THE ADVOCATE 463
VOL. 78 PART 3 MAY 2020
LEGAL ANECDOTES
AND MISCELLANEA
By Ludmila B. Herbst, Q.C.*
In the early 1920s, a recurring column called “Ten
Commandments for the Motorist” ran in a B.C.
newspaper, commencing as follows: “Drive on the
right side of the road; it is just as good as the left”.1
This effort to cajole drivers into driving on the right would
be a little odd, were it not for the fact that the rules of the
road in B.C. had just changed—we are approaching the centenary
of the change in this province from driving on the
left to driving on the right.
Travelling on the left was a tradition derived from various
Granville Street, left
hand drive rule-of-road
(ca. 1920) – City of
Vancouver Archives,
CVA 289-032
practicalities—especially suited to right-handed members of the population—
in the pre-automobile age, such as wanting to have one’s right hand
free to brandish a sword, the greater ease for most riders of mounting a
horse from the left (from the shoulder of the road) and walking on the curb
alongside a horse whose reins were in one’s right hand.
Gradually, however, these exigencies faded and new ones emerged. One
was the advent in the 1700s of large freight wagons, whose driver sat on the
last horse on the left in order to hold a whip in his right hand to spur the
team forward; this style of transport was especially popular in the United
States, with its large open spaces. That country’s later automotive industry
built right-hand-drive vehicles which were in turn exported more broadly.2
For a time in British Columbia there was somewhat of a mix of road-use
practices, which led to calls for legislation deciding the question one way or
other. By the early 1890s, proceeding on the left was relatively common in
Victoria, whereas “in places like the Okanagan the driving experience
appears to have been more chaotic”.3
* Ludmila B. Herbst, Q.C., is the assistant editor of the Advocate. She is a lawyer at Farris LLP, though she realized its
founder’s connection to the subject matter of this piece only partway through researching it.