Cannabis Literature in Canada During the 1910s

Context: what Canadians actually read about cannabis

In the 1910s, cannabis was a legal pharmaceutical in Canada, sold as 'Cannabis indica' tincture or extract through pharmacies. Most written references to it appeared not in novels or essays but in dry reference works: the British Pharmacopoeia (used in Canada), pharmacy textbooks, and patent medicine advertising Strong evidence^[1][2].

This matters because the popular image of a vibrant 'cannabis discourse' in 1910s Canada is largely a back-projection. Canada's major drug panic of the decade was about opium, driven by anti-Chinese sentiment on the West Coast and codified in the Opium Act of 1908 and the Opium and Drug Act of 1911 Strong evidence^[3]. Cannabis was not part of that conversation.

Pharmaceutical and medical writing

The most substantive Canadian-relevant cannabis writing in the 1910s was clinical and pharmaceutical. Canadian pharmacists trained from texts like the British Pharmacopoeia (1914 edition), which listed Extractum Cannabis Indicae and Tinctura Cannabis Indicae with dosing guidance Strong evidence^[1]. Standard therapeutic references such as Sir William Osler's The Principles and Practice of Medicine, widely used in Canadian medical schools, mentioned cannabis indica as a treatment for migraine and other conditions Strong evidence^[4].

This is the closest thing to mainstream Canadian cannabis 'literature' of the decade: brief, technical, and clinical. There was no Canadian equivalent of the French Romantic hashish literature (Baudelaire, Gautier) or the American sensationalist tradition that would emerge in the 1930s.

Newspaper coverage

Searches of digitized Canadian newspapers from the 1910s — the Globe (Toronto), the Manitoba Free Press, the Vancouver Sun, and others — turn up scattered references to 'hashish' and 'Indian hemp,' usually in three contexts: (1) wire stories about events in India, Egypt, or the Middle East; (2) brief medical or pharmacy notices; and (3) occasional crime stories framing hashish as an exotic foreign intoxicant Weak / limited^[5].

These pieces are short and infrequent. Cannabis was simply not a Canadian preoccupation. Claims that Canadian papers in the 1910s ran sustained anti-cannabis campaigns are not supported by the surviving record — that campaign begins in earnest around 1920–1922.

The Emily Murphy problem

Any discussion of early Canadian cannabis writing eventually gets dragged toward Emily Murphy, the Alberta magistrate and author of The Black Candle (1922). That book — and the Maclean's magazine series it grew out of — contains the infamous 'Marahuana' chapter that helped justify cannabis's addition to the schedule of the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act in 1923 Strong evidence^[6][7].

But The Black Candle is a 1922 book based on 1920–1922 reporting. It is routinely, and incorrectly, cited as representative of 1910s Canadian discourse. It is not. Murphy's cannabis chapter drew heavily on U.S. sources, particularly Charles A. Jordan of the Los Angeles police, and reflected an early-1920s North American moral panic, not a 1910s Canadian one Strong evidence^[6]. Treating The Black Candle as a 1910s text is one of the most common errors in popular Canadian cannabis history.

Government and legal documents

The relevant government writing of the decade — the Opium and Drug Act of 1911, parliamentary debates, and reports by William Lyon Mackenzie King (then a rising Liberal politician who had authored the 1908 Opium Act) — is almost entirely about opium and cocaine, not cannabis Strong evidence^[3][8]. Cannabis would not be added to the Canadian schedule until 1923, and Hansard records show essentially no parliamentary debate when it was added — a striking absence given how consequential the change proved Strong evidence^[7].

This silence is itself the most important fact about 1910s Canadian cannabis literature: there wasn't much, because cannabis wasn't yet a political object.

How the myth of a robust 1910s discourse developed

Several factors created the illusion of a richer 1910s Canadian cannabis literature than actually existed:

• Backdating Emily Murphy. Her 1922 work is frequently miscited as 1910s material Strong evidence.
• Confusion with U.S. sources. American yellow-press hashish stories from the 1910s circulated in Canada and are sometimes remembered as Canadian.
• Retrospective framing. Histories written after the 1960s often reach back into the 1910s looking for prohibition's roots and overstate what they find Weak / limited.

The honest summary: in the 1910s, Canadian cannabis writing was dominated by pharmacists' reference works, not by moralists, novelists, or journalists. The cultural and legal storm came in the early 1920s. If you want to read what Canadians actually wrote about cannabis in the 1910s, start with the British Pharmacopoeia and pharmacy trade journals — not The Black Candle.

Sources

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