Booze is a history of Canadian drink and drinking from the European conquest to the present. Filled with photographs, ads, and cartoons, this multifaceted story features the liquor traffic, alcohol in Native communities, the law and prohibition, public drunkenness, the workingman’s club, bootlegging, alcoholism, and a wide array of watering holes.

“To write about booze is to enter into a minefield of controversy,” writes Heron, acknowledging the complexity of his subject. Booze is a work of engaging scholarship by one of Canada’s leading historians.

CRAIG HERON is a professor of History at York University in Toronto and the author of several works in Canadian social history, including Working in Steel: The Early Years in Canada, 1883-1935, The Workers? Revolt in Canada, 1917-1925, Booze: A Distilled History, and The Workers? Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada. He lives in Toronto.

Craig Heron's profile page

Heron deftly weaves together the intersection of alcohol consumption with such issues as community recreation, the regulation of public morality, the growth of policing, the Canadian suffrage movement, and class and racial divides.

Quill & Quire