In 1976, an Ancaster Town Council vote reversed a long-standing policy that would finally allow Ancaster restaurants to apply for liquor licenses. Other than the LCBO and Brewers Retail outlets that were established in Ancaster in the 1950s, the village had up to that point been 'dry', presumably since Prohibition in Canada. Ancaster's earlier pioneers however experienced an entirely different social environment. Again according to Dick-Lauder writing in 1897, "Ancaster saw plenty of life during the rebellion of 1837, when it was quite a frequent thing for all the inns, five in number, and many of the private houses to be full overnight of redcoats passing towards the west".