Canada the Good

Marcel Martel is a professor in the Department of History at York University, where he holds the Avie Bennett Historica Dominion Institute Chair in Canadian History. He is the author of Not This Time: Canadians, Public Policy, and the Marijuana Question, 1961-1975 (2006), Le Deuil d'un pays imaginé. Rêves, luttes et déroute du Canada français (1997), and co-author of Speaking Up. A History of Language and Politics in Canada and Quebec (2012).

• Canada the Good: A Short History of Vice Since 1500 by Marcel MartelIntroduction Chapter 1 Different Worlds, Different Values: Encounters from 1500 to 1700EncountersFree Sexuality""An Inveterate Passion for Brandy""GamblingTobaccoConclusion: Interacting with AboriginalsChapter 2 In the Name of God, the King, and the Settlers: Regulating Behaviors during the Colonial Era (1700-1850)Sexuality: Only for ProcreationDrinking: Very Thirsty People?Gambling: No ""Unlawfull Games to Be Used in House""Tobacco: A ""Successful"" Cultural TransferConclusionChapter 3 Triumphs: Vices in Retreat, 1850-1920Building the Kingdom of God on EarthSexuality: Repression and ResistanceDrinking: Chasing the Liquor DemonGambling: A Disrespectful ActivityDrugs: Getting Rid of ThemTobacco: A Fashionable HabitConclusionChapter 4 No Longer Vices: Call Them Health Issues, 1920 to the PresentDifferent Values and Sexual OpennessAlcohol: State Monopoly and Responsible DrinkingA New Addict: Governments and GamblingDrugs: Let's Help Young White KidsTobacco: A Health Threat and An Annoying HabitConclusionConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

"Canadians have been sticking their noses into each other's business for about as long as they've had noses and business. That part is perhaps no surprise. But, what Martel does so impressively well in this concise volume is to uncover the mutability of that 'business'--what he has defined as 'vices'--in the long sweep of Canadian history. In other words, this is a book about the changing and highly contingent ways Canadians have understood taboos and prosecuted transgression. It traces what Canadians have been afraid of (HINT: it's usually something to do with sex or race), what activities they have tried to control (at every level from the familiar to the federal), and what kinds of tools they have used in an effort to protect a shifting set of ideas about propriety over 500 years. It's fascinating stuff." -- Stuart Henderson, author of 'Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s' (2011), features editor at popmatters.com