VICTORIA -- For more than 40 years, opinion polls were banned outright during B.C. election campaigns, leaving the news media to its own devices in taking soundings of the public mood to gauge the likely outcome of the vote.

It was OK to poll between elections and what the political parties did privately, on their own dime, was not subject to public scrutiny.

But once the election writ was issued, dissolving the house and setting the date for voting, the Election Act was clear about what could and could not happen publicly:

“No person, corporation or organization shall take any straw vote which will, prior to the election, distinguish the political opinions of the voters in any electoral district.”

The ban was enacted in the fall of 1939, prompted by a so-called “straw poll” — think of tossing a straw up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing — in the previous provincial election campaign.

A hardware store in the provincial capital polled its customers as to their preferences among the dozen-and-a-half candidates running for election in what was then the four-member Victoria riding and posted the rankings on pretty much a daily basis.

News reports on the store’s rankings “undoubtedly” influenced the order of finish among the candidates, perhaps contributing to the defeat of two members of the then-governing B.C. Liberal party, according to testimony to a legislature committee by the deputy provincial secretary.

That was enough for the MLAs on the committee. They promptly endorsed the measure making B.C. election campaigns a polling-free zone from the 1940s onward, leastways so far as the scientific surveys conducted by the Gallup organization and its myriad successors were concerned.

The de facto ban particularly suited longtime (1952-72) premier W.A.C. Bennett, who retained a healthy skepticism of the news media and pollsters alike. “The polls cast an unnatural light on electioneering,” as his attorney general Robert Bonner put it. “The partisan press takes whatever comfort it can find in a poll and drums it up until a gentle shower sounds like a torrent.”

But starting with the 1963 provincial election, restaurateur John Dys, the self-styled Frying Dutchman (and later founder of De Dutch Pannekoek House chain) found a way around the ban that was as subversive as it was entertaining.

Patrons to his then-modest trio of food service outlets were invited to choose among four hamburgers, each priced at 49 cents (those were the days) and distinguishable only by being named after one of the leaders of the four parties contending that year’s election.

Dys began posting the results in the window of his restaurant in downtown Vancouver partway through the campaign, promptly drawing a threat of prosecution from provincial officials. Armed with legal advice that his patrons were not really choosing among candidates, only among hamburgers, he did not back down.

Plus, as he advised an inquiring reporter from The Vancouver Sun, the fine for violating the ban on polls was a mere $250. He reckoned he’d reaped far more in free publicity.