Tag: 1924 Page 2 of 4
By Gregory Clark, October 18, 1924.
Struggle in the East Leaves Elizabeth Street Cold – On Front Page of Our Newspapers, But On Inside Page of Toronto’s Chinese Paper
There is war in China.
But there is peace in Chinatown.
Elizabeth street, the three lower blocks of which are Toronto’s Chinatown, goes without flags, processions or special editions.
The Shing Wah, Toronto’s Chinese dally, comes out each afternoon with an editorial on the front page, and the war despatches – by special cable from Shanghai to Toronto, via San Francisco – from Chinese into English, across the Pacific, across the continent, and back into Chinese again – the war despatches on the inside of the paper!
The groups leaning up against the front windows of the stores are without animation.
When there was war in Serbia, the Serbian colony down by the Don was so excited the packing houses couldn’t get their men out to work; the cafes rattled and ring with martial songs and dances. When Italy was at war, Centre street was flame of red, white and green, and men uncorked wild flights of oratory with dark red bottles, and stood on doorsteps to deliver themselves of speeches. If there were a British war, the British colony in Shanghai would be aroar – it did not disappear out to sea, westward, overnight.
But the Chinese are a philosophic race.
Sunday is the big day in Chinatown. Their laundries closed, the crews of Toronto’s washtubs put on their best clothes and foregather in Chinatown for a day of conversation and feasting.
There are four thousand Chinese in Toronto, according to the estimate of the circulation manager of the Shing Wah – who ought to know.
On Sunday, there were perhaps two thousand gathered in the restaurants, shops and community houses of Chinatown. In front of the general stores – every Chinese store is a general store carrying everything from dry goods to drugs, from footwear to dried meats – were groups doing nothing. In the back rooms of the store, larger groups, smoking the large bamboo pipes which are hospitably scattered around for general use, and with chop sticks, dipping crisp noodles out of the big pot that is simmering on every Chinese stove on Sunday for the guests of the day.
In every mothering, a quiet, sing-song conversation was passing, like a juggled ball, from one to another.
All’s Peace in Chinatown
But there was no war in it.
“Wah?” exclaimed our interpreter. “Wah! Wah? What wah?”
“Why, the big war in China. The war on the front page of the Toronto papers,” we replied.
“It is on inside of our paper,” replied the interpreter, slyly.
“Are they not excited about it?”
“Don’t even think about it,” answered the interpreter. “For thirteen years, wah every day in China. For thousand years, China has peace. Then comes reform along western lines. So we have wah. For thirteen years.”
“Let’s ask these men what they are talking about?” we suggested.
Fifteen Chinese were draped about the front of a shop which displayed two pair of straw shoes and six bottles of assorted devil fish for sale, and conversation was passing, in a low monolog, from left to right.
“They are talking about a garden,” said the guide.
“A garden?”
“Lem, here, the old man, is going to set up his three nephews in a truck garden out near Islington.”
“And is that what they are all talking about?”
“Yes. They are all remembering gardens they knew in China, and they are telling Lem and his nephews the things they ought to grow.”
“Ask them what they think of the war.”
There was a brief explosion of Chinese words. Two or three of the younger men made laughing replies. Then the old man Lem broke out into a torrent of language which lasted fully a minute.
“Lem says war is foolish. Only vagrants join armies. Only politicians lead armies. Good men buy and sell. Good men buy land and grow vegetables and duck eggs. Like Islington.”
“Ask them if they know how the armies stand at present.”
Another volley of words. Again the old man answered.
“The silly war is a thousand miles from my home. It is ten thousand miles from me. Islington is only six miles.”
As the guide translated, the old man interjected another burst of words.
“And he says,” added the guide, that we should go away, to let them talk about gardens.
More Interested in Goose Eggs
We continued up Elizabeth Street. In a shop, a large gathering was met. The conversation was so animated, there must be some lively subject involved.
But it wasn’t war.
“A man,” said the guide, “has borrowed a hundred dollars from his friend and not paid it back yet.”
“But what’s the excitement?”
“The friends of the friend have cornered the borrower, and are telling him he is no good.”
We looked in. Sitting in a chair was a frozen-faced gentleman staring coldly at space. Around him stood fifteen men, all talking at once.
“Why doesn’t he get up and go? Why doesn’t he call for help?”
“Because he knows he is no good,” replied the guide.
The Chinese are a philosophic race.
We met George Lee, one of the leaders of the Chinese colony.
“War,” said he, makes no difference to the Chinese. It is only the governors that are not lag. The people go ahead with their business. Politics is for the governors. Business is for the people. If there is war in my street, it makes no difference, I will go ahead with business. If there is war in my house, I go ahead. Who can understand these governors? It is only taxes, anyway, they want. Money. I want money. I get it with business. They want money – they fight for it. It’s all the same. It makes no difference. It doesn’t interest me.”
Mr. Sing, editor of the Shing Wah, a graduate in arts and now going up for his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto, says:
“A few local Chinese are interested in the war, because of its political significance. But the vast majority, here and at home, are totally indifferent to the war. Since the coming of republic in 1911, there has been a succession of civil wars in China, between the governors of the twenty-two provinces. The people are totally indifferent to the whole matter.”
On the street we met a procession of three Chinese, one behind the other, each carrying a large tray on which there were a couple of dozen huge goose eggs.
“What’s this?”
A question or two was asked.
A big celebration. Chung Chung T’si is just home from China with a new way of cooking geese eggs in oil.”
Following the three egg-bearers came a laughing, eager crowd of Chinese.
“Wah?” asked our guide. “What wah?”
The Chinese are a philosophic race, and content themselves with matters that are close in and relevant.
Editor’s Notes: There were only a few references in this story that needed to be cleansed of racist language. The Chinese attitude in the article makes perfect sense, as China was in it’s Warlord Era and there was no end in sight.
The Shing Wah Daily News was at one time the largest Chinese newspaper in North America, and published in Toronto between 1922 and 1990.
By Gregory Clark, October 11, 1924.
A boy of three is spared the Great War, even though the house which is his kingdom be filled with martial photographs, volumes in sets relating to every last detail of the mighty conflict, and mantel shelves littered with shell cases, grenades and fragments of Teutonic pomp.
Like the telephone, radio set, electric light and other marvels of this age of which we elders are proud, the little boy accepts the relics of war as accomplished facts, with equanimity. They are of less real and dramatic importance than a small chair turned upside down, or the furnace chains leading down into remote and reverberating regions below, or the chesterfield which under certain intellectual conditions is a ship at sea.
One evening, however, we were left for a time alone in the house. Whenever this occurs, we stick close together, for with the strong protective females absent from the den, they who feed us and bed us down and stand guard over us day and night, a small boy is justified in feeling that the cave is practically defenseless, and his daddy in need of support and counsel.
On the wall stands a vain photograph, taken one fine day by monsieur le photographe in the narrow town of Houdain, of daddy in his trench helmet, trench coat, gas mask at the alert, sheathed pistol to the fore, and gloved hand grasping a great stick.
“Is that Daddy?” asked the boy.
“Aye, aye, sir,” said I.
“Did I sit on your hat agin?”
“No. That’s the sort of hat Daddy wore in those days. Daddy was a soldier.”
“Where is your horn?”
“Oh, Daddy wasn’t that sort of a soldier.”
“Then where is your drum?”
“I had no drum either.”
He knelt on my lap and studied me with pity.
“Only a few soldiers,” I said anxiously, “are privileged to play horns and drums. Most soldiers have to carry guns and big bags and walk forever and forever.”
He examined the photograph on the wall.
“Where is your gun?”
“Well, that little thing there in front, on my belt, is a gun, a little gun. Daddy didn’t have a big gun, like most soldiers.”
Again the boy examined me narrowly. What sort of tale was this? No drum, no horn and only a little gun!
“Are you a soldier?”
“I was; but not now. The army is all broken up.”
“What is the army?”
“The army was all the soldiers and horses and guns and wagons, walking along forever and ever, and standing in the rain and shooting and thunder and snow and walking and walking and standing still.”
“And broken up?”
“Yes. The army was all broken up.”
“The soldiers broken up?” he asked with horror.
“Oh, yes. That too.”
“Was Daddy broken up?”
“Well, no. Daddy got away safely.”
“Did Grandma put Daddy on the shelf?”
“I beg your pardon!” I demanded in astonishment.
“Did Grandma put Daddy up on the shelf so he wouldn’t get broken? With the white soldier and the rooster?”
Ah, I understood. His grandma had rescued, amongst other things, a lead soldier from a great massacre one day and had hidden it upon the plate rail of the dining room.
“No, siree, Grandma was nowhere near. Daddy had to look out for himself. There are no ladies at a war.”
“What is a war?”
“Well-er-war is what soldiers do – fighting and walking and standing still and shooting and thunder and snow and rain….”
“Did Daddy shoot?”
“Well, yes, sometimes.”
“Did you shoot the bell?” (Once, I showed off at Sunnyside for him.)
“No. We shot Germans.”
“What is a German?”
“Well, let me see; It’s a sort of – sort of a thing!”
“Has it horns on?”
“No.”
“Does it say booooo?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then, why did you shoot it?”
“Well, it was trying to shoot Daddy.”
“Mamma would get after it!”
“But Mother wasn’t there.”
“Did you call for Mama? Wouldn’t she come?”
“But-er…”
“And poor Daddy had only a little gun?”
“Yes, but …”
“And no horn”
“I had a …”
“And no dwum?”
“Daddy was a …”
He climbed hurriedly down to the floor.
“Come on!” he exclaimed with concern, “let we sit at the winnow and watch for Mama!”
Which we did. And the subject of the great war was dropped by mutual consent.
This illustration went with a story by Nina Moore Jamieson.
This illustration by Jim went with a story by Fred Griffin on the re-integration of criminals back into society with the help of the Salvation Army and the Ontario Parole Board.
They found Sullivan sitting happily, if somewhat exhausted, out in the middle of the street upon the inanimate bodies of four of the toughest gangsters of the district.
The police officials beheld in the most casual gang of street corner loafers the potentialities of the criminal gang.
Strong, Well-Disciplined Police Force Beyond Reach of Politics, Has Prevented Development of Crime Peculiar to American Cities – How Toronto’s Notorious Old Gangs Were Broken Up.
By Gregory Clark, February 23, 1924.
Ask any senior police official of Toronto what he considers the one greatest performance of the police in the history of the city and he will surely reply – the elimination of the gang in Toronto.
The biggest crime problem of the American city to this day is the gang. There is not a city on the continent of the size of Toronto that does not support one or more gangs of highly organized and specialized crooks, who, employing the gun and the automobile, terrorize their communities but are immune from complete obliteration by the police because of their organization which includes political and well-paid legal protection.
Toronto has no gangs.
The first reason is the foresight of the police officials of the past thirty years. They beheld, in the most casual gang of street corner loafers, the potentialities of the criminal gang.
The second reason is the ruthless and implacable methods used by the Toronto police in pursuing the smallest crime committed by a gang, playing a lone hand against the offenders, giving no quarter, using no stool pigeons, allowing no Immunity for information received, but bending every effort to break up, scatter and subdue every gang that broke the law in the smallest degree.
For Toronto had its gangs. Plenty of them. Bome of them rose to some celebrity as house breakers and robbers. At one period, about twenty years ago, no fewer than five strong gangs, each numbering from a dozen to a score of members, were doing their utmost to survive the relentless attacks of the police. The Stanley Park gang, the Gay Cats of York street, the Gas House gang, the Ward gang, the Park Rovers of the Don and the St. Lawrence Market gang are names that will be familiar to older citizens of Toronto.
“Those gangs” said Inspector of Detectives George Guthrie, “were not gangsters as we know gangsters to-day. They were gangs of roughs whose commonest crimes were such clumsy stupid offences as robbing drunks, waylaying people on dark streets and robbing them, only occasionally breaking in and robbing stores or houses. They rarely employed guns, for the police were death on guns. To have a gun was fatal. And they had not the automobile.
“But they were the forebears of the modern gang. The gangsters of other cities at that period were no different. We destroyed the gangs. We broke up their memberships with convictions. We scattered their boozing dens and haunts. We drove them with continual pressure on little charges, if we could not secure big ones, from the slum districts where they sought to foregather.
No Political Protection Here
“The American cities failed to break up their old gangs. The modern gangs are simply the sons of those tough gangs of yesterday. The tradition of the old tough gangsters has been refined by the automobile and by the general refinement of everything, into the modern gang with its cars, its political connections, its lawyers and its funds.”
Inspector of Detectives William Wallace adds this:
“One of the biggest factors in the elimination of the gang from Toronto has been the total absence of politics in control of the police force. There has never been, in my time, collusion between the police and the gangsters. The curse of the American system is that the aldermen and government officials control the police force. Gangs control votes. And there you have the impossible situation of the police being interfered with by petty politics.
“Toronto’s police always having been under the control of a board of police commissioners beyond the reach of politics, and politics, whether it desired it or not, could not preserve the gang – a voting power -in the face of the determined assaults of the police.”
Those who may have felt in the past that Col. George T. Denison wielded a somewhat autocratic power over the policing of Toronto can now credit him with a large share in the elimination of the crime factor that is setting the rest of the American continent by the ears.
“Those old gangs – the Stanley Park, the Market gang, the Park Rovers – operated in a very haphazard manner,” said Inspector Wallace. “They had their rendezvous in certain disorderly houses and dives, where they congregated daily and nightly. Whenever any member of the gang turned a trick such as rolling a drunk or holding up a pedestrian on a dark street, the gang boozed and celebrated until the proceeds were used up. There was no pride of craft in them. If times were bad, the gangsters would even stoop to begging money on the streets after dark – a form of terrorization, because their tough appearance was enough to intimidate anybody. Being drunkards and wastrels as a class, their efforts at housebreaking and serious crime were clumsy and lacking in intelligence. Their crimes were largely the cowardly, sneaking crimes of drunken bullies.
Yet these gangs gave strong resistance to the police, who offered them no respite. If the “cops” were not busy digging out some crime, they were raiding their dens, busting up gambling meetings, even dispersing gangs on street corners, which were the most inglorious and offensive tactics of all.
The methods used by the police in those days seem primitive today. There were no end of personal combats between policemen and gangsters. They had not the police equipment they have nowadays, telephones, autos, and rapid communication. When the “cop” set out for his beat in the heart of the ward or the Stanley Park district or Cabbagetown, he never knew what was in store for him. “Cops” had to have some mettle in those days. For in the dark streets and lanes of the Stanley Park region, the gang would be lying in wait for that “cop” who was particularly active in doing his duty, and they would pounce on him and he would have to fight for his good looks if not for his life. There were instances of policemen being beaten unconscious and left lying in lanes. As it was in the dark, the constable could not always identify his enemies, and they would prove alibis and all would go unpunished. But there are also instances of constables performing tremendous feats, beating the life half out of their assailants and securing identifications that resulted in the stiffest penalties the court would impose.
One of these stories is the tale of Constable Tom Sullivan, now a detective, going down into one of the streets below King near Stanley Park and, expecting trouble, met and defeated a whole gang after a battle royal, and when the ambulance for which he sent – not the patrol wagon – arrived on the scene, they found Sullivan sitting happily if somewhat exhausted out in the middle of the street upon the inanimate bodies of four of the toughest gangsters of the district.
Those fights between police and gangs were before the days of Hydro lighted streets. And there was no way of avoiding them. The ability to fight was one of the requirements of a good constable.
Behind Burns’ ice house, in a little crooked street that was only a lane off Water street, was a corner known throughout the district by the name of “Cop Killer’s Corner.” The policeman who ventured to investigate that corner of his beat at night did so at the risk of being beaten up. Any number of the bloodiest fights have occurred at that historic corner. No concession was made by the police in the matter of sending two policemen together into the tough districts. That would have been American methods. Instead, the constable went alone and took what came and gave what he could. The Cabbagetown gang, known as the “Cop Killer’s Corner” gang, were finally disposed of by the most unrelenting attention. Whenever a constable was assaulted he made every effort to mark his enemies with some tremendous whack. Then the district was immediately combed by other police and the injured men, hidden away, were dug out and arrested, to prove where they got the marks. Those were simple remedies, but it took men to stand up to them, and gangsters are not, as a rule, men.
It is a wonder murder was not done in those old gangster days, but there is not one instance of murder in the whole history of the period.
The Stanley park gang fell before a final clean-up campaign on houses, dives and personnel. The Market gang was so broken up by arrests that it never got together again. The Park Rovers in the Don district did their best to graduate into the modern gangster type, but their first efforts at serious crime were detected, and a number of them went to Kingston on long sentences of differing lengths that broke them up.
The Ward gang and the Gay Cats of York street persisted longest. These drunk-rollers and footpads, most of whom are dead now, though they would be only in their forties’ if they had lived less brutally, fled in the face of the cleanup regime of Deputy-Chief Robert Geddes when he was Inspector of the Ward district. One of the leaders of the Gay Cats is still living and hanging around his old haunts, but he is a broken and pathetic character of no danger to anybody, his pals dead and gone, a figure to be pointed out to new constables as a sample of an order that has changed.
When Deputy-Chief Geddes went into the Ward, a giant of a man as active on his feet as a cat, he had with him a squad of giants that struck terror into the hearts of the gangsters. Some pretty strenuous methods were used in the clean-up of the Ward, for even in its present harmless condition one can imagine what a rabbit warren of dives and holes in the wall it was for the gangster. They “vagged” them – which is the charge of vagrancy which can be laid against anybody of a suspicious character – they pinched them as inmates of disorderly houses, they took them in as drunks on every opportunity, they pressed every serious charge to the bitter end, they forced dive keepers to move away, they made the district so utterly unpleasant for the gangsters in every respect, big and small, that the last stronghold of the gangs, the Ward, was rid of its toughs.
Better Lighted Streets
The relics of those five great gangs, the Gay Cats, the Stanley Park, Gas House, Ward and Park Rovers, can be counted to-day on the ten fingers of a senior officer’s hand. They are men prematurely old, broken, harmless, occasionally picked up drunk, occasionally run in at their own request to be kept for the winter in jail.
They have not flourished and passed the tradition down to the young cake-eater, motoring, dancing, gunning tough of other American cities. There is no organization, no politics, no money funds for lawyers and bail. They were nipped in the bud.
Occasionally Toronto is visited by sections of American gangs, and more rarely still some little group of the tough element in the city tries to herd together in crime. But they have no underground organization to run to for hiding or advice or money. They play a lone hand and are soon bang up against the hard wall of the law.
In the leniency of the parole system, in the leniency of some judges and the willingness of the crown, on occasions, to abate a sentence, the police see a danger of losing the ground gained in twenty-five years of ruthless opposition to the gang idea. The law making one year the absolute minimum sentence for theft of a motor car is not being strictly observed by judges and the crown. Yet that law is the best deterrent upon gangsters there is – that if, In the very beginning of their mischief, to wit, the “borrowing” of a car, in which to do their job, they are facing if caught, a sure sentence of one year, without hope of less.
The parole system, admirable as it is from a humanitarian standpoint, is regarded by most of Toronto’s senior police officers with doubt and misgivings for this reason: the young gangsters discuss the merits of a job; they weigh the costs of being caught, and the costs of being caught are discounted by the knowledge that if they are caught there is always the parole system to be remembered – the parole system which, by good conduct, after the crime, can be relied upon to get them out of prison in a few months.
The lone criminal does not always weigh and measure the chances. The gangster does. The psychology of the gang, is to be very optimistic over the parole system.
Chief Constable Samuel Dickson, referring to the passing of the gangs in Toronto, concurs in what his Inspectors of detectives said, with this thought added:
“Street lighting, daylight saving and the transformation of countless corner lots of the city into playgrounds and recreation grounds has aided us in the elimination of the gangster more than is imagined. Where the gangs used to foregather there are ball grounds for the young fellows to play in to-day. Where there were long dark evenings in which to do nothing there are long, bright evenings in which to do much that is healthy and absorbing and clean.”
In conclusion, Inspector Wallace said:
“Toronto does not realize how free it is of crime. The police news which gets into the Toronto papers from day to day would not win two lines in any American dally in cities of the same size.
There are no gangs in Toronto.”
Editor’s Notes: This story was published during the period when the public was fascinated and concerned with the rise of organized crime in the United States, mainly due to Prohibition. The premise is also unlikely, perhaps written as reassurance for the public, as there were definitely gangs in Ontario dealing in illegal liquor as well.
George Taylor Denison was a Toronto police magistrate for 43 years, from 1877 to 1920. He was still alive when this article was written, having died in 1925 at the age of 85.
This artwork appeared with a story by C. R. Greenaway, was yet another tongue in cheek story about how people would get around Prohibition by getting doctor’s notes that they needed “medicine” (whiskey). At the time, a drug store could be opened by anyone, and did not have to be owned or operated by a pharmacist, so bootleggers would take advantage of this.
By Gregory Clark, December 13, 1924.
Through no fault of mine, my house is filled with strife.
To be sure, it is one-sided strife. We are all together on the side of Union. But the strife goes on, long and ardent, from the time the morning paper is snatched from the doorstep and the latest infamy of the Antis read aloud, until bedtime is deferred for another final, emphatic and further elaborated recapitulation of the Union case, in all its justice, righteousness and light.
And now, the small son of the house has taken sides. He has just had his curls cut off, and in the pride of his new tonsure, which he confirms with frequent visits to his mother’s long mirror, he feels he must assume a more intelligent interest in the larger affairs of the world about him.
With grave eyes, he has listened to the arguments at the breakfast, luncheon and dinner tables. An extraordinary increase in the telephone calls, both in and out, have arrested his attention, being filled, as they are, with the mysterious words and phrases, the fervor and scorn, of the interminable table conversations.
He finally got me alone on the chesterfield after dinner, and in a low voice which his grandmother could not hear, he asked me:
“Is Auntie Beth bad?”
“Bad! I should say not.”
“Is Auntie Madl bad?”
“Certainly not!”
“or Aunt Margi?”
“No. What’s the idea?”
“Well, grandmother says-” and he looked the picture of woe – “that they are bad.”
“No!”
“Yes. They are all bad.”
“Well, well! What does she say?”
“She says they are fighting. Little boys mustn’t fight. Well, then, aunties mustn’t fight.”
“Dear me!” I said.
“And they are holding meetings. They mustn’t hold meetings. They must let them go. Is a meeting a kitty?”
“Look here, sonny,” I asked. “Which of your aunties has fallen foul of grandmother? Which auntie does grandmother talk about?”
“All aunties,” said the boy.
“Does she say Auntie Beth?”
“No,” replied the boy. “Auntie Oonun.”
“Auntie who?”
“Auntie Oonun.”
I racked my brains.
“Who?” I repeated.
“Auntie Oo-nun!” cried the boy, louder than he should.
His grandmother, hearing and recognizing the battle-cry, swept into the room.
“What about the Anti-Unionists, laddie?” she asked.
He looked guiltily at me.
“The boy thinks you are attacking his aunties,” I explained.
“Auntie Beth isn’t bad!” he added.
“No, Auntie Beth is for Union,” acceded his logical grandmother.
“Auntie Madl kisses me, and Auntie Margl gives me fire reels and comes up to see me in bed.”
Following the ancient procedure for removing misapprehensions from the minds of little children, grandmother and I took turns in smothering him in our arms, tousling his hair and hugging him.
“Why, you silly boy,” cried grandmother, “it is another kind of Anti I am talking about.”
“What kind?” he demanded with firmness.
“Another kind altogether.”
“Are they ladies?”
“Whish! Tut-tut!” I burst in. “You mustn’t ask your grandmother leading questions, in her present state of mind.”
“Well,” said the boy. “I like my aunties and they are all good.”
“And every one of them,” said grandmother triumphantly, “for Union.”
At the point of the sword, I drove grandmother back to the telephone and her messages to follow Unionists no less ardent. The boy and I resorted to a discussion of Indians and cow punchers, the boy assuring me, with fitting gestures, that next summer, when we go to Muskoka, he is going to punch a cow, himself.
But at bedtime, during the tucking-in exercises, he said to me:
“I never saw Auntie Oonun.”
“No.”
“Did she ever kiss me?”
“Never.”
“Does she smell nice?” (referring to his Auntie Madl’s delicate and elusive sachet.)
“I couldn’t say.”
He usually tells himself a story to put himself to sleep. He commences it the moment the light goes out.
“She has a long nose,” he began. “She doesn’t kiss little boys. She pinches them. The better to smell you wif, said she. A big, long nose. And she is fat. Could eat no lean. And she fights and holds meetings and pulls their tails. Who pulled her out? Little Johnny Stout. Who put her in? Auntie Oonun. And she had a big, long nose. And a . . .”
But the rest was lost in murmurs, which is the junction for Dreamland and all points south.
Editor’s Note: The Union they are discussing, is the creation of the United Church of Canada, from the Methodist Church of Canada, the Congregational Union of Canada and about 70 percent of the Presbyterian churches in Canada. As you can likely tell from the argument, not all Presbyterians supported the Union. Government legislation was required to deal with the property rights, and was passed on June 27, 1924, and the church was formally created on June 10, 1925.
Ontario conducted it’s 5th plebiscite on Prohibition on October 23, 1924. (following ones in 1894, 1902, 1919, and 1921). Prohibition was not successful in 1894 and 1902. It was instituted nationally in 1916 during World War 1, but removed (nationally) in 1919. The 1919 referendum voted to keep it in Ontario, and the 1921 one voted to ban the import of alcohol. The 1924 referendum was whether to keep prohibition. It was approved by only 51.5%, a result that did not sit well with many and urban centers voted against it, while rural areas voted in favour of it.