Try to Control Yourself: The Regulation of Public Drinking in Post-Prohibition Ontario, 1927–44 by Dan Malleck (review)

Dan Malleck’s Try to Control Yourself is an engaging and thought-provoking look at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario’s (LCBO) multifaceted attempts to regulate the province’s sale and public consumption of alcohol after the failed “noble experiment” of prohibition. Malleck’s chronological scope is the 1927–44 period, dates that correspond to the 1927 replacement of the Board of License commissioners with the LCBO after the end of prohibition and a 1944 decision to transfer the LCBO’s hotel-licensing operations to a different board.

Through an analysis of all the LCBO establishment files for six Ontario communities – Essex County; Waterloo County; the Niagara region of Lincoln, Niagara, and Welland Counties; the Thunder Bay district; the city of Ottawa; and the city of Toronto – Malleck paints a nuanced picture of the LCBO’s regulation of public drinking spaces, most prominently the numerous hotels that dotted the Ontario landscape and provided both shelter, and a drink or two, for locals, tourists, and weary travellers. What Malleck deftly shows is that in spite of the fears “Drys” held about the end of prohibition and the predicted social chaos that would ensue, the Liquor Control Act (LCA) and the LCBO’s complex implementation of it aimed to, and largely succeeded in, reshaping drinking habits among Ontario citizens.¹ Arguing against claims that the province’s liquor control regimes were “an extension of temperance ideology,” Malleck affirms that they were in fact a push back against Ontario’s “drying out,” a process that peaked in 1916 with prohibition (5). Moreover, the LCA was revolutionary because it created a “Janus-faced” regime that sought to discourage overindulgence while simultaneously profiting from liquor sales – a modern conflict of interest if ever there was one (5).

Underpinning the author’s analysis is a sophisticated use of Foucault’s ideas of governmentality and biopower. The former, encompassing governments’ attempts to gain control of the “conduct of conduct” of citizens, was demonstrated through the LCBO’s aim to “construct a social vision based on a specific set of values and ideas about social order” (8). In its regulation of public drinking spaces, especially the licensing of hotels, the LCBO not only physically shaped the drinking milieu, but it also subtly reshaped internal beliefs about self-management and drinking’s role in it. As Malleck demonstrates, the exercise of biopower was not simply “social control with a newer name” (8). Instead, it was a process of negotiation and constant tinkering whose limits were exposed through the Board’s inability to firmly maintain the role of “disinterested management,” largely due to the fact that it was, at its heart, a system managed by subjective and flawed human beings.

It is in showcasing the constant negotiations between the LCBO, its inspectors, and its “authorities” (for example, licensed hotels) that the book really shines. Malleck draws on great material, using LCBO files to bring to life the clever, inventive, and humorous ways hotel owners throughout the province attempted to evade LCBO regulations on where, when, and how much liquor could be consumed by patrons. As he makes evident, LCBO inspectors were constrained not just by the province’s vast size, making trips to remote sites difficult, but also by considerations that made a pure, bureaucratic approach both unrealistic and at times inhumane. Well aware that many hotel owners’ livelihoods rested on their ability to provide alcoholic beverages to patrons, the LCBO often gave those who flouted the law numerous chances to reconsider their approach before removing a hotel’s license.

Thus, Try to Control Yourself is a story of modern government and administration, and how the simple act of regulating alcohol consumption entails the reshaping of social and gender boundaries as well as a government’s role in the life of its citizens. However, and equally important, it is a human story...