Prohibition in Canada

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Prohibition in Canada was an attempt to make illegal by law the distribution and selling of alcohol, beginning in the late 19th Century. It reached its height in the 1920s, when outside imports were cut off by provincial plebiscites.

[edit] Origins

Prohibition was mostly spurred on by the efforts of people of the Temperance movement to close all drinking establishments, which were places of drunkenness and misery. The main temperance organizations at the time were the Dominion Alliance for the Total Suppression of the Liquore Traffic and the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Some legislative steps toward Prohibition were taken in the 19th Century. The passage of the Dunkin Act in the United Province of Canada in 1864 allowed any county to forbid the sale of liquor by majority vote.

An official, but non-binding, federal referendum was held in 1898 on prohibition, receiving 51.3% for and 48.7% against prohibition on a voter turnout of 44%. Prohibition had a majority in all provinces except Quebec, where a strong 81.10% voted against it [1]. Despite this electoral majority, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier's government chose not to introduce a federal bill on prohibition in Parliament, mindful of the strong antipathy in Quebec.

As a result, Canadian prohibition was instead enacted through laws passed by the provinces during the first twenty years of the 20th century. Prince Edward Island was the first to bring in prohibition in 1900. Alberta and Ontario passed prohibition laws in 1916. Quebec passed legislation in 1918 that would have prohibited alcohol from 1919 until the end of World War I. However, since the war ended in 1918, prohibition was never implemented in the province. The provinces then repealed their prohibition laws, mostly during the 1920s. Quebec was the first to repeal in 1920, making it the province enforcing prohibition for the shortest period of time; Prince Edward Island was last to repeal in 1948. Alberta repealed in 1924, along with Saskatchewan, upon realizing that the laws were unenforceable.

Realizing that they could not stop people from drinking entirely, temperance advocates successfully pressured all provincial and territorial governments to curtail the sale of liquor as much as possible through the tight control of liquor control boards. Nevertheless, some communities, such as the city of Owen Sound, Ontario, continued to outlaw liquor well into the 1970s.