A KIND of PROHIBITION: Alcohol Administration in Pre-Computer Ontario, Canada 1927-1975
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A KIND OF PROHIBITION: Alcohol Administration in Pre-Computer Ontario, Canada 1927-1975 Scott N. Thompson Advisor: Dr. Gary Genosko Department of Sociology, Lakehead University Thunder Bay 2006 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 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The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protège cette thèse. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformément à la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privée, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont été enlevés de cette thèse. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................i Introduction ........................................................................................................ii Chapter 1 ............................................................................................................. 1 Temperance Morality, Business and Surveillance at the Birth of the LCBO Chapter 2 ........................................................................................................... 15 Self-Control: The LCBO and Panopticism Chapter 3; .......................................................................................................... 30 A Kind of Prohibition Part 1: Social Sorting in Ontario Chapter 4 ........................................................................................................... 57 A Kind of Prohibition Part 2: Targets of the LCBO’s Interdiction List Chapter 5: ......................................................................................................... 83 From Indigenous to Indigent: First Nations Legal Classification and the ‘‘Drunken Indian” Prototype Chapter 6 ..........................................................................................................103 Liquor and the Moral Regulation of Women: The LCBO and the Interdiction List from 1927-1975 Conclusion .......................................................................................................136 Works Cited....................................................................................................142 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgements Images and information presented in this paper were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Archives of Ontario Access Request No. 2004-071, Lake of the Woods Museum Scanning Request and the Archives of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario Access Request # 204151 as well as from other requests. The author has made every effort to contact copyright holders of images used in this text. Contact was not possible in all cases. The researcher would like to thank the following people for their support, inspiration and putting up with endless talk about the LCBO - Dr. Gary Genosko, Sarah Perrin, Dr. Rachel Ariss, Dr. Randle Nelsen, Dr. David Peerla, Dr. Wood, Dr. John Baker, Dr. Wade Deisman, Riley Sleeman, Dave Evans, Mary Michaelides, Grandmaster Soengkono (Song Ren), Dr. Tom Dunk, Dr. Pam Wakewich, Janet loannidis and the rest of the Archives of Ontario reading room staff. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Introduction This thesis describes in detail the development of a vast bureaucracy of surveillance by provincial authorities around alcohol control, and concerns itself with the categories employed in a vast social sorting operation of drinkers undertaken from 1927 into the 1970s when the system was finally discontinued. In short, at issue are the contact points where categories are flush with material technologies. This is a history lesson in surveillance, the theoretical relevance of which for today lies precisely in the extraordinary transformations it made possible in terms of social identity construction and control. The social sorts accomplished by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), working in conjunction with three levels of government agencies and police forces, could transform the most private interests into public matters, in the process recategorizing individuals and redefining their material possessions and property. Beyond technology is, then, the power that accrues to those and their cohorts who use the categorization of such personal information for varied and politically motivated purposes of social control. In short, the concern expressed here is with an all-too- contemporary history - “list” making - and its social consequences. To use the ominous words of Edwin Black (2001 ; 92) in his study of the informational equivalent of blitzkrieg, that is, the speed-processing of data by Hollerith machines, when “lists were everywhere” the politics of race became diabolical. In his work IBM and the Holocaust Black correctly points out that “[mjankind barely noticed when the concept of massively organized information quietly emerged to Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ill become a means of social control, a weapon of war, and a roadmap for destruction” (Ibid:7), To this day only modest contributions have been made to the theorization of the social impact of sorting and tabulating technologies on targeted populations, while too little attention has been paid to the vital social moment when these technologies were adopted and put to work by businesses and governments around the world. In this way the field of surveillance research is somewhat troubled, as in-depth, original historical research has been overlooked. The ever increasing development o f‘new’ technologies has, thus far, effectively displaced historical analysis and further fi’agmented knowledge. It is the general purpose of this research to allow for historical analysis to play a more active role in the development and validation of theory within the field, while also contributing to knowledge by reviewing and explaining the historical development of these technologies. More specifically, this research was conducted in order to investigate the development and impact of sorting and tabulating technologies along with their subsequent categories on Canadian populations with a specific focus on the First Nations and others defined as “Indians” either through law or cultural categorization. The birth of the LCBO occurred in a very particular social moment in Ontario history. Its conception, development, need to instill social control, and thus need for surveillance technologies came as the complex result of the mixture of political conservatism, temperance and business that constituted the hegemonic politics of the time It is important to understand that temperance played a crucial role in the moral socialscape of 1920's Ontario. The province had just entered prohibition as a result of the war effort and although not all people felt that liquor should remain illegal, liquor Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. IV was presented as a social ill, and the liquor trade as the exploitation of the poor and weak willed people of the province. The province had also elected a conservative government on the promise of balancing the budget - and for whom liquor taxation was considered a necessary means to that end. What resulted was an LCBO created by a business focused conservative party, that relied upon the knowledge and abilities of the business elite for the so-called proper running of the liquor trade, not to mention the ability to launch an extensive promotional campaign to create and maintain support for this means of balancing the provincial budget. As it will become apparent these initial themes of temperance morality and