In general racism became less fashionable during World War II with two incidents in 1940 illustrating a tendency towards increased tolerance as feelings of wartime national solidarity made displays of prejudice less acceptable. A Vancouver bar that refused to serve a Black man was fined by a judge when the said man complained while in Toronto a skating rink that turned away blacks found itself the object of a boycott and demonstrations by students from the University of Toronto until the owners of the rink finally agreed to accept Black patrons. The incidents in Toronto and Vancouver, as small as they were, would have been inconceivable ten or even five years before. Winks wrote that if the Second World War was not the end of racism in Canada, but it was the beginning of the end as for the first time that many practices that been considered normal were subject to increasing vocal criticism as many Black Canadians started to become more assertive.