You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Throughout the 1800s, opium and cocaine could be easily obtained to treat a range of ailments in Canada. Dependency, when it occurred, was considered a matter of personal vice. Near the end of the century, attitudes shifted and access to drugs became more restricted. How did this happen? Dan Malleck examines the conditions that led to Canada’s current drug laws. Drawing on newspaper accounts, medical and pharmacy journals, professional association files, asylum documents, physicians’ case books, and pharmacy records, Malleck demonstrates how a number of social, economic, and cultural forces converged in the early 1900s to influence lawmakers and criminalize addiction. His research exposes how social concerns about drug addiction had less to do with the long pipe and shadowy den than with lobbying by medical professionals, a growing pharmaceutical industry, and concern about the morality and future of the nation.
As rates of illegal drug use increase, the debates over drug policy heat up. While some believe penalties should be harsher, others advocate complete decriminalisation. Certainly, debate over the 'war on drugs' is not new. In the early 1920s, as the drive for Chinese Exclusion gathered steam, Canadians blamed the Chinese for the growing use of opium and other drugs, and parliamentarians passed extremely harsh drug laws to counter this use. These laws remained in place until the 1960s. In Jailed for Possession, Catherine Carstairs examines the impact of these drug laws on users' health, work lives, and relationships. In the middle of the century, drug users regularly went to jail for up to tw...
Countless authors, historians, journalists, and screenwriters have written about the prohibition era, an age of jazz and speakeasies, gangsters and bootleggers. But only a few have explored what happened when governments turned the taps back on. Dan Malleck shifts the focus to Ontario following repeal of the Ontario Temperance Act, an age when the government struggled to please both the “wets” and the “drys,” the latter a powerful lobby that continued to believe that alcohol consumption posed a terrible social danger. Malleck’s investigation of regulation in six diverse communities reveals that rather than only pandering to temperance forces, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario sought to define and promote manageable drinking spaces in which citizens would learn to 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.
Cultural pastime, profitable industry, or harmful influence on the nation? Liquor and the Liberal State explores government approaches to drink and drinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In The Real Dope, Edgar-Andre Montigny brings together leading scholars from a diverse range of fields to examine the relationship between moral judgment and legal regulation in the debate surrounding the potential decriminalization of marijuana.
The World of Niagara Wine is a transdisciplinary exploration of the Niagara wine industry. In the first section, contributors explore the history and regulation of wine production as well as its contemporary economic significance. The second section focuses on the entrepreneurship behind and the promotion and marketing of Niagara wines. The third introduces readers to the science of grape growing, wine tasting, and wine production, and the final section examines the social and cultural ramifications of Niagara’s increasing reliance on grapes and wine as an economic motor for the region. The original research in this book celebrates and critiques the local wine industry and situates it in a complex web of Old World traditions and New World reliance on technology, science, and taste as well as global processes and local sociocultural reactions. Preface by Konrad Ejbich.
Using a wide range of visual and textual evidence, Nicholas illuminates both the frequent public debates about female appearance and the realities of feminine self-presentation in 1920s Canada.
This book examines alcohol production, consumption, regulation, and commerce, alongside the gendered, medical, religious, ideological, and cultural practices that surrounded alcohol from 1850 to 1950. Through analyzing major changes in alcohol's place in society, contributors demonstrate the important connections between industrialization, empire-building, and the growth of the nation-state. They also identify the diverse actors and communities that built, contested, and resisted those processes around the world. Overall, this book proposes a new global framework that is vital to understanding how deeply alcohol was involved in central processes shaping the modern world. It shows how empires...
This book considers the problem of excessive drinking and the ‘drink crisis’ which apparently hindered the British war effort during the First World War.
Covering Niagara: Studies in Local Popular Culture closely examines some of the myriad forms of popular culture in the Niagara region of Canada. Essays consider common assumptions and definitions of what popular culture is and seek to determine whether broad theories of popular culture can explain or make sense of localized instances of popular culture and the cultural experiences of people in their daily lives. Among the many topics covered are local bicycle parades and war memorials, cooking and wine culture, radio and movie-going, music stores and music scenes, tourist sites, and blackface minstrel shows. The authors approach their subjects from a variety of critical and historical perspectives and employ a range of methodologies that includes cultural studies, textual analysis, archival research, and participant interviews. Altogether, Covering Niagara provides a richly diverse mapping of the popular culture of a particular area of Canada and demonstrates the complexities of everyday culture.