Liquor, Lust and the Law Read online

  Joe was different than the rest of his family also because of the spelling of his name. At one point, it was wrongly alleged that Philliponi spelled his name differently as an alias or to confuse law enforcement agents. But, in fact, an immigration officer had misspelled it as “Philliponi” when he first entered Canada. The mistake was never legally corrected, and the name stuck. Eventually, Joe would come to stand out in other ways.

  Joe Philipponi, late 1930s.

  Ross, Giuseppe, and Mickey Filippone, 1930s.

  Coal mining was hard and dangerous work, and many miners died underground. The Extension miners came to know that the long blast on the mine’s whistle could only mean bad news. The disaster at the nearby Esplanade coal mine that had taken 150 lives more than thirty years earlier in 1887 would not have been forgotten by the community. To this day known as the worst mining disaster in the history of British Columbia, the accident and its victims were remembered on each anniversary in May with a reunion of miners from around the island and a two-minute moment of silence.

  The warmth of the Calabrian sun must have seemed far away on rainy Vancouver Island, but the Filippones settled into Extension, and their family quickly grew. A second boy, Jimmy Filippone, was born in 1922, followed by a third son, Ross—a name popular with the Scottish miners of Extension (and also a respectful nod to Maria Rosa)—just over a year later. Domenic “Mickey” Filippone was born in 1924, and Giuseppe and Maria Rosa were graced with their final child (“at last a daughter!”) whom they named Florence, born in 1929.

  The Filippone family not long after they arrived in Vancouver, mid-1930s. L to R: Florence, Giuseppe, Jimmy, Joe, Ross, Maria Rosa, and Domenic (Mickey).

  The mine’s fortunes declined after the stock market crash, and the Filippones decided to move to the burgeoning city of Vancouver, hoping that the Lower Mainland offered a brighter future than the coal mines of Extension. In May of 1932, Giuseppe and Maria Rosa purchased their house, which still stands at 1033 Seymour Street.[3] While the younger brothers attended King George High School, Ross and Joe were called upon to supplement the family income during the Depression. Ross worked down the block at Chapman’s Bowling Alley on Helmcken Street as a pinsetter, and Joe had a paper route and delivered packages as a bicycle courier. After literally saving his pennies, Joe bought a motorcycle and was soon one of the fastest couriers in town. His father and Jimmy drove delivery trucks, and so the family’s first company, Eagle Time Delivery Systems Ltd., was begun in 1935.

  Joe Philliponi and one of the Diamond Cabs fleet in front of Eagle Time's offices 1942.

  Jimmy Filippone in the Eagle Time dispatch office.

  “Joe had the city divided up into zones on a map,” Ross recalled. “[It wasn’t] much different [from] how transit works today. You bought these zone tickets depending on how far away you needed things delivered. It was a good system.”

  The Filippone home on Seymour Street was not only the base for family gatherings, but also for its business and administrative operations for the next forty years. Their backyard was a taxi and truck depot, and they ran a dispatch office from the front of the house. As business began to flourish, Eagle Time branched out with a fleet of taxicabs they called Diamond Cabs. “We Circle the City” was the company’s motto. The trucking and taxi companies bolstered the family’s revenue, and the Filippones soon bought the empty lot next door to their house for $1,400. Construction on the building that would become the Penthouse started in 1941. “I remember the contractors putting up the bricks,” said Ross. “When the building was finished in 1942, we moved the taxi and trucking business out of the family house and into there.”

  Eagle Time and Diamond Cabs building on Seymour Street, 1942.

  Joe Philliponi’s press debut (in what would be a lifetime of making headlines) appeared in the February 14, 1942 edition of the Vancouver Sun. A smiling Joe is shown as the “Happy & Proud” owner of Eagle Timebelow the headline, “Fast Growing Delivery Service and Cab Business in Modern Building.”[4] Philliponi had built the Penthouse in contra deals with local construction supply companies in exchange for free cartage from Eagle Time Delivery. One wonders if Joe gave the reporter some complimentary cab rides in return for sterling press, because at times the tone of the article reads like an advertisement: “As soon as a customer or visitor enters the new building he senses the type of service that is maintained. A luxuriously furnished waiting room is there if one is to wait for a cab or other service, but the facilities … are all as business like and modern as they can be.” Jimmy Filippone was photographed seated at the busy switchboard, as acting dispatcher. “The facilities ‘behind the scenes’ are no less modern than in the front offices. With a large staff of girl messengers as well as boys, the most complete arrangements have been made for their comfort … the girls have a nice powder room and lounge, with private lockers in which each can keep her own personal belongings.”

  At the bottom of the same page there are a number of accompanying ads from companies that Eagle Time did business with or that Philliponi bartered with in the construction of the new building, all offering their best wishes for the business at its new location, suggesting how many friends and business contacts the family had garnered in Vancouver just a little over a decade after moving there.

  The Eagle Time offices may have seemed rather ostentatious for a taxi dispatch and delivery service; it was almost as if Joe already had bigger plans. The Sun article concluded prophetically that the spacious new building “should take care of the development of the business for some time to come.”

  It wasn’t a nightclub yet, but the Filippones were already making sure that their block on Seymour Street was a hub of activity. The family’s interest in sports first brought social activities into the building.

  Jimmy, right, gives an Eagle Time athletic jacket to a young athlete. Photo: Vancouver Public Library Archives, 81118.

  Joe at Christmas Party at Eagle Time, 1949. Photo: Vancouver Public Library Archives, 81118G.

  “We had a lot of room in there,” Ross recalled. “So that’s when we decided to put a gymnasium in and started a boxing club for the neighbourhood kids. It was one of the best-known clubs in the city. We had more champions than you could shake a fist at. We sponsored lacrosse and basketball, football, bowling, and we hosted a Christmas carnival for the kids, too. It was almost like a community centre.”

  Joe and the Eagle Time Athletic Club boys, Christmas 1949. Photo: Vancouver Public Library Archives, 81118B.

  Eagle Time already had its in-house stars: Jimmy was a two-time finalist in the BC Golden Gloves boxing championship. Between 1938 and 1942, he was one of the leading amateur lightweights and had bouts against well-known boxers such as Jimmy Crook, Henry Devine, and Robert Hickey. A generation of Vancouver youth in the late 1930s and ’40s passed through Eagle Time Athletics and learned to box from Jimmy and coaches like Val Roach and Pops Yates.

  Jimmy Filippone, Charlie Bagnato, and Pops Yates at Eagle Time, c. 1941.

  Ross and Mickey had potential to become professional bowlers and helped coach young people and others interested in the sport. Meanwhile, Joe—never much of a sportsman unless it involved betting on a horse—was “Uncle Joe” to the hundreds of children who came to the gym at Eagle Time, including former Vancouver City Councillor George Puil, who would go on to be a University of British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame inductee in football and rugby, “Whistling” Bernie Smith, who Joe would encourage to become a policeman,[5] and “Socking” Sid Morrisroe, who first competed at a Silver Gloves boxing tournament at the Eagle Time gym and would years later appear again in the history of the Penthouse in a notorious role less befitting a champion.

  The outbreak of World War II directly touched Vancouver’s Italian community when more than 1,800 living in the city were designated as “enemy aliens” after the fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini joined forces with Nazi Germany.[6] The Italian consulate in Vancouver encouraged local Italians to declare their al
legiance to Mussolini, and forty-four men in the community were removed to Ontario internment camps. Because Joe had been born in Italy, it’s likely he would have come under initial scrutiny from government authorities during the implementation of the War Measures Act. But Joe—and many others in the community—made their loyalties to Canada clear with the help of Angelo Branca.

  A legend in Vancouver legal history—the city’s first Italian lawyer and judge—Branca formed the Italian-Canadian War Vigilance Association. He sent 2,000 flyers around East Vancouver to announce a mass meeting for June 10, 1940 at the Hastings Auditorium. That morning, North Americans heard the news that Mussolini had declared war on the allies, and by nightfall about 400 people—Joe Philliponi among them—attended Branca’s rally where they cheered a resolution that publicly announced that all members of the association were unequivocally behind Canada’s war efforts. Joe Philliponi and Angelo Branca became friends, and the legal counsel Branca provided to the Filippones over many years would prove invaluable.

  In 1942, inspired by feelings of Canadian patriotism, both Joe and Ross signed up for the Royal Canadian Air Force. Jimmy was left in charge of keeping the family business running and helped to keep an eye on Mickey, who had begun skipping classes at school in order to go to the horse races. Joe was posted at Jericho Beach Air Station, where his experience with the taxi company seemed to make him a natural for assignment to the motor pool. Ross worked in the transport division of the RCAF, driving trucks.

  Ross in uniform, 1940.

  While Ross and Joe were in the Air Force, Maria Rosa, Giuseppe, Jimmy, Florence, and Mickey ran the business.

  Joe in the RCAF, c. 1943.

  Joe was never sent overseas, but friends would say that he didn’t go through the war without seeing any action. One night in 1944, Joe stood in the lineup for a movie at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver, his sergeant’s stripes on one arm and his date on the other. The patron in front of him seemed to be taking an unreasonably long time to purchase his tickets, so Joe asked him to hurry it up. The man angrily turned around with a gun in his hand—he was in the process of robbing the box-office cashier. Local newspaper columnist Denny Boyd later joked that “whether [it was] from bravado, fear, or indignation at seeing someone’s gate receipts being pilfered,”[7] Joe then wrapped his arms around the hold-up man, wrestled him to the ground, and held him until the police arrived.

  Jimmy, Giuseppe, Ross (in uniform), Maria Rosa, and Mickey.

  After the war, Joe and Ross returned to work at Eagle Time. In 1949, their father, who had been suffering from emphysema for years from working and breathing the black dust in the coal mines of Nanaimo, passed away. The loss of her husband was hard on Maria Rosa and her children. Now Joe, the eldest son, took on the role of head of the family. Both he and Ross had bigger ideas than just running a taxi company with a gym on the side.

  “When the war was over, I thought about studying law, but I was also interested in the restaurant business,” said Ross. “Joe had some ideas too…”

  Joe and Ross, 1946, at the Penthouse.

  II. What Does a Guy Have to Do to Get a Drink Around Here?

  The Penthouse originated in a Vancouver much different than today’s. Those who frequent the Granville Entertainment District, one of Gastown’s wine bistros, or a Commercial Drive watering hole, would scarcely recognize Vancouver in the post-war years.

  View from the Penthouse, c. 1970s, over downtown Vancouver.

  Downtown Vancouver was not the metropolis of glass towers it is now. Only the Sun Tower, Marine Building, and the old Hotel Vancouver edged the skyline to compete with the backdrop of the North Shore Mountains across the Burrard Inlet. Instead, smoke coughed from smokestacks and churned from the mills and rail yards in False Creek. Most downtown city blocks looked more like the residential Strathcona neighbourhood does today, with smaller two-storey houses occupied by families with multiple children.

  Before every house had a television set, these families sat on their verandas in the evenings, reading newspapers, watching children play, or gossiping with the neighbours over fences, as music or shows from

  a Philco radio were heard through an open window. Fathers played catch with sons in small front yards and, in the mornings, headed to work, nearly all of them wearing hats. It wasn’t just that the city was smaller—the population of greater Vancouver was 562,462 in 1951, compared to more than 2.3 million in 2012[8]—but places where a fellow might socialize for a drink when the sun went down and enjoy an evening of cocktails and good cheer were not easy to find. When Welsh poet Dylan Thomas visited Vancouver in April 1950, he called the city a “handsome hellhole” and complained about the “pious and patriotic” people of British Columbia who he thought acted more British than the Brits back home.[9] Thomas decried the local bars that legally couldn’t serve whiskey or wine, closed on holidays, and were open for what seemed like just a few hours each day.

  For much of its history—though it was the same frontier town that began in 1867 when Gassy Jack Deighton offered the local mill workers all they could drink in return for helping him to construct the bar that the city would be built around—Vancouver has been divided, over the decades, about liquor.

  British Columbia experimented briefly with prohibition from 1917 to 1921. After World War I, the provincial government regulated the sale of alcohol at government liquor stores. By the 1920s, public support for establishments that sold beer by the glass was broad enough that the government eased restrictions and the province’s three-member Liquor Control Board created the beer parlour in March 1925.

  These establishments purposely offered little to encourage a patron to have a pleasant night out. Even the term “parlour” was a misnomer, for it promised some measure of comfort that was never fulfilled— they were dreary places. As author Daniel Francis notes, the beer parlours reeked “of stale tobacco, smoke and stale beer … There was no standing at the bar, no hard liquor, no entertainment [i.e., no music either from a radio or musicians], no singing or darts or billiards, nothing to suggest that the consumption of alcohol might be enjoyable.”[10]

  For a brief period, women were not allowed in beer parlours. Then in 1927, separate rooms were granted to accommodate women drinking alone or with escorts. Hotel beer parlours were also required to place a partition between the men’s and ladies’ sections as well as separate entrances; with a rise in reports of venereal disease during the 1930s, worried puritanical authorities suspected that the beer parlours were black holes of venereal disease-ridden prostitutes.

  Given the restrictions on Vancouver ’s nightlife at the time, it might be easy to assume that there was no taste for alcohol in British Columbia except for a ruffian minority—which certainly wasn’t the case. It was still legal to drink at private residences, so bootleggers and clubs that were not considered open to the public thrived. There, members signed in upon entry, and these “private” establishments managed to skirt the liquor laws of the time.

  The Eagle Time Athletic Club would be the beneficiary of the city’s thirsty citizens. Joe built another floor at the top of the Eagle Time building and used it as a lavish apartment for himself. With business doing well and post-war prosperity in the air, Joe’s characteristic generosity and gregariousness found a greater outlet. He began to host after-hours parties in the upstairs apartment and, for a donation of $1.75 (to the purchase of sports equipment for the gym), one was granted entry.[11]

  The original Penthouse bar.

  There were no bar liquor licences in British Columbia at the time. Even at the elegant Hotel Vancouver ’s Panorama Roof, guests brought their own liquor in brown bags. The difference was, at Joe’s apartment and certainly later at the Penthouse, if you were in a pinch and showed up with nothing, something could be conveniently supplied from a back room. Soon the Seymour Street building wasn’t attracting just the local kids who wanted to learn how to box, but their mothers and fathers, who now stopped in at night after the gym had closed.
/>   Ross at the Palomar Supper Club, one of Vancouver's now-lost ballrooms. The Filippones got their show-business start booking the Palomar with Sandy DeSantis.

  The Palomar Ballroom at 713 Burrard Street, which opened in 1937, was just another popular bottle club,[12] and the sort of place in which people would have danced all evening, before ending the night at Joe’s apartment. The King Cole Trio, the Ink Spots, Frankie Laine, the Mills Brothers, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Jerry Colonna, and Nellie Lutcher all performed there in the 1940s, as did orchestra leader Sandy DeSantis, who had taken the Palomar over from owner Hymie Singer. “Sandy made a bundle of money off of those servicemen coming through during the war. But after the war was over, the servicemen disappeared,” said Ross Filippone. “He loved to gamble and drink, but the money wasn’t coming in anymore, and he was having difficulties financially when he came to us.” Eager to get involved in the club business, Joe and Ross made a deal with DeSantis and became equal partners with him in the Palomar. But DeSantis’s gambling habit put him deeper and deeper in debt.

  Bill Kenny and the Ink Spots with Sandy DeSantis at the Palomar Supper Club, c. 1940s.

  “We eventually bought his house to get him out of the hole he’d dug himself in,” Ross recalled. What Joe and Ross learned from the Palomar experience was not so much to be careful of one’s business partners (DeSantis remained a family friend and Penthouse regular for years afterward), but a lesson in the value of real estate. “We’d just spent $100,000 renovating and decorating the place in a Grecian style, with columns of red and gold, when the owners of the Palomar came in and told us to get out in thirty days because they’d sold the building and were going to put up an office block. After that experience, we learned there was no way we were going to get into a property we didn’t own. You have to own your own place.”