With American Booze Out of Favor, Canadian Drinkers Go Local

Drinks tend toward the tropical at Gareth Tingling’s backyard “speakeasies” on Friday afternoons—a summer tradition he and his neighbors started during the pandemic, when indoor meetings were verboten, thus the Prohibition-inspired name.

Illustration: Kyle Platts for Bloomberg Businessweek

In a twist on the cross-border flow of liquor a century ago, when the US banned alcoholic beverages and Canadian distillers helped supply the underground market, the portfolio manager and financial adviser stocks his home bar in Oakville, Ontario, with a stiff coconut rum he brings back from vacations in Florida.

A year ago, American alcohol was stripped from government-run liquor-store shelves in most Canadian provinces in ...