Vancouver’s Zoot Suit Riots

Vancouver’s had some infamous riots over the years. The 2011 riot after the Canucks’ Stanley Cup finals defeat is still fresh in the memory for many people. Of course that wasn’t even the first time, with 1994’s Canucks’ defeat also leading to a riot. We’ve had riots at concerts by both the Rolling Stones and Guns ‘N’ Roses. We’ve had riots about logging rights. We’ve had riots about the treatment of union employees and unemployed men during the Great Depression.

Many locals will remember the infamous “Gastown Grass Riot” of 1971, which we talk about on our Forbidden Vancouver Tour, along with another infamous riot in our city, the Asiatic Exclusion League riot of 1907. Chinatown was ransacked by a racist mob that also attacked Japantown, damaging businesses and inflicting misery on already marginalized communities.

Zoot Suits “Toughies”

In 1944, a series of riots took place in Vancouver that aren’t so well known, the “Zoot Suit Riots.” The story begins at the Home Apple Pie Café, situated on the northeast corner of Hastings Street and Princess Avenue and surely the last place a violent street brawl could break out?

The Home Apple Pie Café was one of many diner-style cafes that once dotted Vancouver. In the 1940s, it was open late and boasted a Wurlitzer juke box filled with swing era hits. One group of young regulars from the East End (today’s Strathcona) became known as the “Home Apple Pie Gang.” They were “the toughies of our time,” according to Ines Leland, who grew up in an Italian immigrant family in the neighbourhood.

The Bluebird Café at the 1960 PNE Parade. In 1944, this was the Home Apple Pie Café. (Leslie F Sheraton, City of Vancouver Archives #2008-022.146)

Leland recalled the Park Board setting up speakers in MacLean Park. Someone would bring a hand-crank phonograph and local kids would bring their 78 rpm swing records. The black kids taught the white kids to jitterbug and she and her friends spent their summer afternoons dancing.

Another popular teen spot was Happyland at the PNE, which variously served as a roller rink and a dance hall. Occasionally the Home Apple Pie Gang would get into beefs there with youth gangs from Grandview-Woodlands, the West End, or other neighbourhoods.

There were a number of other “gangs” in the East End, still a neighbourhood of immigrant enclaves in the 40s. The Bull Gang, for example, consisted of younger teens and kids, who spent their time on the street playing games such as kick-the-can, and mostly kept out of trouble besides smoking cigarettes and the occasional fight. “We sort of roamed the streets – more for the idea of looking for outsiders that were coming into the neighbourhood,” remembered Lorne Bezubiak, a Ukrainian-Canadian Bull Gang member who was eleven years-old at the time of the Zoot Suit riots. “We were sort of a protective force walking around.”

Vancouver zoot suiters a year before the riots. (Vancouver Sun, June 19, 1943)

The Home Apple Pie Gang were the so-called zoot suiters, or “zooters.” Zoot suits consisted of high-waisted pants that were wide at the knee and tapered at the cuff, a knee-length broad-shouldered jacket, a porkpie or wide-brimmed hat, and a dangling watch chain. They were exaggerated versions of a popular suit style of the era and originated in the jazz clubs of New York during the Harlem Renaissance.

War rationing that limited the amount of fabric used in clothing effectively outlawed the zoot suit in 1942, so unless zooters purchased theirs before then, they resorted to buying suits that were too large and taking them in. Regardless, the very act of wearing one was considered by many to be unpatriotic.

A Vancouver zooter profiled after the zoot suit riots in Los Angeles. (Vancouver Sun, June 11, 1943)

Zoot Suit Riots & “Eerie Midnight Parade”

The zoot suit riots broke during a heat wave at the end of July, 1944. Tensions had been building between the Home Apple Pie Gang and merchant seamen. The sailors were recruits from across Western Canada stationed at a “Manning Pool” in the Hotel Dunsmuir downtown. A Manning Pool was a place where merchant seamen received room and board, in between taking assignments on vessels leaving the local port. To the local youth, they were just farm boys who acted like they owned the city. Both factions had civilian allies, including “a sprinkling of teenage girls” on both sides.

The seamen made their hangout at a Granville Street café on the corner of Smithe – either the Silk Hat or The Aristocratic, or both.

Granville and Smithe, ca. 1950. The merchant marines hung out at either the Silk Hat Café on the left, or The Aristocratic on the right, or both, in 1944. Painting by Tom Carter.

The riots were precipitated by a report that zoot suiters had knocked a sailor unconscious outside their café hangout on Granville Street. Police later determined it was a false report: the sailor was drunk and sustained his injuries by tumbling down a flight of stairs. Nevertheless, the sailors were out for revenge.

Three street brawls broke out that weekend. One occurred on the 900 block of Granville and drew nearly a thousand spectators from the crowds leaving the movie theatres on a busy summer Saturday night. City police were able to break that one up with little trouble, but another skirmish at Granville and Smithe left one zoot suiter unconscious on the sidewalk. One witness claimed the zooters were attempting to skip out on their bill at a café when the sailors intervened. Military police were called out to Granville following the disturbances but did not take any action. A spokesman said the fighting made a lot of noise, but was mild.

A casualty in the zoot suit riots on Granville Street. (Sun, July 31, 1944)

The third battle was outside the Home Apple Café at Hastings and Princess with about 200 spectators. One police officer received cuts and bruises when someone threw a rock at him. A zoot suiter was fined $25 for obstruction because he jumped on the back of a cop trying to break up a fight.

Two combatants waiting for an ambulance. (News-Herald, August 7, 1944)

The following night saw what the Vancouver Sun called an “eerie midnight parade” of merchant marines and their anti-zoot civilian allies. Zoot suiters reportedly caused a disturbance at the Town Hall Ballroom at 1027 West Pender Street. Sailors gathered and began scouring downtown dance halls and cafés looking for zoot suiters, gathering reinforcements and onlookers as they went, and then began heading east towards the Home Apple Pie Café.

The Vancouver Police and military police intercepted the parade – which had grown to about 200 people – at the CPR railyards at Pender and Abbott streets. Police tackled them with batons and arrested eleven “extremely youthful” marchers and roughed up a Sun reporter. Another brawl almost broke out shortly after back at Granville and Smithe, but police arrived in time to stop it.

Police constable grabbing two merchant marine paraders. (Sun, August 1, 1944)

Another group of 20-30 merchant seamen marched to the Home Apple Pie Café the next night and stormed the place and threatened a number of youth inside. Numerous civilian and military police arrived soon after and managed to separate the opposing factions before any blows were struck. A crowd of about 150 young men and women dispersed and the sailors marched back downtown over the Georgia Viaduct.

Police confiscating a cherry wood cudgel from a East End zoot suiter. (Sun, August 7, 1944).

A Sun reporter interviewed some patrons left in the café. One said that the seamen started the feud: “They thought they were tough and could run us off our streets,” he said. Another insisted that they weren’t even zoot suiters. “Only guys who dance wear zoot suits, and we don’t dance.” Other reports noted that zoot suiters didn’t want to risk ruining their suits in street brawls, and some questioned whether these disturbances even counted as “zoot suit riots.” The Sun seemed to prefer the name “Café War.”

A female bystander who was knocked unconscious by a rock during one of the street brawls on East Hastings Street. (Sun, August 7, 1944)

Public sympathy for the merchant seamen seemed almost inevitable. Sailors and other servicemen were lauded as patriots valiantly putting their young lives on the line to serve their country. In contrast, a spokesman for the Canadian Seafarers’ Association asked:

Why should a merchant navy man, classed as a fourth arm of the service, have to always apply for an army deferment in order to serve at sea when these effeminate lounge lizards, with squeaky voices, long hair and baggy pants seem to get away for free? Ashore in Vancouver, torpedoed or wounded, a merchant navy seaman refuses to be sneered at or spit upon by these draft dodgers. Rightly so, too, because his is a record of which he can be proud.

Nineteen-year-old Tony Di Palma, a shipyard worker and Home Apple Pie Gang member, said that the seamen started the war by hunting down East End youths and beating them because they were “sore at us because we are not with them.” But, he said, “we are all rejects or too young for the forces.” Di Palma and some other East Enders had already served in the merchant marines.

Hotel Dunsmuir at 500 Dunsmuir Street served as the Manning Pool, or barracks for seamen stationed in Vancouver during the war.

After a few days of relative calm, the largest battle broke out. Apparently the East Enders issued a challenge to the merchant marines to fight it out once and for all. Groups of 50 to 60 youth began gathering on street corners in the East End around 11pm on August 7th. By 11:30, about 200 people “staged a pitched battle with fists and other weapons” in the 700 block of East Hastings, according to the Province newspaper.

A zoot suiter and merchant marine in hand-to-hand combat. (Sun, August 7, 1944)

Lorne Bezubiak of the Bull Gang recalled the melee in an interview a few decades later:

We’d have situations where the Bull Gang and Zoot Suits joined forces and we all had our jobs to do. For instance, when the marines came … our job was to get clubs and baseball bats. The story was that the marines were going to come down and clean out the neighbourhood, they didn’t realize what a tightly knit neighbourhood they were coming into … We first picked up the signal when they were past the Patricia Hotel and we were all more or less stationed along the road. Of course, the neighbourhood heard about it so they were all out there and the Zoot Suits were all intermingled with the neighbourhood … The marines were all slicked up and coming down the street and they had little billy clubs that they were going to clean the neighbourhood with. All of a sudden, everyone attacked and I think it was all over in about fifteen minutes because the marines were lying all over the sidewalk and all over the road … Of course, the whole neighbourhood was just cheering one way and the good guys won.

After the battle, a couple hundred East Enders marched down to Manning Pool. There were about 150 sailors asleep when the zooters arrived. After loud jeering failed to draw any of the seamen out of the building, the mob began throwing rocks and smashed about fifteen windows. With no one to fight, the mob eventually dispersed, but created disturbances downtown until about five in the morning. Casualties that night included three sailors sent to the hospital, a female bystander knocked unconscious by a rock, and a police constable bruised by a rioter’s kick.

In the final tally, zoot suiters received the brunt of the consequences. Four were given six month prison sentences with hard labour; two received three months; four received one month; and two were given ten days. One was given a suspended sentence.

In contrast, most of the sailors were acquitted or had their charges dismissed. Two received suspended sentences. One was fined $25 for public intoxication and turned over to military police, and another was given a choice of a $25 fine or thirteen days in jail for kicking a cop in the groin.

A bystander injured in the riots. (News-Herald, August 7, 1944)

Aside from a handful of incidents, the zoot suit disturbances fizzled in Vancouver following the numerous arrests, an increase of police patrols, and restrictions placed on merchant marines. Similar wars between zoot suiters and seamen had earlier played out in other port cities, including Philadelphia, Montreal, and Detroit. The 1943 zoot suit riots in Los Angeles were the most violent and depraved, and were more about racism than clothing choices. The zoot suiters there were Mexican American “Pachucos” who were violently ravaged by white sailors and police. In Montreal, some commentators wrongly claimed that zoot suiters were francophones and that the riots there were an expression of tensions between Anglophones and Francophones.

Although the zoot suit style was short lived, Vancouver newspapers used the term “zoot suiter” as a euphemism for “juvenile delinquent” well into the 1950s.

Sources: Vancouver Sun, Province, and News Herald newspapers; Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter (eds.) Opening Doors in Vancouver’s East End: Strathcona, Harbour Publishing, 2011.