Try to Control Yourself by Dan Malleck, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

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. In Try to Control Yourself, Dan Malleck shifts the focus to the province of Ontario after the 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. Did the Liquor Control Board of Ontario pander to temperance forces, or did it forge a new path? Malleck’s from-the-ground-up historical research of regulation in six diverse communities – Toronto, Ottawa, Niagara, Essex County, Waterloo County, and Thunder Bay district – reveals that the Board placated anti-liquor groups while at the same time seeking to define and promote manageable drinking spaces. Its goal was to provide more appealing places in which to consume alcohol than the many illegal drinking dens or “blind pigs," places where 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. | Try to Control Yourself by Dan Malleck, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters