Huron County Museum Exhibition

Explore Huron County's long history with prohibition and temperance in this temporary exhibit Huron County: The Dry Years.

For 75 plus years, the citizens of Huron County dealt with the ideas of temperance, intemperance and prohibition and what that would mean to them. Alcohol as an evil of society or alcohol as a business with economic impact.  Alcohol as private right or alcohol as community fault.   These debates raged heavily as various forms of prohibition were passed in Huron County and its municipalities through the years.

Prohibition was, and is still, an impressive part of Huron County’s history beginning even before 1884 when the whole of the county voted to introduce an a Act to prohibit the sale of alcohol.  On May 1, 1885 the County of Huron went dry.

By the mid-1950s, Huron and Perth Counties were the only counties left in Canada following the Canada Temperance Act.   A vote was called for Monday, November 30, 1959 for the whole of the County.  Vote for revocation was 12,080 in favour and 7,354 against.   

That does not mean that the entire county went wet immediately.  While retail stores were established in many local communities, no beverage rooms or taverns could be established in any municipality, regardless of local statues, without a local vote.  These votes would include questions of support for men’s beverage room, ladies beverage room, dining room and lounge licenses.  

Some local municipalities still held their dry status until the mid-1970s.   Better not wetter was a common refrain.

Discover stories of local liquor legislations and the tactics some citizens used to defend and detract from the laws.