New Year's resolutions from The Guardian's past

In 1887, The Island Guardian runs a strongly worded editorial on the topic of the Scott Act (ie. prohibition), in which the newspaper faults the success of the bootlegging industry on the failure of the justice system — and the police force in particular — to uphold the law banning the sale of alcohol outside of a medical prescription.

"While it is satisfactory to know that our article last week, on the above subject, fully expressed public sentiment regarding it, we cannot join in the general merriment which the farcical affair not unnaturally produced. To us, the matter is far too serious to be treated as a joke, worthy only of derision. On the principle that those who win may laugh, it is not unlikely that our illicit rum sellers also made merry over it. So well "satisfied" were a number of them at the result of the investigation, that they lost no time in removing their liquor from the Custom House to their respective places of business and opening out forthwith.

If our policemen -— the guardians of the law — have become so demoralized as to be at times not able to take care of themselves, it should be a subject of deep humiliation, and also "alarm", to every citizen. "

Prohibition handout, Plebiscite Series, No. 5. Dominion Women's Christian Temperance Union.
From Library and Archives Canada www.collectionscanada.gc.ca

The Island Guardian, therefore, makes a promise to its readers to keep the issue of prohibition "to the front":

"Let it not be forgotten that the (Scott) Act was nearly lost, just because the police failed to enforce it. And in order to induce citizens to give it another trial, it was distinctly promised by some of the most succesful canvassers that a change in the force would be made.

THE ISLAND GUARDIAN also made such a promise, and we cannot go back on it, and are determined to keep the matter to the front till the change comes. This is a mtter in which the people of the whole Province have a deep interest, if the illicit liquor traffic is stamped out in the city, its power is cut, the same time broken in the country. Victory in the city means triumph throughout the land."

 Also on the subject of making promises, an edition of The Guardian in January 1957 states:

"Some people consider making New Year's resolutions utter foolishness. Whether it happens on New Year's or "Eat more fish" week, it is never foolish to resolve to be better than you are. Your resolve may last for only a short time, but it stamps you as a person aspring to higher levels of thought and action. This is not to be confused with the type of people who voice remorse merely to enlist sympathy or to fend off the listener's righteous indignation."

Thank you to UPEI's Robertson Library,  Islandnewspapers.ca and Library and Archives Canada for help putting together this blog.