Canada Dry: Temperance Crusades before Confederation

The Temperance movement has played a large part in the history of Canada. From the founding of the first known temperance society in 1822 until the passage or near passage of prohibition laws in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the province of Canada in 1855, over half a million colonists took the abstinence pledge.

This overview by Jan Noel is the first major study of the subject since Prohibition in Canada by Ruth Spence, published in 1919. Whereas Spence's book was the work of a dedicated prohibition warrior, Noel's study is social history examining the forces that created the temperance movement and the effect of the movement on work, women, children, religion, and social structure.

Noel perceives the call for temperance as a hybrid of idealism and material concerns. She assesses the interplay of these concerns in the regions of British North America where the movement showed strength before Confederation: the Atlantic colonies of Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island; the province of Canada (the southern areas of today's Quebec and Ontario); and the Red River colony.

The temperance movement worked. It eliminated the acceptance of drink in the workplace and reduced the amount of alcohol consumed. It throve best and longest where improved communications and a middle class grew. And in conjunction with the broader social-reform agenda of the day, it remade the manners and morals of British North America.

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