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The Brightside Hotel

Gender

Like other drinking establishments throughout Ontario, men and women entered the Brightside Hotel through separate doors, and ‘ladies and their escorts’ drank separately from the men’s room. The smaller and quieter ladies’ beverage room admitted males only with female accompaniment. 

Tidy exterior photo of the Brightside Hotel.
LCBO regulators aimed for places like the Brightside House to have a clean, well-ordered, and well-maintained appearance, something that this photograph suggests with the Hotel’s impressive sign and tidy exterior complete with awnings. (Source: <em>Brightside Reunion</em>, pg.6)
Brightside Hotel Ladies and Escorts Beverage Room.
Government regulations required that women be separated from the men’s much larger and livelier beverage room; only when accompanied by a woman could a man enter the Ladies and Escorts Beverage Room. (Source: Brightside Public House files, LCBO, AO. Courtesy of AO)
Brightside Hotel Beverage Room.
With card tables and folding chairs as its  rudimentary furniture, the Brightside Hotel began as a clean, orderly, and well-maintained drinking establishment. (Source: Brightside Public House files, LCBO, AO. Courtesy of AO)

Listen: Separating The Men From The Women. Click the play circle below.

Show/Hide Transcript

Speaker 1:    

I remember that.  

Here’s the outside of the Brightside Hotel. 

Here’s Ralph’s barber shop. 

Here’s, we’ll call it the Brightside hub. 

Here’s the little alley way you went down… 

Speaker 2:    

That’s right. 

Speaker 1:    

… to go into the back. 

Speaker 2:    

The Ladies and Escorts entrance… 

That’s right. 

Speaker 1:    

... to the Brightside Hotel.  

It was down a little paved alley way… 

It was paved. 

… and around the corner. 

[laughter] 

And you walked in that, you know, clandestine door there.  

And then you went into this lounge which was just for ladies. 

A lady couldn’t go there alone… 

Speaker 2:    

No. 

…you’d have to be accompanied by an escort… 

Speaker 3:    

A man. 

Speaker 2:    

… or some resemblance of one. 

Speaker 1:    

It had to be a gentleman of high standing. 

[laughter] 

It was almost like going to the Hamilton Club for… 

[laughter] 

…the smaller classes. 

Speaker 2:    

For the elite. 

 

Listen: The Ladies And Their Escorts. Click the play circle below.

Show/Hide Transcript

Speaker 1:    

Did you, did you ever take a lady into the ladies and escort side? 

[laughs]  

Speaker 2:    

Everybody did. 

Speaker 1:    

So, who would you have taken? 

Speaker 3:    

Did you ever take your wife to the ladies and escort?  

Was she a beer drinker? 

Speaker 2:    

I didn’t know my wife then.  

Speaker 3:    

Oh, okay, you were single then? 

Speaker 2:    

I met her later. 

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