By Ashley Harper Written for Look Back at the Past, an initiative by the Township of North Dundas In the pioneering days of Dundas County, liquor was cheap and widely available. It served as a persuasive tool in early elections, and as an easy incentive when one needed help to raise a building. But when the temperance movement gained popularity across Canada in the mid-1800s, some local residents began to reconsider their stance on the consumption of intoxicating beverages. By the early 1850s, temperance organizations were being formed in Dundas, with chapters of the Sons of Temperance and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union popping up across the county in the following decades. Temperance hotels opened in many areas.
Provincial and federal referendums in the 1890s and early 1900s showed that a majority of locals favoured banning the importation, manufacturing and selling of alcohol. It appears that local option had been repealed in most areas of the county by the turn of the 20th century, but that was soon to change. Over the next decade and a half, almost every municipality voted on the issue, with Mountain Township adopting it in 1906, Winchester Village in 1907, Iroquois in 1909 and Matilda Township in 1914.
By 1926, public support for prohibition in the province was wavering. With an election scheduled for that December, Premier Howard Ferguson (Conservative MPP for Grenville) made his position clear: if he was re-elected, prohibition would come to an end.
Still, some areas of Dundas remained ‘dry’ for almost a half-century, preventing stores, hotels, and restaurants from selling alcohol. Iroquois went ‘wet’ in 1959, followed by Williamsburg Township in 1970 and the village of Winchester in 1973. Winchester Township held out until 1976.
Morrisburg was a unique exception, which saw an LCBO outlet and a brewery warehouse in operation by 1936. Iroquois and Chesterville opened LCBO stores in the early 1960s, and Winchester got one in 1977 after much resistance and delay. All four of these stores continue to operate today.
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