There is no general study of prohibition and the prohibition movement in Canada that is readily available. Jack A. Blyth has a chapter "Wets and Drys and the Demon Rum", pp. 192-241 in his The Canadian Social Inheritance (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1972). It is, as it admits, only a rough sketch of developments in Canada, Britain, and the United States, and the Canadian section is concerned largely with Toronto. It is available in paperback.
The very early days of the movement are dealt with in the chapter "Temperance" in W.H. Eglee, The Social Teachings of the Canadian Churches: Protestant: The Early Period, Before 1850 (Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1964), pp. 135-159. This is a careful and thoughtful study, though it may overstress denominational factors. The final days of the movement are reflected in a collection of documents in J.M. Bumsted (ed.), Documentary Problems in Canadian History Volume 2, Post-Confederation (Georgetown: Irwin-Dorsey, 1969), available in paperback. The documents in the chapter "The Triumph and Decline of Prohibition", pp. 185-214, were selected by Richard Allen who also contributed a useful introductory essay. These documents must, however, be interpreted with caution, since they often reflect the views of an elite rather than the movement in general. Another document to be treated with caution, but which is still useful for an understanding of opinions of the time, is the Report of the Royal Commission on the Liquor Traffic, 1896 (Toronto: Newton & Treloar, 1896), available as a reprint of the summary entitled The Facts of the Case: a summary of the most important evidence and argument presented in the Report of the Royal Commission on the Liquor Traffic (Toronto: Coles, 1973). Very brief treatments of the movement may be found in Ralph Allen, Ordeal by Fire: Canada, 1910-1945 (Toronto: Doubleday, 1961) and in Robert Craig Brown and Ramsay Cook, Canada, 1896-1921; A Nation Transformed (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974).
For a fuller study of reformist movements and concerns closely related to prohibition, see Richard Allen, The Social Passion; Religion and Social Reform in Canada, 1914-1928 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971) and Richard Allen, ed., The Social Gospel in Canada; Papers of the interdisciplinary conference on the social gospel in Canada, March 21-24, 1973 (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, National Museum of Man, History Division, 1975, Mercury Series Paper No. 9). All other sources easily available are provincial or regional.
Nova Scotia is represented by "Prohibition and the Social Gospel in Nova Scotia" by E.R. Forbes in Samuel D. Clark, J. Paul Grayson, and Linda M. Grayson (eds.), Prophecy and Protest: Social Movements in Twentieth Century Canada (Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing Ltd., 1975), pp. 62-86, available in paperback. It deals with the later stages of the movement. Smuggling along the eastern seaboard, mostly from Canada to the United States, is examined in Malcolm E. Willoughby, Rum War at Sea (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964) and Janice Patton, The Sinking of the "I'm Alone" (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1973) available in paperback.
Father Chiniquy was certainly the most spectacular of Quebec's temperance advocates. He is the subject of Marcel Trudel's Chiniquy (Trois-RiviÅres: Editions du Bien Public, 1955). It should be remembered, however, that this is a study of Chiniquy rather than the movement. For some indication of the extent of Chiniquy's following, see Jacques Monet, The Last Cannon Shot: A Study of French Canadian Nationalism 1837-1850 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), The shift to government sale of liquor is discussed very briefly by Antonin Dupont in "Louis-Alexandre Taschereau et la lÄgislation sociale au QuÄbec, 1920-1936", Revue d'histoire de l'AmÄrique franìaise, Vol. 26, no. 3, dÄcembre, 1972, pp. 397-426.
The movement in Ontario has received considerable study, including a valuable article by Jean R. Burnet. It is "The Urban Community and Changing Moral Standards" in Samuel D. Clark, Urbanism and the Changing Canadian Society (Tronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), pp. 70-99. One of the few studies of temperance literature is James M. Clemens, "Taste Not; Touch Not; Handle Not: A Study of the Social Assumptions of Temperance Literature and Temperance Supporters in Canada West Between 1839 and 1859", Ontario History, Vol .64, no. 3, September, 1972, pp. 142-160. This should be coupled with a reading of M.A. Garland and J.J. Talman, "Pioneer Drinking Habits and the Rise of Temperance Agitation in Upper Canada prior to 1840" in Frederick Henry Armstrong, Hugh A. Stevenson, and John Donald Wilson, Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Ontario: essays presented to James J. Talman (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), pp. 171-194. The reasons for prohibition and the class nature of the movement are examined in M.G. Decarie, "Something Old, Something New: Aspects of Prohibitionism in the 1890's" in Donald Swainson, ed., Oliver Mowat's Ontario: papers presented the Oliver Mowat Colloquium Queen's University, 1970 (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1972), pp. 154-171, available in paperback. A linkage to a form of Canadian nationalism is considered in M. Graeme Decarie, "Paved with Good intentions: The Prohibitionists' Road to Racism in Ontario", Ontario History, Volume 66, no. 1, March, 1974, pp. 15-22. Ontario's Conservative Party was generally considered to be unsympathetic to the prohibition movement, but Brian Douglas Tennyson questions that in "Sir William Hearst and the Ontario Temperance Act", Ontario History, Volume 55, no. 4, December, 1963, pp. 233-245. The years of prohibition are examined in Gerald A. Hallowell, Prohibition in Ontario, 1919-1923 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1972), available in paperback as Ontario Historical Society research publication, no. 2. The most useful sections are those dealing with newspaper opinion and with enforcement difficulties. For a look at the seamy conditions that prohibition was a response to, read Christopher St. George Clark, Of Toronto, the Good: A Social Study: The Queen City of Canada as it is (Toronto: Coles, 1970). This is a lively book but not entirely reliable since it consists largely of gossip. Finally, there is G.P. de T. Glazebrook's Life in Ontario: A Social History (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1966). The second chapter, "The Individual in Society", pp. 198-219, touches on some of the ramifications of the movement.
A readable account of prohibition in the West is James H. Gray's Booze: The Impact of Whiskey on the Prairie West (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1972). Booze is weak on the goals and ramifications of prohibition but excellent on the conditions that gave rise to it and on the smuggling of the prohibition years. It is available in paperback. Mr. Gray also contributes an often perceptive account of the decline of prohibition in the West in The Roar of the Twenties (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1975). The dangers of an arbitrary control system lacking popular support are illustrated in D.M. McLeod, "Liquor Control in the North-West Territories: The Permit System, 1870-1891", Saskatchewan History, Vol. 16, no. 3, Autumn, 1963, pp. 81-89. The relation of prohibition to other reforms and the part played by World War I in bringing them about is the subject of John H. Thompson, " `The Beginning of Our Regeneration': The Great War and Western Canadian Reform Movements", in Samuel D. Clark, J. Paul Grayson, and Linda M. Grayson (eds.), Prophecy and Protest: Social Movements in Twentieth Century Canada (Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing Ltd., 1975), pp. 87-104. Professor Thompson also suggests the difficulties of assessing prohibition sentiment on the basis of wartime actions. It is available in paperback.
