Editor’s note: Dan Malleck is a historian of medicine on the Community Health Sciences faculty at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, and he keeps a blog on Canadian drug history. His interview with Points focuses on his recently published book, Try to Control Yourself: The Regulation of Public Drinking in Post-Prohibition Ontario, 1927-44 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012).
1. Describe your book in terms your bartender could understand.
My book looks at the introduction and regulation of public drinking from 1927-1944, after prohibition ended in the province of Ontario. It is focused on the relationship between the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and the management of licensed drinking spaces, mostly hotel beverage rooms and clubs. It argues that the rules which seem so odd today, were part of a long process of negotiation and an attempt to build a viable public drinking system in a highly politically charged environment.
2. What do you think a bunch of drug and alcohol historians might find particularly interesting about your book?
The study might be called grass-roots, in that it examines the regulatory activities of the LCBO in six communities across the large province, from the border communities of Windsor (across from Detroit) and the Niagara region (across from Niagara Falls and Buffalo) to the provincial and national capitals (Toronto and Ottawa, respectively), a mixed rural and urban county with a large ethnic German population (Waterloo) and the large region in the northwest (Thunder Bay). It uses the inspection records and communication between the various levels of the LCBO (senior management and inspectors on the ground) and the beverage room operators, along with communications with politicians, interested social organizations and everyday people to develop a picture of the intricate process of regulating the politically charged issue of public drinking in large and diverse province. Historians may be intrigued or repulsed by the theoretical tools I use.