Try to Control Yourself

The Regulation of Public Drinking in Post-Prohibition Ontario, 1927-44

By Dan Malleck
Categories: History, Health, Social Work & Psychology, Health & Medicine, Canadian History, Political Science, Public & Social Policy, Canadian Political Science
Publisher: UBC Press
Hardcover : 9780774822206, 324 pages, April 2012
Paperback : 9780774822213, 324 pages, January 2013
Ebook (PDF) : 9780774822220, 324 pages, April 2012
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Table of contents

Introduction: The Emergence of Liquor Control Bureaucracy in Ontario

1 Liquor Control Bureaucracy and the Mechanisms of Governance

2 The Public Life of Liquor, 1927-34

3 Idealistic Form and Realistic Function: Restructuring Public Drinking Space

4 Hearing the Voices: Community Input and the Reshaping of Public Drinking Behaviour

5 “As a Result of Representations Made”: Clientelism and the (Dys)function of Patronage in the LCBO's Regulatory Activities

6 Restructuring Recreation in the Drinking Space

7 Women, Children, and the Family in the Public Drinking Space

8 “Their Medley of Tongues and Eternal Jangle”: Regulating the Racial and Ethnic Outsider

9 Public Drinking and the Challenges of War

Conclusion

Appendix: The Communities

Notes

Bibliography

Index

An engaging account of the Ontario government’s vision for reconstructing a public culture of drink following repeal of the Ontario Temperance Act.

Description

The prohibition era of gangsters and bootleggers has captured our imagination. But what happened when government turned the taps back on? Dan Malleck shows that contrary to popular belief, post-prohibition Ontario was an age when the government struggled to please both the “wets” and the “drys.” Rather than pandering to temperance groups, officials sought to define and promote manageable drinking spaces in which citizens would follow the rules of proper drinking and foster self-control. The regulation of liquor consumption was a remarkable bureaucratic balancing act between temperance and its detractors but equally between governance and its ideal drinker.