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News
Town’s century-old booze ban was never legal
A town has discovered that legislation passed in the 1800s banning the sale of alcohol was never officially put in place.
Hanover has banned alcohol sales for more than a century
Councillors in Hanover, Canada, began sifting through paperwork to compile a referendum that would grant citizens a vote on whether the law banning alcohol sales should be abolished.
However, upon close examination they discovered the law had never actually been put in place and the town could have been selling alcohol all that time.
The majority of surrounding towns overturned alcohol bans in the 1880s, but Hanover did not.
As such, it was assumed that the law was still in place more than a century later.
According to the Metro, city councillor Reeve Stan Toews, said: “We went back to 1880 and we could not find a by-law that said Hanover is dry.
“We weren’t quite sure yet, so then we hired some municipal lawyers and they went through all the records and they could not come up with anything either. I didn’t know any better.”