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Gangster Cool with Roaring ’20s Tours

Forbidden Vancouver

Vancouver, British Columbia

Canada experienced a Prohibition movement around the same time that the United States did. And although some of the dates and details are different, most of the nation remained dry throughout the 1920s.

In British Columbia, a company called Forbidden Vancouver operates a tour called Prohibition City that dishes on the local drinking scene in the 1910s and 1920s.

“It’s a 90-minute walking tour of the city,” said owner Will Woods. “The concept is that everyone in the group is an undercover newspaper reporter out to discover the dirty history of Vancouver’s past.”

Participants learn about L.D. Taylor, the Vancouver mayor of the time who had significant organized crime connections. They also visit buildings constructed around the beginning of the century, tour the waterfront where rum-running operations took place in warehouses and stop at the oldest bar in the city, opened in 1887 at the Carlton Hotel.

Along the way, they learn about the various kinds of speakeasies that operated in Vancouver.

“There were two kinds of illegal drinking establishments,” Woods said. “The working man would go to a place called a ‘blind pig’ in a warehouse or in someone’s home.

“But if you had money, you would go to a private bottle club. These were like supper clubs; they had live shows and cabarets, and people went wearing suits and ball gowns.

“It’s a forgotten narrative to the city that has been buried over time.”

www.forbiddenvancouver.ca

Brian Jewell

Brian Jewell is the executive editor of The Group Travel Leader. In more than a decade of travel journalism he has visited 48 states and 25 foreign countries.