 1909 Shanghai conference. This and subsequent conferences in turn fuelled further expansions of Canada’s drug laws.

Market Alley [pdf] took its name from the market that operated on the ground floor of the original City Hall, just south of the Carnegie Library. The sign marking 34 Market Alley is the only visible reminder of the bustling commercial strip that existed here a century ago. That said, the drug trade that Mackenzie King characterized as “an evil which is not only a source of human degradation but a destructive factor in national life” is flourishing as never before in this and nearby alleys and streets, despite the unprecedented amounts of money and resources the government now spends trying to suppress it.

Public Enemy No. 1

A rare, previously unpublished early photo of Joe Celona in the 1920s or '30s, courtesy Theresa Teppema.

Giuseppe Fiorenza, better known as Joe Celona, came to Canada from Italy via New York City in 1913, and landed in Vancouver six years later. From 1919 to 1921, he lived and ran a disorderly house at 272 Union, and operated a store on the ground floor. This was where he was first “pinched” by the police in 1923. He sold this building in 1928, but by then owned several other East End properties that operated as bawdy houses, including 204 and 244 East Hastings and 210 Keefer Street. Next door at 600 Main Street, Celona ran his legitimate business, a cigar store. By the 1930s, he was living at 4973 Angus Drive in upscale Shaughnessy.

One of Celona’s regular customers at the cigar store was Mayor LD Taylor. The extent of their relationship may never be known for sure, but allegations of corruption dogged Taylor for much of his time in office. Mayor Taylor argued that police energy and resources should be focused on serious crimes, not the vice crime that pre-occupied moral reformers. He didn’t believe it was realistic or desirable to try and run a “Sunday School town,” especially in a seaport like Vancouver. To Taylor’s critics, he was soft on crime and allowed commercialized vice to flourish in Vancouver, which probably meant he was being paid off.

The F. Morgan Building at 244 East Hastings was one of Joe Celona's disorderly houses in the 1920s. Others were on Union near Hogan's Alley, and at Keefer and Main, where the HSBC bank is today.

The issue of corruption was aired in 1928 in an exhaustive police inquiry conducted by RS Lennie. Countless criminals, police, and politicians testified at the inquiry, but Lennie found nothing that conclusively proved Taylor’s City Hall or the police department had been corrupted by the likes of Joe Celona, though Taylor was a regular customer at Celona’s cigar store. What the inquiry did accomplish was to help ensure LD Taylor wouldn’t be re-elected in the next civic election; undermine public confidence in the police; and firmly plant the anti-vice and anti-Celona bug in the mind of the inquiry’s lead attorney, Gerry McGeer.

LD Taylor was out of office for one term, but managed to get re-elected as the city’s mayor the following year. Taylor won more mayoral elections than anyone before or since, in part because the right-of-centre vote was typically split at election time. So in 1934, Vancouver’s business elite came together and formulated a plan to get LD Taylor out of office. The crux of their scheme was to unite the anti-Taylor vote behind a single candidate and they recruited Gerry McGeer as their man. Picking up where he left off in the Lennie inquiry, McGeer ran an aggressive “war on crime” campaign and targeted Joe Celona specifically. “We’re going to Barcelona,” was one of his favourite campaign quips. McGeer rolled into City Hall with a huge landslide.

The Maple Hotel (now the Washington) was a disorderly house operated by Joe Celona in the 1930s.

Chief Constable John Cameron was another target in the war on crime. Cameron was charged with conspiring with Celona “to effect a public mischief by perverting the course of justice.” Colonel W. W. Foster had replaced Cameron as chief constable and led the investigation, which included the Vancouver Police Department’s first use of a wiretap. From their listening post set up in the Carter-Cotton Building, detectives monitored Joe Celona’s telephone and heard conversations between Celona and police officers. Colonel Foster claimed they were advising Celona on how he could avoid conviction, but the sound quality of the recording was so bad that it was excluded as evidence.

The only other evidence against John Cameron was that he partied with Joe Celona on several occasions, at Cameron’s ranch, at Celona’s house, and on the police boat on a cruise in Howe Sound. The police detectives who testified all agreed that it was necessary to occasionally mix with criminals to gather information, and in lieu of any evidence of an agreement or monetary gain, the case of a conspiracy between Celona and the chief fell apart, and Cameron was acquitted.

Celona wasn’t so lucky. He was charged with procuring girls for prostitution and running a disorderly house at the Maple Hotel on Hastings Street. What made the case especially repugnant to prosecutor Dugald Donaghy was that it was Chinese men frequenting the Maple. “There are no words in the English language to describe the abhorrence of [white girls] being procured exclusively for the yellow men from China,” Donaghy told the court. “That these girls should be submitted to crawling yellow beasts of the type frequenting such dives.”

The top floor of 373 East Hastings was Joe Celona's bootlegging joint in the 1950s.

Celona was sentenced to 22 years in prison, but an appeal reduced it to 11 years. With good behaviour, he was paroled and back on the streets in five, but his freedom didn’t last long. A public outcry and a campaign led by Mayor Lyle Telford ended with Celona being re-arrested and returned to the BC Penitentiary in New Westminster to serve the remainder of his sentence. Some people suspected Celona’s political connections got him out early, even though there was nothing unusual about his case under the ticket-of-leave system in place at the time. One factor that helped get Celona back in prison – besides his nefarious reputation – was that he was Italian and it was 1940. Some felt he should have been deported to fascist Italy.

When Celona got out the second time in 1943, he turned his attention to bootlegging and set up shop on the second floor of 373 East Hastings. He had run-ins with the law and paid a couple hefty fines, but managed to stay out of prison.

After this was taken, Joe Celona (left) attacked the photographer and called him a dirty rat. His lawyer, Angelo Branca (right), tried to break the camera. Vancouver Sun, 21 January 1956.

Celona found himself back in the public spotlight during the “Mulligan Affair.” Chief Constable Walter Mulligan had established a police pay-off system for local organized gangsters. The story was broke in 1955 by a Toronto-based tabloid called Flash, and RH Tupper headed up the inquiry. Celona was subpoenaed after police witnesses testified that he seemed to have intimate knowledge of policing affairs, such as who was being transferred and when. Detective Grant said he first learned that he would be moved from the Dry Squad to Morality in a conversation with Celona on the corner of Hastings and Gore. Celona denied this, and said he had never been shaken down by the police or paid them off.

The 1955 inquiry was the biggest Canadian news story of that year, and the press were all over it. Despite being a household name in Vancouver, Celona had so far avoided having his picture in the paper, and he wanted to keep it that way. When a photographer from the Sun snapped his photo, he covered his face with his hat. As soon as it was taken, Celona’s lawyer, Angelo Branca, tried to break the camera and Celona hit the photographer in the head. Celona became less camera shy after that incident.

After the incident with the Vancouver Sun photographer, Joe Celona became less camera-shy. These were all taken during the 1955 Tupper Inquiry into police corruption.

Celona eventually retired from his life of crime, saying “there’s no dough left in bootlegging; all the bawdy houses are closed down and now they stop a man from taking a few honest bets.” His death at St. Paul’s Hospital on 4 March 1958 marked the end of an era.