Alcohol and Drugs History Society

Prohibition in the Canadian province of Alberta (article)

Hugh A. Dempsey, "The Day Alberta Went Dry: Prohibition of Selling Liquor in Alberta in 1916," Alberta History 58/2 (2010).

Canada's (mostly Mohawk) underground tobacco industry

The first in a five-part series is available at http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/09/18/post-preview-inside-canadas-underground-tobacco-industry-a-five-part-series/

Taverns in Upper Canada (book review)

Alan McLeod reviews Julia Roberts, In Mixed Company: Taverns and Public Life in Upper Canada (UBC Press, 2009), in A Good Beer Blog.  Deals with Ontario until about 1860.

Beer in Canada (book)

Ian Coutts, Brew North: How Canadians Made Beer and Beer Made Canada (Greystone Books, forthcoming 2010).

Books from WHO and PAHO on Alcohol and Harm

Unhappy Hours: Alcohol and Partner Aggression in the Americas, by (Editors) Kahryn Graham; Sharon Bernards; Myriam Munne; Sharon Wilsnack, June, 2009, The Pan American Health Organization, "brings to light evidence of alcohol's impact on partner aggression from 10 countries in the Americas (Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay, and the United States)"

Alcohol and Injuries, Emergency Department Studies in an International Perspective, May, 2010, The World Health Organization "synthesizes the results of studies from a number of hospital emergency departments conducted in different cultural settings, including the World Health Organization s Collaborative Study on Alcohol and Injuries."

The Customer May Not Always Be Right

Three complaints about "burnt, decaf" earns New Brunswick Tim Horton's customer a life-time ban. The CBC reports.

Pashley's History of Beer in Canada (book review)

For Beppi Crosariol's review of Nicholas Pashley, Cheers! An intemperate History of Beer in Canada (HarperCollins Canada, 2009), see here.

Canadian brewers' response to prohibition, 1874-1920 (article)

M.J. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry's Response to Prohibition, 1874-1920," Brewery History 132 (2009): 2-17.

Alcohol surveillance and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (book)

Gary Genosko and Scott Thompson, Punched Drunk: Alcohol, Surveillance and the LCBO 1927–1975 (Fernwood Publishing, 2009).

 

From the publisher:

In this critical study of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Scott Thompson and Gary Genosko expose the stakes and consequences of the enormous bureaucracy behind the administrative surveillance of alcohol consumption in Ontario. Since its inception in 1927, the LCBO subjected alcohol consumption to its disciplinary gaze and generated knowledge about the drinking population. This book details how the LCBO tracked all alcohol consumption and capitalized on technological advances in order to generate categories and profiles of individuals so they could “control” drinking in the province. While this is a historical project, it also investigates how categorical treatment of populations like First Nations helped to develop and foster stereo-types around addiction that persist to this day.

CONTENTS

Introduction • Temperance, Business and Surveillance at the Birth of the LCBO • Self-Control and the Panoptic LCBO • Accountability: Reconstructing the Fragmented Present • A Kind of Prohibition, Part I: Social Sorting in Ontario • A Kind of Prohibition, Part II: The Application of the LCBO’s Interdiction List • Regulation of Gender Performances and the Interdiction List • From Indigenous to Indigent: Legal and Prototypical Classifications of First Nations • The Politics of Alcohol Surveillance

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gary Genosko is Canada Research Chair in technoculture in the Department of Sociology at Lakehead University. He is the author of Félix Guattari (2009), editor of The Semiotic Review of Books and co-editor of Deleuze Studies.

Scott Thompson is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Victoria. In addition to his publications regarding liquor control, he has published material on National Registration in Canada and the UK.

 

 

History of alcohol and public health in Canada

Renee Lafferty (Brock University) briefly discusses the intersection between alcohol and public health in Canadian history, the topic for a luncheon talk.  For more, see here.