Montreal Gazette reporter Janet McKenzie and her smokin' hot lusty leggy secretary colleague Karen York are pictured here drinking 14 ounce glasses of draught beer, which cost 35 cents at Claude Janelle's Le Gobelet at 8405 St. Lawrence (it's a Cage'o'Sports now) on December 8, 1971.They were making history by being the first women to drink in a tavern in Quebec. Well, in fact, they were actually the first women to drink in a brasserie, which was a new category invented by the authorities to allow taverns to serve women. The newly reopened Le Gobelet was the first to get a brasserie license.
Nowadays almost nobody has brasserie or tavern licenses. All together there are 22,555, liquor licenses out there in the province, of those, about half have bar licenses, the rest have mostly restaurant licenses - which means you have to have some food with your booze.
Nowadays, according to a liquor board official, Quebec is home to just 98 brasseries and 40 taverns.
A decade ago there were 24,177 liquor licenses in the province, which included 133 brasseries and 114 taverns.
So there are still 40 places where women are barred from entering?
ReplyDeleteLol. Good math.
ReplyDeleteApparently not from this place:
http://www.box.net/shared/static/gvdh9rxw8s.jpg
(Kate McD. of Montreal Weblog explained to me the background of the somewhat ironic "Bienvenue aux Dames" in the windows of such places in terms of the prior prohibition.)
There was a later legal decision that allowed women into taverns.
ReplyDeleteThere remains a formal list of criteria as to what constitutes a tavern versus a brasserie.
I asked the liquor bureau rep about what those differences are exactly but he was a big vague, like he didn't know that clearly himself.