The WCTU and Educational Strategies on the Canadian Prairie

Abstract

THERE HAS BEEN increasing interest in the past several years in the history of temperance and prohibition in both Canada and the United States. Researchers of women's history, religious history and social history have viewed the temperance movement as a key element in understanding developments in each of these areas. One of the organizations central to the temperance movement, and one which has been given credit as a catalyst in organizing the anti-drink campaign, was the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Until quite recently most of the studies related to the WCTU have been parts of much larger works on prohibition itself. Although this women's organization has been credited in these studies with an important role in the campaign, the essence of the WCTU, its philosophy, organization and methodology are lost in the ongoing rush to tell the story of the rise and fall of prohibition. Sinclair's Prohibition: An Era of Excess, Symbolic Crusade; Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement by Joseph Gusfield and James Timberlake's Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900-1920 are examples of such work.' Norman H. Clark's Deliver Us From Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition shows the interest women took in the number of saloons and the problems associated with alcohol.2 In Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition Movement in the United States, 1890-1913, James Blocker identifies prohibitionist leaders, both men and women, as decent citizens.3 What each of these works tells us is what women did for temperance. Recent scholarship has zeroed in more directly on the WCTU itself and not only looks at the role of these women in temperance, but asks the question, What did temperance do for women? Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty by Ruth Bordin is the most recent example of this approach. She labels the WCTU as unquestionably the first mass movement