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Prohibition in Canada was a massive 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.

[edit] References

• The Canadian Encyclopedia, 1988; Hurtig Publishers ISBN 0-88830-328-9