In Old Montreal, just before the doors of El Pequeño opened, bartender Jackson Long — who proudly traces his roots to Jamaica — described a sense of unease about a little-discussed side of Canadian history: the role of rum in shaping social and economic life. Long worries that, for many Canadians, the beverage is only a product on a shelf rather than a link to a complicated past. He sees a story where a popular spirit connects the aisles of modern bars to deeper patterns of trade, labour and control.
That hidden narrative is the focus of historian Allan Greer’s new book, Canada, in the Age of Rum, which reconstructs how cheap Caribbean rum and molasses moved through colonial markets and into everyday consumption in the 1700s. Greer reports that people in the 18th century drank roughly 15 times the alcohol Canadians consume today, and much of that intake was rum. In parts of the country, annual per-person rum consumption exceeded 30 litres, revealing just how central the spirit was to colonial life.
How rum became an economic engine
Greer argues that the circulation of rum did more than supply a thirst: it underwrote entire industries. Coastal and forest enterprises used spirit sales as a way to reclaim wages and stabilize operations. Workers such as fishermen, fur-trade voyageurs and lumbermen were routinely sold liquor at inflated prices — sometimes four to five times the normal retail cost — and ended the season in debt. These debts frequently forced them to sign on for additional seasons, creating cycles of service and dependency that historians now describe using the phrase alcoholic capitalism. The term captures how addiction and commerce were intertwined to keep labour costs low.
Mechanisms of coercion
The system functioned through familiar commercial levers: company stores, credit arrangements and occupational isolation. Employers or traders extended credit, but tied it to purchases of rum and other goods, allowing firms to recover wages indirectly. This mechanism — a combination of restricted markets and manipulated desire — worked as a form of debt bondage without relying on the large-scale enslaved labour more commonly associated with Caribbean plantations. Greer’s archival evidence shows how these arrangements made precarious livelihoods sustainable for firms while deepening workers’ dependence.
Impact on Indigenous communities
Greer and other scholars emphasize that the distribution of rum was not limited to settler labourers. Traders from urban centres like Montreal used spirit as a bargaining tool in fur exchanges, introducing rum into communities with little prior exposure to alcohol. The result was social disruption as addiction emerged in places unfamiliar with intoxication practices. Yet Indigenous communities did not passively accept these changes: in locations such as Kahnawake, near Montreal, people began resisting the trade in alcohol as early as the 1670s, while wider settler agitation over liquor’s harms tended to appear only around the 1820s.
Reframing stereotypes and modern data
Academics warn that persistent stereotypes linking Indigenous Peoples and alcoholism misrepresent the evidence. Dr. Omeasoo Wahpasiw, an associate professor in Indigenous studies at Carleton University, stresses that many Indigenous people are less likely to drink than the general population. Recent Statistics Canada surveys support lower reported drinking rates in several Indigenous communities. These findings help correct narratives that ignore how traders and commercial interests shaped consumption patterns, while scholars such as Dr. Anya Zilberstein at Concordia University connect Canada’s reliance on rum to broader Atlantic trades and the expansion of exploited African labour.
Responses and continuing conversations
Reactions from the drinks world and public historians reflect surprise and a desire to learn. Blogger Lance Surujbally described Greer’s evidence as revealing debt bondage-like practices tied to liquor — a framing that has prompted conversations among rum enthusiasts and historians alike. Jackson Long says this history matters to consumers: understanding the past adds nuance to enjoying products today. While modern distillers and drinkers can appreciate rum’s flavours, Greer and others suggest doing so with an awareness of the ways commerce, coercion and colonial exchange shaped Canada’s relationship with this commodity.
Recognizing the legacy of rum in Canada is less a call to abandon cultural tastes than an invitation to interrogate them. A sober look at the archives, combined with contemporary scholarship and community testimony, offers a fuller picture of how a simple spirit helped finance industries, disrupt communities and become woven into the nation’s economic fabric. That is the history Long and others hope more Canadians will acknowledge as they raise a glass.
