The other problem that had doomed the last attempt at a “permanent” license plate in the early 1950s had been the confusing arrangement of letter prefixes and suffixes.

With vehicle registrations quickly nearing the 1,000,000 mark and the total number of combinations on a 6-digit numerical plates (e.g. 999,999 available combinations), the MVB was going to re-consider the use of letters.

The Branch's hand was forced in November of 1966 when Superintendent Ray Hadfield had to confirm that the Branch was, indeed, exploring the use of letters on passenger vehicles after Ken Kiernan, Minister of Recreation and Conservation, let slip to a meeting of the Provincial Tourist Advisory Council that “tourist studies would be aided if a better system were set up, using letter prefixes to indicate where cars were from” - and that such a change would be made.

Hadfield expressed doubts that such a system of lettering could accurately identify the origins of a vehicle as many license plates were issued by mail and approximately 20% of motorists changed their address each year.

As an example, Hadfield cited a car originally registered in Prince George whose owner relocated to Vancouver. The PG lettered plates would remain on the car.

Instead, the MVB was hoping that “a comprehensive international study” that was then underway would determine “which of the letter prefix systems are best” for identifying a license plate. Also, a new computer system would be required to assist with administration of such a licensing system and to avoid the problems that had beset the letter-number combinations used on the Totem base between 1952-54.

Hadfield hinted that another challenge posed by the use of letters was going to be the occurrence of potentially “distasteful” combinations of letters!

In the end, the Minister and Superintendent both got their ways. Hadfield was able to introduce the common AAA-000 format used by multiple jurisdictions, including Washington and California (whom British Columbia looked to regularly for license plate inspiration), while Kiernan got prefixes assigned to specific towns and regions:

While a more detailed breakdown by region and town is provided below, the allotment of the first letter by region is summarized as follows:

• Vancouver Island would be assigned plates starting with the letters 'A' & 'B',
• Central and Northern BC would be assigned plates starting with the letter 'C';
• the Okanagan & Kootenays would be assigned plates starting with the letter 'K'; and
• the Lower Mainland would be assigned all other letters.

So, why did BC only use letters between A and K on the first million 1970 license plates?

Well, we here at BCpl8s.ca have been told two stories. One is that the stamps used by employees of the MVB for compiling licensing documents in 1960s only had enough space for ten (10) characters.

The other is that when the province upgraded the machinery at the Oakalla Plate Shop in the mid-1950s, it was designed to accommodate a maximum row of ten (10) different dies for each of the six columns that might be used in the license plate's serial.

Regardless of which, if any of these stories is the correct one, the alphabet was broken into two blocks of ten letters with the first block comprising A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, and K with “I” excluded as it too closely resembled the number one:

As result, once plate AAK-999 had been issued the next plate in the series was ABA-001 as opposed to AAL-001, despite AAL-001 being the next sequential combination.

For the second half of the alphabet, which would be used in the second and third columns of the serial on a short over-run series in 1972, the ten letters would be L, M, N, P, R, S, T, V, W, and X with “O”, “Q”, “U”, “Y” and “Z” being excluded.

Clear as mud, right?

After the MVB Superintendent, Ray Hadfield, had expressed his concerns about the “distasteful” combinations that might result from various letter arrangements on passenger plates, local media took an interest in Washington State's practices.

Although Washington had switched to a AAA-000 format in 1958, and used this same format again when new plates were issued in 1963, the BC press had not taken much interest.

This change in 1968, when all four of the major newspapers reported on the letter combinations Washington was excluding from its new license plates, including those denoting sex and alcohol (see at right), but also BAT, APE, DOG, FOX, PIG, RAT, YAK, COW, MOO, FBI, SPY, DAD AND POT.

The Director of the State Department, Doug Toms, explained their rationale as not wanting a person's license plate to be a source embarrassment or to be grounds for a motorist to refuse a license plate due the letters being in bad taste.

Not surprisingly, when Attorney-General Leslie Peterson announced the letter combinations BC would be excluding from its 1970 license plates in August of 1969, the list was almost identical to Washington's, and why not given the cultural similarities between the two jurisdictions.

In addition to RYE, GIN, RUM, ALE, PIG, RAT, COW, SEX, SIN, MOO, CIA, FBI, SPY, COP, FAG and HAG (all seen on Washington's list) was added some distinctly Canadian / British combinations such as CAD (i.e. a man who behaves dishonourably, especially towards a woman).

Peterson acknowledged that the MVB had been in touch with its counterparts in other provinces and US states to find out which combinations they had excluded.

Some motorists saw the irony of this decision coming from a government that had been in power for 18 years and had suffered its fair share of scandals and controversies, yet was trying to impose moral standards on license plates.

Others accused the government of being a buzz-kill and not trusting its citizens to contain their emotions upon seeing a random collection of letters on a license plate that might spell something objectionable. While some excluded letter combinations elicited nothing but bafflement:

It was reported that one of the only letter combinations that spelled an actual word that was allowed to be issued was “DAD”. All other letter combinations that spelled words had been weeded out by the MVB in order to try and avoid any complaints or embarrassment.

As an aside, when Ontario announced it was introducing the AAA-000 format for use on its license plates three years later (i.e. 1973), it relied on the same lists as British Columbia for undesirable word combinations.

Naturally, this provided another opportunity to gain an insight into what generally tickled the fancy of male headline writers ...

Despite the paternalism and protestations, the inevitable happened to Vancouver radio DJ John Tanner, who was working the 9 pm. to midnight shift at CKLG AM 730 when the new plates came out.

Given the novelty of the letter prefixes, the station decided to run a segment in 1970 entitled “Freaky License Plates” where listeners could phone and report on whatever combination of letters they had seen that day that inadvertently spelled a word.

According to Tanner (as recounted by John Mackie in the Vancouver Sun), “someone called me and said they saw an FUK.  It turns out it was actually a CK, they had misread it.  But it was too late, because I had already gone on the air and listed my freaky licence plates for the night.  I said ‘Oh, and here’s a report of an FUK. Oh, I thought they were censoring those.’  And then I went into a song or something.  Some mother was tucking her child in that night.  The child was listening to the radio, and she heard me say this and phoned the manager.”

Tanner was fired the next day in what became known as the “Licence Plate Fiasco”.

Although it took much longer, the UFO mystery was eventually solved as well. As part of its “Unexplained Phenomena Series”, the Royal Canadian Mint produced a pure silver Glow-in-the-Dark coin to commemorate “The Duncan Incident” in November of 2023 (which we have embellished ... slightly):

The Mint described “The Duncan Incident” as follows:

Before dawn on the morning of January 1, 1970, a nurse at a hospital in Duncan, B.C., opened the curtain in a patient’s room. What she saw next is depicted on this coin’s colour-over-engraved reverse, where the UFO glows brighter when viewed under a black light (included).

The nurse described seeing a large saucer-shaped craft with a glass-like dome top. Inside the object, which was estimated to be 50 feet (15 metres) in diameter and illuminated from the bottom, two male-like figures clad in dark cloth appeared to be standing in front of a large panel. Absorbed by the sight, the nurse studied both the craft and its occupants, and soon noticed one of the figures slowly turning to face in her direction. The other figure then reached down to grab hold of a lever, and the tilted craft began to spin in a counter-clockwise direction. She called over another nurse to witness the hovering object just as it silently, and swiftly, moved away, though its lights were still visible to two more witnesses who joined them at the window.

With the Mint's announcement of the new coin, Jan White, of Esquimalt, decided it was time to come clean.

In the late 1960s, White and a friend used plastic sheets salvaged from lumberyards, ironed them together to create a balloon shape and then added a frame to the bottom to hold a pie plate that they filled with a gelled denatured alcohol called Sterno to heat the balloon and lift it skyward.

According to White, “the heat would fill the balloon and give it an unworldly glow ...” and, for New Year's Eve 1970, it was decided to bring one to a party in Duncan they had been invited to.

The balloon was launched from the Hospital's parking lot “because there was a wind that night, and [we] used the hospital as a shield from the wind.”

“It took two of us to hold up the plastic while the [fuel] was lit,” said White. “It just sort of quivered and it cast shadows all around the balloon. It was a pretty spectacular thing because the Sterno really gave it an incandescent glow,” so he could see why someone from a distance would consider it a very odd sight with shadowy effects.

With the coin from the Canadian Mint coming out, White felt it was time for the truth to come out.

In early February of 1970, the Vancouver Province newspaper ran a short column marveling at the resourcefulness of motorists who, despite the Motor Vehicle Branch (MVB) not reserving letter combinations, “have discovered a way to pick and choose” the letters they want.

Noting that “there's no law against you finding out however you can what areas are selling plates with certain letters”, the Province profiled the case of plate number “HBC-300”, which was being driven around by D.G. “Pete” Buckley, Regional General Manager of the Hudson's Bay Company.

As reported by the Province, “company sleuths discovered that the Richmond office was selling plates with HBC prefixes, and The Bay sent scores of applications for plates to that office. Some enterprising Bay employee ensured that Buckley's car got the coveted 300 number - he'll go places.”

The Bay, of course, was founded on May 2, 1670 in London, England, and 1970 marked its 300th anniversary - hence the significance of plate “HBC-300”.

Apparently, “at least one other company [was] running around in tight circles trying to find the office that deals in its initials, so far to no avail.” What company this might have been was not stated by the Province.

Seemingly unbeknownst to the Province, its rival, the Vancouver Sun, had published a summary of the letter combinations available at local MVB offices two weeks earlier, including the following entry:

Richmond's easy - 25,000 combinations from HAH-000 to HDE-999.

Richmond in the early 1970s had a population of around 50,000 to 60,000 and likely only had one MVB office, so tracking down the “HBC” prefix really would have been “easy”!

Mistakes were bound to occur in the transition to the new AAA-000 format, and a notable one involved the production of 1,000 sets of the plates (or 2,000 individual plates) that ended with “000”.

Since the mid-1920s, the province had issued “Sample” license plates to other jurisdictions for identification purposes and also to collectors which always displayed the same number; all zeros.

To ensure these plates weren't passed off as legitimate, the law stipulated that zero, or any number of zeros was not considered a number.

Consequently, Stu Jackson, Deputy Superintendent of the Motor Vehicle Branch (MVB) conceded it was not known how this mistake had occurred and that the plates could not be sold and would probably be stored by the MVB.

In the end, they were generally distributed to collectors as “Sample” license plates between 1970 and 1972, which is why actual “Sample” license plates from this period are so hard to come by.

The other “goof” that befell the new plates was the placement of the new decal box at the bottom centre of the plates.

It seems that, in the early 1970s, a lot of British Columbia motorists had a tow hitch on the back of their cars and that the design of cars had the location of the license plate in a spot where the “ball” of the hitch obscured the new decals, as shown:

Testing station officials in Vancouver began to warn-motorists that this situation couldn't go on; “If there's nothing else wrong with the car we just give them a warning but if there are other defects we are telling them to get the ball taken off.”

This was not an issue in 1970 as the decals being provided to motorists were decorative in nature and only intended to serve as practice for forthcoming years.

The Motor Vehicle Branch (MVB) crunched some numbers and estimated that approximately 100,000 vehicles could be affected by this “hitch” and began to advise affected motorists to take their balls off and only use them when needed (i.e. the weekend).

Unfortunately, with the majority of the 1970-72 plates having already been manufactured at Oakalla, the soonest that a fix, in the form of a relocated decal box could occur would be with the new plate series planned for 1973.

From time to time, license plates produced on the 1970 base and displaying the serial number “1970” (with or without a decal) will show-up at flea markets, on-line auctions or license plate meets.

It is generally understood that these were souvenir plates that were sold at the Canadian Pavilion at the 1970 World's Fair (Expo 70) held in Tokyo, Japan.

That said, this has not yet been definitively confirmed.