politics Vancouver, was also the home port of the 246 ft. Malahat, a five-masted schooner known as the "Queen of Rum Row," maintained an active liquor trade throughout the Prohibition Era of the neighbouring United States, despite efforts to bring Prohibition to Canada. Vancouver's longest serving and most often elected mayor, L. D. Taylor, followed an "open town" policy prior to his final defeat in 1934 to Gerry McGeer. Essentially, the policy was that vice crimes such as prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging would be managed, rather than eliminated, so that police resources could be directed towards major crime. A consequence of this, in addition to assumptions that Taylor was colluding with the criminal underworld, was the maintenance of red light districts in racialized neighbourhoods, such as Chinatown, Japantown, and Hogan's Alley, which perpetuated the association of non-whites with immorality and vice crime. Taylor suffered the biggest electoral defeat the city had seen in 1934, largely on this issue. McGeer ran on a law and order platform, resulting in a crackdown on vice crimes, which, after years of Taylor's "open town," sought to clean up crime. Unfortunately, policing non-white communities was key to successfully executing the plan. Even the East End (today's Strathcona) had by WWI been largely vacated by English, Scottish, and Irish residents who moved to the wealthier (and whiter) new developments of the West End and Shaughnessy. The East End, the original residential district that grew up around Hasting's Mill, was left to successive waves of new immigrants, and became associated with poverty and vice, (as the Downtown Eastside remains today). Neighbourhood and property development The first act of the City Council at its first meeting in 1886 was to request that the military reserve be handed over for use as a park. Historians have pointed out that this may seem a strange priority for the nascent city as there was an abundance of green space at the time. The West End, however, was designated to be an upscale neighbourhood by speculators with connections to the CPR., They did not want the scattered settlements on this property to grow into another industrial, working-class neighbourhood. This act also signalled the beginning of the process that would see the remaining inhabitants of various origins evicted as squatters in the 1920s for the creation of a seemingly pristine park. It has been suggested that perhaps the new Stanley Park would over