From the 1500s on, fur traders, missionaries, and European colonizers from Britain and France introduced alcohol to Indigenous communities when they settled the lands we now call Canada. Alcohol was exchanged at trading posts for valuable items like furs, and its introduction had devastating impacts on Indigenous communities. At the time, alcohol was the drug of choice for Europeans, but there was growing opposition to its consumption by some moral reformers who viewed it as a corrupting force. By the 1800s and early 1900, the temperance movement in Canada flourished. White moral reformers were also focused on converting Indigenous communities to Christianity; and so this goal, along with the prohibition of alcohol, became their focus. [Keep reading]
The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition is based out of Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Health Sciences.