Montreal's unescorted women refused service when unaccompanied by a man

Montreal needs to commemorate the snub on women in bars

   Generations of Montreal women merit a monument to commemorate the ban on their right to drink at bars unaccompanied.
   Denying service to such women was commonplace in certain Montreal establishments until at least 1974.
  The ban on single women was legally enshrined in law in many places.
  In 1940s Chicago, Vancouver and Alberta passed bylaws and laws banning unescorted women from dance halls and bars, with the aim being to lower venereal disease.
  Mayor Drapeau passed a bylaw before Expo 67 banning bar staffers from talking to customers, but it was rarely enforced. 
  Restaurants and bars that banned women from sitting at the bar were open about their policy, according to a 27 Dec. 1974 article in The Montreal Gazette.
  The Bonaventure Hotel and the Laurentian Hotel, The Chateau Champlain and The Queen Elizabeth Hotels banned women from sitting at their bars.
   The reason?
  "There are too many hookers coming into our bars and we have the reputation of the hotel to think about. We don't want prostitutes soliciting in our bars or lobbies," said Fern Roberge, Bonaventure Hotel Manager.
  Some of the hotels would permit the women to sit at tables, however.
  A large group of 10 women could approach the bar and request service but the policy would be to refuse each and every one of them, unless there were at least one man present among them.
   This policy was applied even to women who were paying for expensive rooms at the hotels.

MacDougall

   The Golden Hind Bar inside the Queen Elizabeth Hotel even had a policy of banning all women from the bar at lunchtime.
    In one bizarre and extreme example, Mary-Eileen MacDougall, 35, entered the Ritz Carlton Hotel bar on 3 May 1989 at around midnight with a man she had just met.
  She became angry when staff refused to serve her or empty her ashtray. Staff asked her to leave, she refused and she asked to call the police, who ended up keeping her behind bars, starting at the old Station 10 on De Masionneuve for eight days, as authorities deemed her psychologically unfit for trial.
   The posh downtown hotels managed to keep their discriminatory policies in place even though such prejudicial practices had been  challenged in lowbrown Montreal taverns for generations.
  In 1936 Fred Christie went all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to be service at the Forum Tavern regardless of his skin colour and in 1971 fancy tavern Le Gobelet on St. Lawrence near Cremazie was targeted by feminists, who wanted to be allowed to dine at the place. 
  The provincial government then created a new category of tavern called brasserie and the end was in sight for the barring of individuals based on their ethnicity or gender.