Cannabis Literature in Canada During the 1910s

What Canadians actually read about cannabis

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

This distinction is crucial to understanding the period. Canada's dominant drug panic of the 1910s was about opium, driven by anti-Chinese sentiment on the West Coast and enshrined in the Opium Act of 1908 and the Opium and Drug Act of 1911 Strong evidence. Cannabis was not part of that political conversation. The popular image of a vibrant 'cannabis discourse' in 1910s Canada is largely a retrospective projection—a back-reading of what came later into an era when cannabis had no public profile at all.

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 standard dosing guidance Strong evidence. These entries were short, technical, and non-controversial: cannabis was simply another agent in the materia medica.

Standard therapeutic references used in Canadian medical schools, such as Sir William Osler's The Principles and Practice of Medicine, mentioned cannabis indica as a treatment for migraine, neuralgia, and other conditions Strong evidence^[2]. The tone was clinical. There was no moral debate, no sensationalism, and no call for prohibition.

This pharmacy and medical literature is the closest thing to mainstream Canadian cannabis 'literature' of the decade. It was brief, technical, and entirely non-controversial. Canada had no equivalent of the French Romantic hashish literature of the 19th century 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 hashish use or regulation in India, Egypt, or the Middle East; (2) brief medical or pharmacy notices; and (3) occasional crime stories treating hashish as an exotic foreign intoxicant Weak / limited^[3].

These pieces are short, infrequent, and peripheral. Cannabis was not a Canadian preoccupation. By contrast, sustained newspaper coverage of opium as a public menace was extensive and racialized, reflecting the Asiatic exclusion politics of the West Coast. Cannabis did not draw comparable editorial attention until the early 1920s.

The Emily Murphy myth

Any discussion of early Canadian cannabis writing eventually confronts Emily Murphy, the Alberta magistrate and author of The Black Candle (1922). That book—and the Maclean's magazine series on which it was based—contains the infamous 'Marahuana' chapter with sensational claims about Mexican cannabis users and imported 'marihuana' that helped justify the addition of cannabis to the schedule of the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act in 1923 Strong evidence^[4].

But The Black Candle is a 1922 publication 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 the Los Angeles Police Department, and reflected an early-1920s North American moral panic, not a 1910s Canadian one Strong evidence. Treating The Black Candle as a 1910s text is one of the most common errors in popular Canadian drug history.

Government and legal documents

The relevant government writing of the 1910s—the Opium Act of 1908, the Opium and Drug Act of 1911, parliamentary debates, and reports by William Lyon Mackenzie King (then a rising Liberal politician)—is almost entirely about opium and cocaine, not cannabis Strong evidence^[5]. Cannabis would not be added to the Canadian drug schedule until 1923. Hansard records show essentially no parliamentary debate when it was added—a striking absence given how consequential the change proved Strong evidence^[4].

This silence is itself the most important fact about 1910s Canadian cannabis literature: there wasn't much, because cannabis was not 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, collapsing two distinct eras Strong evidence.

Confusion with U.S. sources. American yellow-press hashish stories from the 1910s and early 1920s circulated in Canada and are sometimes remembered as, or conflated with, Canadian domestic content.

Retrospective framing. Histories written after the 1960s, seeking to trace the roots of cannabis prohibition, often reach back into the 1910s looking for early moral objections and overstate what they find Weak / limited.

The honest summary: in the 1910s, Canadian cannabis writing was dominated by pharmacists' reference works and medical texts, 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.

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