On November 19, 1948, it was announced that the colour of the 1949 license plates would be "deep yellow ... with black lettering. The colors are just a little different from any chosen in North America. Manitoba's plates will be nearest, with black on ordinary yellow ... Texas has gone everyone just a bit better: her cars will be tagged with gold plates bearing black letters."

It was estimated that 200,000 license plates of all types (cars, trucks, motorcycles and trailers) would be issued in 1949, and that 12,000 to 15,000 of these would be delivered through the mail, with in-person registration starting on February 2, 1949.

Superintendent George Hood also assured motorists that "as far as it's humanly possible, I think I can say the paint won't peel this year." This was because the plates had "been put through 14 days in a weather testing machine. The test, equivalent of a year's weathering, showed the effects of cold, heat, fog and ice on the paint." Hood continued that the plates "came out a little dulled from the machine, but all license plates do that after a year of weathering."

In 1948, the issue of prison crowding and the deleterious affects this was having on young offenders being sent to Oakalla Prison Farm to serve their sentences prompted the provincial government to announce the construction of a new wing in order to segregate young prisoners from hardened offenders.

The Attorney-General, Gordon Wismer, informed the Legislature that "the old wing of the jail used for the manufacture of auto license plates will be completely renovated and set aside for housing young offenders. A new building will be put up for plate manufacture."

Due to on-going troubles at Oakalla, the government was forced to revise its plans in March of 1949 and announce the construction of a new 100-cell concrete block at the prison - thought to be what would become known as “Westgate” - in addition to the previously announced renovation of the old jail.

The work on the West Wing of the main jail was nearly completed by March of 1949, and Wismer advised that the East Wing would be converted to cells "as soon as the license plate machinery now housed in that section of the old building has been moved to a newly erected quonset hut", which was tentatively due to be completed within weeks.

It is thought that the East Wing of the prison is shown circled by the dashed red line in the image at left. Where in this wing the Plate Shop was located is unknown to us here at BCpl8s.ca, but if we had to wager a guess it would likely be in the lower floor / basement(?).

As and aside, a quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated galvanized steel having a semi cylindrical cross-section, and the government had plans to erect two (2) of them at Oakalla to ease overcrowding.

When the planned “new jail” was completed, the 100-cells in the concrete building then under construction (“Westgate”) would be removed with this structure becoming “the permanent workshop for the prison farm.” The Attorney-General described it as being a place where young men could be “segregated in a sort of Borstal and kept there until it is determined they are suitable for Borstal home at New Haven” (Borstal being a reference to a system started in England for rehabilitating young offenders that was popular at this time).

An interesting insight into the operation of the Plate Shop at this time comes from news reports of prisoner escape at Oakalla which occurred on April 30, 1949, at 11:30 a.m. as inmates employed in the shop were being lined up lunch.

As the guards in the Plate Shop worked closely with inmates they were not provided with weapons (guns) and when the prisoner made his break for the fence and woodlands beyond, there was not much they could do other than give chase (but they were evidently not as fleet of foot).

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By May of 1950, the Plate Shop had left the confines of the quonset huts as these were now being put to use housing 146 Doukhobors awaiting transfer to a penitentiary. It was reported that the huts could accommodate up to 200 persons and that the Doukhobors “present no problem at the prison ... [and that] only four extra guards have been hired.”

On December 21, 1949, it was announced that the colour of the 1950 license plates would be the reverse of the previous year's plates; "yellow numbers on a black background."

It was estimated that 220,000 license plates of all types (cars, trucks, motorcycles and trailers) would be issued in 1950 - being another new record!

Since the switch in the licensing year from the end of December to the end of February in 1933, the Provincial Police had steadily phased out the informal grace period of 2-weeks they had previously granted motorists to obtain their new license plates, which the following headlines from the proceeding 16 years attest:

So, when the Mayor of Vancouver, Charles Thompson, was caught driving with his 1949 plates and drivers license on March 12th - nearly a full two weeks after the deadline for obtaining 1950 plates! - the story was carried far and wide, including in the national media.

According to Thompson, he was touring some of Vancouver's newly paved street with his wife when the wail of a police siren brought him to a stop. A young office got out and asked him a question he already knew the answer to; "Driving with last year's plate, eh", before asking for the Mayor's driver's license.

When the Mayor identified himself, the police officer "nearly fainted" and "didn't wait long enough to find out that the mayor not only was using last year's plates but also had forgotten to pick up his new driver's license."

Thompson instantly caught flack for using his position to get out of a summons to traffic court (as was the practice in this period) that anyone else in the same position would have received.

Shown at left is Mayor Charles Thompson with an un-identified man stopped near the Lion's Gate Bridge in Vancouver. The parked car in the background is displaying 1949 license plates, but it is not known if this is the Mayor's official car (assumed to be as this appears to be a work related photo shoot), or his personal car that he had not yet changed the license plates on by March 12, 1950. Thompson is shown at right in an official portrait.

To diffuse the situation, Thompson arranged to pay the typical fine of $10 for this type of infraction directly to the Chief Constable, thereby avoiding traffic court.

After the story was picked by the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper, Thompson received a letter from Judge J.A. McGibbon of Lindsay, Ontario, who had seen the story and sent Thompson a $1 contribution towards his fine.

Lindsey had met Thompson the previous summer when he was toured around Vancouver in the Mayor's official vehicle and thought this was the car Thompson had been driving when pulled over. Lindsey added a “PS” to the letter; he couldn't guarantee financial aid in the event of a second offense.

Thompson would serve only two years as Vancouver Mayor, losing the December 13, 1950, civic election to Frederick Hume.

Twenty years after the province issued the first 6-digit license plate bearing the No. 100-000 (in 1930), the first plate with a number above 200-000 was issued on September 8, 1950.

The lucky motorist was Rick Paschal, a used car salesman in Vancouver who had the plates on a demonstrator model. We suspect that Paschal was hoping the novel number would help him quickly sell the vehicle it was attached to (and maybe even at a premium) given his first action was to promptly phone The Province newspaper to apprise them of his score.

The next day, the Vancouver Sun newspaper clarified the situation for any its readers who might have been tempted to go and purchase the car with the No. 200-001 plates from Paschal. The No. 200-000 (a more momentous number) was still sitting in the Victoria office of the Motor Vehicle Branch (MVB) waiting to be sold, while numbers higher than No. 200-001 would still be issued before the end of the year.

There were also 10,000 plates lower than the No. 200-000 still waiting to be issued in the Vancouver area alone, while registered vehicle numbers were only at 169,000 for the year.

The new tabs (also referred to as strips) that were to be used in 1951 were to be white with blue lettering and would be manufactured in two different sizes for use on the shorter 5-digit plates and longer 6-digit plates.

Registrations were anticipated to climb from 198,000 (1950) to almost 210,000 (before ultimately reaching 213,770 by the end of 1951), however due to the near invisibility of the registration numbers stamped into the tabs, it is difficult to know how many were ultimately produced.

The last time BC motorists had been asked to use renewal tabs to re-validate a license plate had been in 1922.

Consequently, a whole generation of car owners had no experience with the practice and the Motor Vehicle Branch (MVB) tried to rectify this situation with the assistance of local newspapers by running photos show how to affix the 1951 tabs to the 1950 license plate.

Shown at right is F.T. MacDonald Lake of the Vancouver MVB office showing how the tab is to be affixed to the bottom of the plate.

Easy, right? Well, apparently not as, in a portend of the troubles to come, Mr MacDonald Lake is attempting to fit a short version of the tab intended for a 5-digit license plate to the longer 6-digit license plate!

Even more interesting was the the provincial government heavy-handed response to what can only be seen as a very mild act of protest. An Order in Council (OIC) was passed amendment the regulations to the Motor Vehicle Act making it an offence to place the tab anywhere other than the bottom of a license plate!

The government was serious as two Victoria residents, Morris Duke and Edgar Perry, soon found out when, “in the first case of its kind”, they were fined $10 each in police court for wrongly affixing the 1951 validation tabs on the top of their license plates.

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Given the novelty of renewal tabs for many motorists, we suspect the following misunderstanding afflicted both men and women. The press, however, only reported on the case of three female drivers in Courtenay who had bought the 1951 renewal tabs at the local MVB issuing office and, in an ultimate act of protest, promptly threw away their 1950 license plates and mounted only the tabs on their cars.

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An innocuous classified ad placed by Black Motors Limited in February of 1951 hinted at an early problem with the renewal tabs; they could be easily stolen!

A week later the local press had picked up the story, quoting “veteran police officers” who stated “the new strip is just what license thieves have been dreaming of for years" and dozens of reports of thefts of the strips had already been reported to the police.

The police placed less emphasis on the old-fashioned cheapskate who saw an opportunity to register a single vehicle but swap out the 1951 renewal tab to other cars they might have owned.

Also irking the police was the “almost undecipherable stamp, [and] a lengthy serial number” that were making it impossible to easily determine if a tab was stolen, or a counterfeit (but, given how easy they were to steal why would anyone bother making a knock-off?):

	As can be seen, little effort was put into making the registration number stamped into the 1951 tab legible. For collectors, it is important to look at these as it may be a low number, such as the strip shown above, which happens to have been the 35th issued.

To try and deal with the issue, motorists were advised to place the “green slip” that they had received with their 1951 tabs in a conspicuous place inside a car so that it could be checked against the license plate whether a motorist was in their car, or not. Failure to display the green slip could result in a $5.00 fine.

On August 4, 1950, the BC Provincial Police ceased to exist and were replaced by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).  

The Provincial Police had been tasked with administering vehicle registrations in the province since the first legislation had been adopted in 1904 and had built up an elaborate system comprising dozens of field offices throughout British Columbia to fulfil this mandate.

With the dissolution of the Provincial Police, the Motor Vehicle Branch (MVB) was retained by the Attorney-General's office, but the RCMP had agreed to carry-on certain tasks that the Provincial Police had previously for an interim period, such as vehicle registrations, collection of dog taxes and issuance of marriage and birth certificates while alternate arrangements were made.

At the end of 1950, the RCMP had decided to end its provision of these ancillary services in four or five towns, but neglected to inform the provincial government. As a result, “a minor storm broke over Attorney-General [Gordon] Wismer's head in the Legislature [in early April of 1951] ... as members complained that RCMP would not issue motor licenses and hundreds of people couldn't get their 1951 plates at outlying points.”

In Sechelt, Gibsons and Kimberley motorists were reported to be protesting by continuing to drive their vehicles with 1950 plates after the March 31st deadline for obtaining the 1951 renewal tabs and refusing to pay the fines they were being issued for doing so.

Wismer advised the Legislature that the job of the police was law enforcement and they should not have been providing these other services and motorists should not have been ticketed. Going forward, alternate arrangements would be made for vehicle registration while those who had been ticketed for not yet having 1951 tabs in the smaller “country areas” of the province would have these cancelled.

Due to a reported steel shortage in May of 1951, the material used on the additional 1950 base plates required for the 1951 licensing year was switched from metal to aluminium for plates issued after the No. 230-000. This also happened to be the same material that was being used in the manufacture of the new 1952 license plates. While it is difficult to convey in a picture, the plates shown below are all made of aluminium: