Toying with Temperance: How the Prohibition Movement Succeeded in Canada Following World War I
This is an essay I wrote for a history class a few years ago - Canada since 1867. This post-Confederation peek gives a glimpse into our country's brewing history from the narrow years of our prohibition movement. Enjoy!
Figure 1: A man carries a keg of beer in Toronto during prohibition, Sept. 16, 1916 (Library and Archives Canada, MIKAN no. 3193881)
Prohibition and the control of alcohol sale and consumption was not a new idea within Canada by World War I. The Temperance Movement had its origins in the 1820s and had become more common in regional pockets throughout the century.1 However, during this time there was little support for official legislation to restrict drinking in the newly declared country. Despite early Canadians having a vested interest in beer and alcohol consumption as a constitutional right, both for pleasure and business ventures, the Temperance Movement was able to get prohibition approved throughout most of the country from the late 1910s to the 1920s. While the push for anti-alcohol did not encompass all of Canada and was not permanent, the lasting influence on local legislation and policy against the sale and consumption of alcohol was due to the softness and misdirected lobbying of anti-prohibitionists, the Great War and the disconnect between the soldiers in Europe and the home front, as well as traditional religious ties of the Canadian population. By the late 1920’s about 75 percent of Canada’s breweries had shut their doors,2 and the liquor industry would never be the same again in the country.
Beginning in the late 1830s committees and petitions were organized within parts of what is now Canada to study the issue of liquor traffic. It was believed that alcohol was a large factor in the potential decline of society. While Nova Scotia carried out studies for over ten years, Upper and Lower Canada were less enthusiastic about supporting the initial push for alcohol restrictions.3 The post-Confederation government had a similar mentality and chose not to interfere or contend with budding national unity, an important platform for Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister in 1867.4 However, it was not merely the government’s failure to act nor the power of the prohibitionists that resulted in a surge in the Temperance Movement in the early twentieth century. Canadian brewers and other anti-prohibitionists were a mismanaged, divided, and lethargic group. Although the seeds of prohibition had been growing for decades, the defence of the liquor industry was lacking throughout this time. Unfortunately for this group, a change in prime minister would be encouragement for the temperance members as well. MacDonald, a man known to enjoy his drink, resigned in 1873 and the dry Alexander Mackenzie formed a Liberal government. In his new role Mackenzie helped push for prohibition legislation at a larger level than ever, and in 1878 the government passed the Scott Act (also known as the Canadian Temperance Act) by popular vote.5 Although two previous prohibition acts (the Cameron Act 1852, and the Dunkin Act 1864) were not as successful, the Scott Act allowed for “local option”: the ability of local governments and populations to determine if they wanted to be “wet” or “dry”, i.e. to allow the sale of alcohol or not, respectively.6 Though many brewers were against such early legislation, not all brewers provided a concerted effort to stop policies because of personal interests. Many in the business had religious inclinations which tampered with career ambitions, others simply did not foresee growth in their industry due to existing temperance movements and smaller brewers believed “enormous profits could be made by violating the intent of the law”.7 The latter is to say that selling beer to dry and rural regions would make the smaller brewer more profitable over larger production facilities who may be caught if they did the same. As mentioned, many brewers did not seem invested in their professions long-term. For instance, during the 1892 Royal Commission on Liquor Traffic when asked if they would give up their brewery if compensated, about half of the brewers said they would.8 By 1914, brewers still lacked cohesive strategies to fight against larger temperance groups who were united in their plight against perceived immorality. Brewers lacked the ability to coordinate internal or external activities9 due to religious, political, economic or regional differences. Although some brewers appealed to the Senate to alter the Scott Act for allowance of the sale of beer due to its low alcohol percentage as compared to spirits,10 others saw no issue with the Scott Act, as they were still able to sell their beer to “wet” areas.11 In addition, many brewers within the Canadian Brewers and Maltsters’ Association (CBMA) pursued only inside-lobbying12 - instead of petitioning to the public as well, they only petitioned to those in government. Even though the brewing industry did have a paid lobbyist as early as 1852,13 it was not until after 1900 the brewer’s association realized it must form a more “grass roots movement” geared directly to the public;14 yet this still did not come to fruition until after World War I started, almost one hundred years after the Temperance Movement’s public lobbying began. Ignoring the power of the people would be the biggest disadvantage for the brewers’ so-called alliance. Prohibitionists had long realized that positive results relied on the majority and that they were in “a fight for the hearts and minds of Canadians, as much as for having influence in the corridors of power”.15 As early as the late 1800s the Dominion Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquor Traffic16 utilized both inside and outside of government lobbying for their cause. Additionally, brewers did not seek unions with other industries where numbers would have outweighed prohibitionists. In 1909, a temperance supporter from Saint John, New Brunswick said the brewers “held no public meetings, nor did they appear at our meetings”.17 Those in favour of alcohol were not eager to voice their position. The trickle-down effect of prohibition policies impacted “labourers, farmers, hotel and tavern owners, barrel makers, bottles, shippers, vintners, and distillers” as well as newspapers who published liquor advertisements and magistrates who provided retail liquor licenses.18 This was a huge portion of the working class. Furthermore, both the local governments and the working class feared higher taxes that prohibition may result in, to supplement a decline in liquor taxes.19 There were a few labour leaders who opposed full prohibition directly to the government, and only some “licensed victuallers” (landlords of a public house or similar licensed establishment), distilleries, and Bacchanalian Societies also voiced their opposition.20 Breweries, about 131 throughout the country, would have had a huge impact on the anti-prohibition cause had they banded together with others.21 Yet in the end, when freedoms were being fought for passionately overseas prohibition was provincially enacted throughout the late 1910’s, and “legacies were lost; thousands of well-paying jobs disappeared; and the civil liberties of thirsty Canadians were restricted”.22
The start of the twentieth century saw the rise of the Temperance Movement like never before. Although it had been active in Canada for just under a century it was not until World War I that the cause began to see the fruits of its labour, not only within the swing of the general public’s opinion but also in official legislation and policy. By 1902 only Prince Edward Island had officially brought in prohibition laws and the cause for moral salvation was becoming somewhat stagnant.23 However, when the Great War began in 1914 and Canada joined the British effort against the Central Powers, those who supported the anti-alcohol movement used patriotism as their new principle.24 The war was viewed as a time for the Dominion of Canada to show loyalty and skill on the world stage - those who were not able to actively fight were expected to still do all they could at home to help. The home front was involved in farming, manufacturing of munitions and generally devoted time, work, and resources towards the war effort.25 The Temperance Movement viewed pubs as destructive, and those who frequented them as having a lack of self-control while shirking responsibility.26 By placing all manpower and materials towards the war there would be a significant increase in military, industrial and farming efficiency, said the prohibitionists.27 One prohibitionist advertisement from 1916, as quoted in Smart and Ogborne, pushed the dichotomy between support for the war or alcohol:
This prescribed the idea that ambiguity was not possible when it came to alcohol consumption and the Great War - the public had to choose between their desire for drink and their country. Many at home argued that alcohol degraded both the fighting and moral skills of soldiers and allowed them to become “prey” to local women.29 Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, F.X. Lemieux, wrote to Prime Minister Borden in 1917 that the army was a “school of drunkenness and depravity”.30 While there were very few in the army who were teetotallers, those that existed wrote letters to home which further built up the concern of “alcohol abuse” among soldiers and camps. Some correspondence was taken up by the Temperance Movement as a method of inciting a moral panic on the home front; this included one medical officer who wrote to his father, “I don’t know what you’re doing in Canada about the drink business, but if you’ve any influence, for God’s sake use it to suppress the cursed liquor traffic during the war”.31 This multi-layered defence of morality from various public realms and figures was hard to defend, especially for the public who were not able to read much from the army directly. The argument made by many mothers of soldiers further emphasized the disconnect of morals between the home front and the front lines. Many women claimed that their boys were unaccustomed to the irresistible temptations of alcohol and the moral sins that it could lead to. A lot of soldiers already in Europe found this argument contradictory though, as they were being asked to kill but not to drink in order to save their morals and souls. Yet, Borden took the mothers’ views seriously as their opinions and influence were pragmatically affecting continued enlistment.32 However, contrary to the ad above Britain never enacted prohibition and the majority of Canadian soldiers overseas did not support the idea of prohibition either at home or within their battalion. One soldier, Harold Baldwin, wrote in his 1918 memoirs that sips of alcohol helped “’keep in little warmth in their poor battered bodies’” as soldiers were “forced to live in vast, impersonal camps, where they were daily trained in methods of killing the enemy”.33 During the war the soldier became less of an individual and instead was used successfully as “a tool to achieve redemption of a nation”.34 The soldier became the idealized form of goodness and morality and as such were supposed to rid themselves of what many at home considered unnecessary evils.35 Following the war, many veterans publicly protested the national prohibition which Borden enacted in 1917. Four hundred veterans marched against a Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) parade in Toronto in 1919;36 “citizen-soldiers had fought for freedom and were now to return home to a country that denied them one of the few pleasures that they had found overseas”.37 Regardless of best intentions, prohibitionists and supporters had created a major rift in the country. Limited resources, a bombardment of rumoured vices and unconfirmed lifestyles allowed the Temperance Movement to prey on the general public’s fears for their sons, their morality, and their country in order to push through their own agenda despite the opinions and disapproval of those actively fighting.
One of the major reasons that temperance began in North America was due to the strict values and beliefs of the many Protestant immigrants who arrived from Europe. Indigenous groups in Canada did not drink fermented beverages prior to French settlement around the sixteenth century, however alcohol eventually became a major contributor to trade and income throughout the territory,38 much to the chagrin of English Protestants who would arrive in the coming decades. Many Protestants, particularly Methodists, believed in ascetic conduct in all facets of life;39 therefore, it was believed that indulgence in vices such as alcohol led to a poor work ethic and increased the likelihood of sin. The “holy crusade”40 against the alcohol industry began to pick up momentum due to ties with the U.S., rather than with Britain as many assumed. Many clergy for Canadian churches came from the south and, unlike Catholic and Anglican leaders, it was Protestant evangelicals, Methodists and Presbyterians who pushed the hardest for temperance. Many Anglicans believed that there was too much “fanaticism” in Protestant and temperance belief, which was supported by the idea that one was considered a “bad” Methodist if not part of the Temperance Movement in the late 1800s.41 During World War I the fight for Christianity grew out of the general fight for freedoms and much of the propaganda given to the Canadian public centered on upstanding morals and Christian beliefs against “the Hun”, i.e. the Germans.42
Figure 2: The Pioneer , Hamilton, Dec 17 1915
As there were still divisions within the religious body concerning temperance, the debate constantly shifted but one recurring topic revolved around references to alcohol in the Bible. Various parts of Jesus’ narrative and miracles concern the manufacturing, distribution and consumption of wine. There were some clergymen who would use this, along with the knowledge that beer was of a low alcohol level, to push against prohibition and in favour of simple moderation instead of a full ban on alcohol.43 On the other hand, prohibitionists debated that “beer did not exist in Christ’s time, and therefore, if one was to live in godly perfection, one should abstain”.44 Although beer was indeed brewed and consumed much prior to Jesus’ time, the Temperance Movement still argued of a slippery slope toward hard liquors. Furthermore, a lack of French-Canadian, non-British and Jewish names in the WCTU roster realistically showed the religious divisions concerning prohibition.45 Although the WCTU was officially non-denominational, the “Christian” portion of their name along with predominantly evangelical and Protestant beliefs highlighted a major bias concerning their feelings towards alcohol.46 During this time brewers were still highly influenced by their churches and their wives, both of whom typically had a vested interest in quelling alcohol consumption and steering morality in general.47 For example, John Carling, owner of Carling Brewery in Ontario and Member of Parliament, was so concerned about his products’ effects on people that he lobbied provincial and federal governments to build a regional insane asylum. Carling, a Methodist, believed alcohol was linked to insanity and corruption.48 In keeping with the Protestant-heavy support of prohibition the movement had the least support in the predominantly Catholic Quebec.49 As mentioned above, many Catholic bishops even supported the idea of drinking, though sensibly and in moderation. By the late 1800s, the entire prohibition movement in Canada took on the larger political and cultural Canadian divide of anti-French and anti-Catholic.50 Methodists and Baptists in Canada even became the self-proclaimed moral authorities on alcohol consumption, its harms and most importantly how to rid oneself of the sin. This power would not be directly challenged for the next one hundred years.51 There were specific religious groups who opposed the alcohol industry and promoted a moral lifestyle: the Independent Order of Good Templars, the Salvation Army, young people’s unions of most Protestant denominations (not Anglicans), the Christian Temperance Union, the Centennial Methodist Church, the Sons of Temperance and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union who, in 1898, all coordinated efforts to lobby Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier prior to the national prohibition plebiscite.52 Only three letters of the total 97 Laurier received were anti-prohibition, and all of these three were written by Edward O’Keefe, owner of Victoria Brewery in Toronto.53 Temperance had a vocal and united front unlike their opposition as mentioned above. This plebiscite saw a technical majority for the prohibitionists, but at only 51.3 percent Laurier believed a close margin would still divide the country and chose not to follow through on passing any law.54 Once the Great War began in 1914, although chaplains on the front line were morally against the consumption of alcohol many still supported the controlled sale of liquor through wet canteens. This was viewed as the lesser of two evils, as the soldiers had access to purchasing “bad” alcohol (high percentage) from local towns or villages and were likely to cope either way as mentioned earlier. The prohibitionists, however, viewed the war as an opportunity to shift temporarily from their place as “tensely religious type of patriot”55 towards a platform of general loyalty and pragmatic conservation for the good of the nation. The Social Gospel movement further encouraged the “responsibility” of both religious, mostly Protestant, and non-religious moral entrepreneurs to rid society of vices such as drinking, gambling, smoking and violence. The movement spread throughout the U.S. and Canada during and after the war to usher in a better society for all.56 Impressing strong Protestant morality, Presbyterian Minister John Rennie, originally of Scotland but living in Ontario, believed that “‘the whole army of living God’ must battle against [alcohol’s] destructive power so that eventually ‘our beloved country is purified and saved’”.57 With hopes of general social reform, this movement eventually garnered support of some Catholics and Anglicans in eastern Canada, further establishing the Temperance Movement’s success. While views concerning prohibition were split throughout Canada, the fear of depraved morality and sinfulness was harnessed and strengthened by religious enthusiasts eager to rid their country of alcohol’s evils.
Prohibition resulted in the loss of business and entrepreneurship in areas that went dry, causing “bottom feeders” to buy many businesses and land that could no longer afford to stay open. Large companies became massive, and small operations that were still open could not stay open for long.58 It also provided a niche market for illegal drinking establishments, rum-running, as well as the production and sale of alcohol to areas outside of dry jurisdiction territories. Although prohibition was not concrete in much of Canada past the 1930s, instead of being followed by a liberalization of liquor many provinces saw government-sanctioned control on liquor sales and consumption indefinitely. Sarah Hamill states that this shift reflected more effective legislation and supervision concerning alcohol consumption59 which, though not a clone of the often religiously-backed temperance movements, forever limited the free nature of alcohol consumption. While prohibition is often thought of as the “great experiment that failed”,60 it was successful for many years throughout Canada due to lack of motivation and solidarity among anti-prohibitionists, a well-intentioned and facilitated push for the Great War effort, and the fact that a large portion of the population retained austere religious values. Following World War I, the electorate continued to vote for measures that it had become accustomed to during the war, and women who had not had the right to vote prior to or even during the war were now given the ability to influence politics more so.61 These factors allowed the lingering principles of prohibition as well as the government influence on alcohol in society to linger throughout the country into the twenty-first century.
Endnotes
1. Reginald G. Smart and Alan C. Ogborne, Northern Spirits (Toronto: Addition Research Foundation, 1996), 16.
2. Matthew J. Bellamy, “Beer Wars,” Beaver 89, no. 2 (2009). 3. Craig Heron, Booze: A Distilled History (Toronto, Between the Lines, 2003), 152. 4. Matthew J. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry’s Response to Prohibition, 1874-1920," Brewery History 132 (2009): 9; Heron, Booze…, 152. 5. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…", 9. 6.Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 7.Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 10. 8. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 9. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 11. 10. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”; Heron, Booze…, 189-91. 11. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 12. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 8-12. 13. Ibid., 8. 14. Ibid., 9. 15. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 16. Heron, Booze…, 154-55. 17. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 11. 18. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”; Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 24. 19. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 25. 20. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”; Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 12; Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 24. 21. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 4-5. 22. Ibid., 3. 23. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 47. 24. Ibid., 47. 25. Tim Cook, “Wet Canteens and Worrying Mothers: Alcohol, Soldiers and Temperance Groups in the Great War,” Social History 35, no. 70 (2003): 316. 26. Ibid., 316. 27. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 47. 28. Ibid., 47. 29. Cook, “Wet Canteens…”, 327. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 322. 32. Cook, “Wet Canteens…”, 329; Fay Wilson, “Booze, Temperance, and Soldiers on the Home front,” Canadian Military History 25, no. 1 (2016): 6. 33. Cook, “Wet Canteens…”, 329. 34. Wilson, “Booze, Temperance, and Soldiers…”, 5 35. Ibid., 4. 36. Cook, “Wet Canteens…”, 313. 37. Ibid., 312. 38. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 1 and 4. 39. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (Mineola: Dover Publications Inc.:2003): 139-143. 40. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 41. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 16-17. 42. Wilson, “Booze, Temperance, and Soldiers…”, 3-4. 43. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”; Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 25-26. 44. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 45. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 16 and 20. 46. Heron, Booze…, 153. 47. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…", 13-14; Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 50. 48. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 14. 49. Ibid., 2. 50. Heron, Booze…, 156. 51. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 17. 52. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 10-11; Cook, “Wet Canteens…”, 315. 53. Ibid., 11. 54. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 11. 55. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 39. 56. Nancy M. Sheehan, Temperance, The WCTU, and Education in Alberta, 1905-1930 (Edmonton: University of Alberta: 1980): 3-4; Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 50. 57. James L. Sturgis, “The spectre of a drunkard’s grave”: One Family’s Battle with Alcohol in Late Nineteenth-Century Canada,” in Drink in Canada, ed. Cheryl Krasnick Warsh (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993), 115-119. 58. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 3. 59. Sarah Hamill, From prohibition to administrative regulation: the battle for liquor control in Alberta, 1916 to 1939, (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 2014): 188-89. 60. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 39. 61. Ibid., 41.
Bibliography
Bellamy, Matthew J. “The Canadian Brewing Industry’s Response to Prohibition, 1874-1920.” Journal of the Brewery History Society, no. 132 (2009): 2-17.
Bellamy, Matthew J. “Beer Wars.” Beaver 89, no. 2 (2009).
Cook, Tim. “Wet Canteens and Worrying Mothers: Alcohol, Soldiers and Temperance Groups in the Great War,” Social History 35, no. 70 (2003): 311-330.
Hamill, Sarah. From prohibition to administrative regulation: the battle for liquor control in Alberta, 1916 to 1939. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta, 2014.
Heron, Craig. Booze: A Distilled History. Toronto, Canada: Between the Lines, 2003.
Sheehan, Nancy M. Temperance, the WCTU, and Education in Alberta, 1905-1930. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta, 1980.
Smart, Reginald and Alan C. Ogborne. Northern Spirits: a social history of alcohol in Canada. Toronto, Canada: Addiction Research Foundation, 1996.
Sturgis, James L. “The spectre of a drunkard’s grave”: One Family’s Battle with Alcohol in Late Nineteenth-Century Canada,” in Drink in Canada, edited by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, 115-143. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications Inc., 2003.
Wilson, Fay. “Booze, Temperance, and Soldiers on the Home front.” Canadian Military History 25, no. 1 (2016): 1-36.
Prohibition and the control of alcohol sale and consumption was not a new idea within Canada by World War I. The Temperance Movement had its origins in the 1820s and had become more common in regional pockets throughout the century.1 However, during this time there was little support for official legislation to restrict drinking in the newly declared country. Despite early Canadians having a vested interest in beer and alcohol consumption as a constitutional right, both for pleasure and business ventures, the Temperance Movement was able to get prohibition approved throughout most of the country from the late 1910s to the 1920s. While the push for anti-alcohol did not encompass all of Canada and was not permanent, the lasting influence on local legislation and policy against the sale and consumption of alcohol was due to the softness and misdirected lobbying of anti-prohibitionists, the Great War and the disconnect between the soldiers in Europe and the home front, as well as traditional religious ties of the Canadian population. By the late 1920’s about 75 percent of Canada’s breweries had shut their doors,2 and the liquor industry would never be the same again in the country.
Beginning in the late 1830s committees and petitions were organized within parts of what is now Canada to study the issue of liquor traffic. It was believed that alcohol was a large factor in the potential decline of society. While Nova Scotia carried out studies for over ten years, Upper and Lower Canada were less enthusiastic about supporting the initial push for alcohol restrictions.3 The post-Confederation government had a similar mentality and chose not to interfere or contend with budding national unity, an important platform for Sir John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister in 1867.4 However, it was not merely the government’s failure to act nor the power of the prohibitionists that resulted in a surge in the Temperance Movement in the early twentieth century. Canadian brewers and other anti-prohibitionists were a mismanaged, divided, and lethargic group. Although the seeds of prohibition had been growing for decades, the defence of the liquor industry was lacking throughout this time. Unfortunately for this group, a change in prime minister would be encouragement for the temperance members as well. MacDonald, a man known to enjoy his drink, resigned in 1873 and the dry Alexander Mackenzie formed a Liberal government. In his new role Mackenzie helped push for prohibition legislation at a larger level than ever, and in 1878 the government passed the Scott Act (also known as the Canadian Temperance Act) by popular vote.5 Although two previous prohibition acts (the Cameron Act 1852, and the Dunkin Act 1864) were not as successful, the Scott Act allowed for “local option”: the ability of local governments and populations to determine if they wanted to be “wet” or “dry”, i.e. to allow the sale of alcohol or not, respectively.6 Though many brewers were against such early legislation, not all brewers provided a concerted effort to stop policies because of personal interests. Many in the business had religious inclinations which tampered with career ambitions, others simply did not foresee growth in their industry due to existing temperance movements and smaller brewers believed “enormous profits could be made by violating the intent of the law”.7 The latter is to say that selling beer to dry and rural regions would make the smaller brewer more profitable over larger production facilities who may be caught if they did the same. As mentioned, many brewers did not seem invested in their professions long-term. For instance, during the 1892 Royal Commission on Liquor Traffic when asked if they would give up their brewery if compensated, about half of the brewers said they would.8 By 1914, brewers still lacked cohesive strategies to fight against larger temperance groups who were united in their plight against perceived immorality. Brewers lacked the ability to coordinate internal or external activities9 due to religious, political, economic or regional differences. Although some brewers appealed to the Senate to alter the Scott Act for allowance of the sale of beer due to its low alcohol percentage as compared to spirits,10 others saw no issue with the Scott Act, as they were still able to sell their beer to “wet” areas.11 In addition, many brewers within the Canadian Brewers and Maltsters’ Association (CBMA) pursued only inside-lobbying12 - instead of petitioning to the public as well, they only petitioned to those in government. Even though the brewing industry did have a paid lobbyist as early as 1852,13 it was not until after 1900 the brewer’s association realized it must form a more “grass roots movement” geared directly to the public;14 yet this still did not come to fruition until after World War I started, almost one hundred years after the Temperance Movement’s public lobbying began. Ignoring the power of the people would be the biggest disadvantage for the brewers’ so-called alliance. Prohibitionists had long realized that positive results relied on the majority and that they were in “a fight for the hearts and minds of Canadians, as much as for having influence in the corridors of power”.15 As early as the late 1800s the Dominion Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquor Traffic16 utilized both inside and outside of government lobbying for their cause. Additionally, brewers did not seek unions with other industries where numbers would have outweighed prohibitionists. In 1909, a temperance supporter from Saint John, New Brunswick said the brewers “held no public meetings, nor did they appear at our meetings”.17 Those in favour of alcohol were not eager to voice their position. The trickle-down effect of prohibition policies impacted “labourers, farmers, hotel and tavern owners, barrel makers, bottles, shippers, vintners, and distillers” as well as newspapers who published liquor advertisements and magistrates who provided retail liquor licenses.18 This was a huge portion of the working class. Furthermore, both the local governments and the working class feared higher taxes that prohibition may result in, to supplement a decline in liquor taxes.19 There were a few labour leaders who opposed full prohibition directly to the government, and only some “licensed victuallers” (landlords of a public house or similar licensed establishment), distilleries, and Bacchanalian Societies also voiced their opposition.20 Breweries, about 131 throughout the country, would have had a huge impact on the anti-prohibition cause had they banded together with others.21 Yet in the end, when freedoms were being fought for passionately overseas prohibition was provincially enacted throughout the late 1910’s, and “legacies were lost; thousands of well-paying jobs disappeared; and the civil liberties of thirsty Canadians were restricted”.22
The start of the twentieth century saw the rise of the Temperance Movement like never before. Although it had been active in Canada for just under a century it was not until World War I that the cause began to see the fruits of its labour, not only within the swing of the general public’s opinion but also in official legislation and policy. By 1902 only Prince Edward Island had officially brought in prohibition laws and the cause for moral salvation was becoming somewhat stagnant.23 However, when the Great War began in 1914 and Canada joined the British effort against the Central Powers, those who supported the anti-alcohol movement used patriotism as their new principle.24 The war was viewed as a time for the Dominion of Canada to show loyalty and skill on the world stage - those who were not able to actively fight were expected to still do all they could at home to help. The home front was involved in farming, manufacturing of munitions and generally devoted time, work, and resources towards the war effort.25 The Temperance Movement viewed pubs as destructive, and those who frequented them as having a lack of self-control while shirking responsibility.26 By placing all manpower and materials towards the war there would be a significant increase in military, industrial and farming efficiency, said the prohibitionists.27 One prohibitionist advertisement from 1916, as quoted in Smart and Ogborne, pushed the dichotomy between support for the war or alcohol:
Are we to do our Duty by the Empire or are we to neglect it? Are we to “Be British” indeed and remove a “greater enemy than the Hun” from our midst? Is the sacrifice made by our soldiers for us on the battlefield to be the only sacrifice? The Bar or the War? That is the Question of the Hour. 28
This prescribed the idea that ambiguity was not possible when it came to alcohol consumption and the Great War - the public had to choose between their desire for drink and their country. Many at home argued that alcohol degraded both the fighting and moral skills of soldiers and allowed them to become “prey” to local women.29 Even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, F.X. Lemieux, wrote to Prime Minister Borden in 1917 that the army was a “school of drunkenness and depravity”.30 While there were very few in the army who were teetotallers, those that existed wrote letters to home which further built up the concern of “alcohol abuse” among soldiers and camps. Some correspondence was taken up by the Temperance Movement as a method of inciting a moral panic on the home front; this included one medical officer who wrote to his father, “I don’t know what you’re doing in Canada about the drink business, but if you’ve any influence, for God’s sake use it to suppress the cursed liquor traffic during the war”.31 This multi-layered defence of morality from various public realms and figures was hard to defend, especially for the public who were not able to read much from the army directly. The argument made by many mothers of soldiers further emphasized the disconnect of morals between the home front and the front lines. Many women claimed that their boys were unaccustomed to the irresistible temptations of alcohol and the moral sins that it could lead to. A lot of soldiers already in Europe found this argument contradictory though, as they were being asked to kill but not to drink in order to save their morals and souls. Yet, Borden took the mothers’ views seriously as their opinions and influence were pragmatically affecting continued enlistment.32 However, contrary to the ad above Britain never enacted prohibition and the majority of Canadian soldiers overseas did not support the idea of prohibition either at home or within their battalion. One soldier, Harold Baldwin, wrote in his 1918 memoirs that sips of alcohol helped “’keep in little warmth in their poor battered bodies’” as soldiers were “forced to live in vast, impersonal camps, where they were daily trained in methods of killing the enemy”.33 During the war the soldier became less of an individual and instead was used successfully as “a tool to achieve redemption of a nation”.34 The soldier became the idealized form of goodness and morality and as such were supposed to rid themselves of what many at home considered unnecessary evils.35 Following the war, many veterans publicly protested the national prohibition which Borden enacted in 1917. Four hundred veterans marched against a Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) parade in Toronto in 1919;36 “citizen-soldiers had fought for freedom and were now to return home to a country that denied them one of the few pleasures that they had found overseas”.37 Regardless of best intentions, prohibitionists and supporters had created a major rift in the country. Limited resources, a bombardment of rumoured vices and unconfirmed lifestyles allowed the Temperance Movement to prey on the general public’s fears for their sons, their morality, and their country in order to push through their own agenda despite the opinions and disapproval of those actively fighting.
One of the major reasons that temperance began in North America was due to the strict values and beliefs of the many Protestant immigrants who arrived from Europe. Indigenous groups in Canada did not drink fermented beverages prior to French settlement around the sixteenth century, however alcohol eventually became a major contributor to trade and income throughout the territory,38 much to the chagrin of English Protestants who would arrive in the coming decades. Many Protestants, particularly Methodists, believed in ascetic conduct in all facets of life;39 therefore, it was believed that indulgence in vices such as alcohol led to a poor work ethic and increased the likelihood of sin. The “holy crusade”40 against the alcohol industry began to pick up momentum due to ties with the U.S., rather than with Britain as many assumed. Many clergy for Canadian churches came from the south and, unlike Catholic and Anglican leaders, it was Protestant evangelicals, Methodists and Presbyterians who pushed the hardest for temperance. Many Anglicans believed that there was too much “fanaticism” in Protestant and temperance belief, which was supported by the idea that one was considered a “bad” Methodist if not part of the Temperance Movement in the late 1800s.41 During World War I the fight for Christianity grew out of the general fight for freedoms and much of the propaganda given to the Canadian public centered on upstanding morals and Christian beliefs against “the Hun”, i.e. the Germans.42
Prohibition resulted in the loss of business and entrepreneurship in areas that went dry, causing “bottom feeders” to buy many businesses and land that could no longer afford to stay open. Large companies became massive, and small operations that were still open could not stay open for long.58 It also provided a niche market for illegal drinking establishments, rum-running, as well as the production and sale of alcohol to areas outside of dry jurisdiction territories. Although prohibition was not concrete in much of Canada past the 1930s, instead of being followed by a liberalization of liquor many provinces saw government-sanctioned control on liquor sales and consumption indefinitely. Sarah Hamill states that this shift reflected more effective legislation and supervision concerning alcohol consumption59 which, though not a clone of the often religiously-backed temperance movements, forever limited the free nature of alcohol consumption. While prohibition is often thought of as the “great experiment that failed”,60 it was successful for many years throughout Canada due to lack of motivation and solidarity among anti-prohibitionists, a well-intentioned and facilitated push for the Great War effort, and the fact that a large portion of the population retained austere religious values. Following World War I, the electorate continued to vote for measures that it had become accustomed to during the war, and women who had not had the right to vote prior to or even during the war were now given the ability to influence politics more so.61 These factors allowed the lingering principles of prohibition as well as the government influence on alcohol in society to linger throughout the country into the twenty-first century.
1. Reginald G. Smart and Alan C. Ogborne, Northern Spirits (Toronto: Addition Research Foundation, 1996), 16.
2. Matthew J. Bellamy, “Beer Wars,” Beaver 89, no. 2 (2009). 3. Craig Heron, Booze: A Distilled History (Toronto, Between the Lines, 2003), 152. 4. Matthew J. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry’s Response to Prohibition, 1874-1920," Brewery History 132 (2009): 9; Heron, Booze…, 152. 5. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…", 9. 6.Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 7.Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 10. 8. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 9. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 11. 10. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”; Heron, Booze…, 189-91. 11. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 12. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 8-12. 13. Ibid., 8. 14. Ibid., 9. 15. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 16. Heron, Booze…, 154-55. 17. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 11. 18. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”; Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 24. 19. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 25. 20. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”; Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 12; Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 24. 21. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 4-5. 22. Ibid., 3. 23. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 47. 24. Ibid., 47. 25. Tim Cook, “Wet Canteens and Worrying Mothers: Alcohol, Soldiers and Temperance Groups in the Great War,” Social History 35, no. 70 (2003): 316. 26. Ibid., 316. 27. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 47. 28. Ibid., 47. 29. Cook, “Wet Canteens…”, 327. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 322. 32. Cook, “Wet Canteens…”, 329; Fay Wilson, “Booze, Temperance, and Soldiers on the Home front,” Canadian Military History 25, no. 1 (2016): 6. 33. Cook, “Wet Canteens…”, 329. 34. Wilson, “Booze, Temperance, and Soldiers…”, 5 35. Ibid., 4. 36. Cook, “Wet Canteens…”, 313. 37. Ibid., 312. 38. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 1 and 4. 39. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (Mineola: Dover Publications Inc.:2003): 139-143. 40. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 41. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 16-17. 42. Wilson, “Booze, Temperance, and Soldiers…”, 3-4. 43. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”; Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 25-26. 44. Bellamy, “Beer Wars”. 45. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 16 and 20. 46. Heron, Booze…, 153. 47. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…", 13-14; Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 50. 48. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 14. 49. Ibid., 2. 50. Heron, Booze…, 156. 51. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 17. 52. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 10-11; Cook, “Wet Canteens…”, 315. 53. Ibid., 11. 54. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 11. 55. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 39. 56. Nancy M. Sheehan, Temperance, The WCTU, and Education in Alberta, 1905-1930 (Edmonton: University of Alberta: 1980): 3-4; Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 50. 57. James L. Sturgis, “The spectre of a drunkard’s grave”: One Family’s Battle with Alcohol in Late Nineteenth-Century Canada,” in Drink in Canada, ed. Cheryl Krasnick Warsh (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993), 115-119. 58. Bellamy, "The Canadian Brewing Industry…”, 3. 59. Sarah Hamill, From prohibition to administrative regulation: the battle for liquor control in Alberta, 1916 to 1939, (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 2014): 188-89. 60. Smart and Ogborne, Northern Spirits, 39. 61. Ibid., 41.
Bellamy, Matthew J. “The Canadian Brewing Industry’s Response to Prohibition, 1874-1920.” Journal of the Brewery History Society, no. 132 (2009): 2-17.
Bellamy, Matthew J. “Beer Wars.” Beaver 89, no. 2 (2009).
Cook, Tim. “Wet Canteens and Worrying Mothers: Alcohol, Soldiers and Temperance Groups in the Great War,” Social History 35, no. 70 (2003): 311-330.
Hamill, Sarah. From prohibition to administrative regulation: the battle for liquor control in Alberta, 1916 to 1939. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta, 2014.
Heron, Craig. Booze: A Distilled History. Toronto, Canada: Between the Lines, 2003.
Sheehan, Nancy M. Temperance, the WCTU, and Education in Alberta, 1905-1930. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta, 1980.
Smart, Reginald and Alan C. Ogborne. Northern Spirits: a social history of alcohol in Canada. Toronto, Canada: Addiction Research Foundation, 1996.
Sturgis, James L. “The spectre of a drunkard’s grave”: One Family’s Battle with Alcohol in Late Nineteenth-Century Canada,” in Drink in Canada, edited by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, 115-143. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications Inc., 2003.
Wilson, Fay. “Booze, Temperance, and Soldiers on the Home front.” Canadian Military History 25, no. 1 (2016): 1-36.
Comments
Post a Comment