Here’s a crazy idea that never took hold in Saskatchewan hotels on the corners of Railway and Main. When the provincial government legalized the sale of beer by the glass in 1935, the question arose as to whether women should be allowed in beer parlours. In the end, after much debate in the legislature, Saskatchewan women were granted the right to drink beer – in separate women-only parlours.
Despite stereotypes about women as temperance advocates in the early 1900s, Saskatchewan women from many walks of life drank wine, beer and hard liquor at weddings and other gatherings. Many married couples spent their leisure time together at home and some shared a drink or two. In addition, in Saskatchewan’s cities and towns, the single women who worked as telephone operators and salesclerks, hotel chambermaids and restaurant workers, might want to enjoy a drink in their local hotel beer parlour after a day’s work.
The thought of women in beer parlours was frowned upon by many, however. They considered beer parlours to be morally compromised places frequented by morally suspect patrons. Women might drink beer at the expense of their children. Much worse, women might be lured into illicit sexual activity if they were allowed to drink beer in parlours.
The issue further complicated by the fact that a lot of men, including hotel operators, workers and their customers, simply did not want women in what was considered male social space. Hotelmen feared the presence of women might curtail the consumption of beer. Male camaraderie might be inhibited.
On Jan. 22, 1935, the legislature approved separate, women-only beer parlours for all communities in the province. In cities, there had to be separate entrances for, and no means of communication between, the men’s and women’s parlours. In smaller centres, there could be a single entrance, but separate parlours.
Perhaps the most interesting reaction to Saskatchewan’s new women-only beer parlours came in an editorial by the Regina Leader-Post on March 21, 1935:
The New York Times … hears about our new Saskatchewan beer law and doesn’t know what to make of us all. … No man except a beer waiter may be lawfully in a women’s beer parlor in the new Saskatchewan beer dispensation. And no woman may be lawfully in a man’s beer parlor. … separate compartments (beer-tight partitions, say), and there may not even be communicating doors… They fought over these regulations for a whole week in the Saskatchewan House, before the beer separatists won. One member said, suppose a man and his wife dropped into a beer parlor together, wanting to have a thoughtful and connubial beer together, and then found they must go their separate ways, sundered by this harsh, estranging partition, drinking their lonely and uninspiring beer-by-the-glass, he on his side of the partition, she on hers, so that those whom God had joined together had been put asunder by the beer laws of Saskatchewan – how about it, what then? And the Saskatchewan House said, all right, what about it: it would just be too bad for them.
All of this consternation was irrelevant, however. In March 1935, Regina hotelmen announced that they would not provide separate beer parlors for women. It appears that the rest of the hotels in the province followed suit. Women would have to wait until 1960 to enter Saskatchewan’s beer parlours – or beverage rooms as they became known – through the “Ladies and Escorts” door.
