Canada at War: WARTIME LIVING: The Great Parch

¶ Two were dead in Ottawa, three in Toronto, three in Halifax, one in Vancouver, from drinking industrial alcohol, shaving lotions, hair tonics, paint removers.

¶ Winnipeg police said that 95% of all flavoring extracts (vanilla, etc.) sold in some stores was bought to flavor stomachs, not cakes and candies.

¶ In many places bootlegging was rife, doctors’ prescriptions for medicinal alcohol up sharply.

¶ All over the Dominion, thirsty Canadians found liquor-store shelves bare, bootleggers’ prices sky-high (in some instances, $15 for a fifth of Scotch). Result: a demand for substitutes. One of the most popular: a highly scented, highly alcoholic, highly poisonous (if swallowed) skin lotion called lilac water.

The situation has political potentialities. Frustrated Canadian drinkers, full of wrath and woe, naturally blame the Government. Their term for the great parch: “Mackenzie King Prohibition.”