Victoria Day long weekend — a.k.a. May 2-4, — marks the unofficial start of summer, and the official kick-off of cottage and patio seasons. We’re taking advantage of this traditionally beer-infused holiday to examine Canadians’ overall boozy habits.

LESSON 1: THE VAST MAJORITY OF US DRINK

Roughly 80% of Canadians drink alcohol, the boozing majority swelling in size over the better part of a decade. Nearly 22 million Canadians reported throwing back booze in the year 2013, whether it be a tipple or a ton of Tanqueray. Studies show we’re also drinking more than we should: The percentage of Canadians exceeding the low-risk drinking guidelines set out by Canadian health agencies was 18.8% in 2013 compared to 17.6% a decade earlier.

In the year 2014, Canadians over age 15 downed 8 litres of pure booze, or 469 standard drinks. But while ubiquitous beer commercials and these kinds of stats make it seem like we’re on the bottle more than ever, drinkers in the 1989 and the mid-to late 80s actually drank more than we do now: about 8.8 litres per person in a year, or 502 drinks a year. That was the historical peak for our drinking — at least according to the best available data, says Gerald Thomas, a collaborating scientist with the Centre for Addiction Research of British Columbia.

We dried out a little in the 1990s. “I think it has to do with drinking and driving laws — during that period there was a big shift on how we relate to alcohol and driving.” People also became far more health conscious through that decade, he says. But by the turn of the century, we started steadily drinking more, with a bit of a dip in 2012, following the financial downturn. There’s been an increase since, but then a drop in sales in 2013-2014.

LESSON 2: WE LIE ABOUT HOW MUCH WE DRINK

How much did you drink last Saturday night? Come on, tell the truth. It turns out we’re very bad at assessing how much alcohol we throw down our gullets. Researchers — grappling with self-reported data they know doesn’t quite reflect reality — are now trying to fix that. A United Kingdom study which explored the discrepancy between survey responses about how much people say they drink and the amount of alcohol sold found 75% of men and 80% of women were drinking above the daily limit. That was 19% and 26% more, respectively, than what they claimed.

A forthcoming Canadian study on the same discrepancy found that only a third of Canadians accurately reported their consumption to interviewers. “The great majority of alcohol sold in Canada is drunk in a way that exceeds national low-risk drinking guidelines,” study co-author and University of Victoria psychology professor Tim Stockwell told the National Post. “[F]urther, the number of people exceeding these guidelines is almost double previous estimates,” When researchers controlled for under-reported data, they estimate more than 40% of Canadians are “higher risk” drinkers.

We aren’t always intentionally misleading those who ask about how many drinks we drink. Part of the problem is we just can’t remember — at least over the long term, says Thomas. Doctors and researchers can take some of the responsibility for that: Instead of asking how many drinks a person has in a year or an average week, they could ask, “How many did you drink last night?” and then work it out from there (more studies are now taking that approach). On top of that, people don’t know what a standard drink looks like. The big glass of wine your sister-in-law pours at the family barbeque is probably more like 10 oz rather than the standard drink of 5. A pint of beer at a pub? That’s one and a half standard drinks. At the end of the day, stigma’s also to blame for our bad counting: No one wants to be painted a drunk. When Thomas gives talks, he’ll ask how many people have been impacted by alcoholism. A wave of hands always goes up. And yet there’s real trouble discussing alcohol. “People are not comfortable talking about these things,” he says.

LESSON 3: WE DRINK AT HOME

A whole lot of Canadians prefer to swill their spirits and sip their wine in the comfort of their own homes. “Looking at the data, we see the vast majority of drinking is going on behind closed doors,” says John Mohler, a vice-president at Ipsos Reid, one of Canada’s leading polling agencies, which has run the robust Alcohol Consumption Tracker, a market research tool, since 2011. The 2015 ACT, which has more than 1,000 Canadians keep a monthly online diary of their drinking behaviours, found a full 58% of drinks are consumed in one’s own home and 16% of drinks consumed in the home of another person. This is the case across regions and generations. “It’s cheaper to drink at home, it’s easier, it’s more accessible — you don’t have to go anywhere — you have greater selection, typically,” adds Mohler. “Going somewhere has implications…[this way] you don’t have to drive.” While 80% of drinks are consumed in the presence of somebody else – 29% in the presence of only a spouse and 20% in a large group — 19.6% of drinks are being swallowed alone. Gabor Forgacs, a professor of hospitality at Ryerson University, connects this with the rise in single person households noted in the most recent Census. “I suppose if someone has a meal alone … isn’t it natural to make it less unhappy by adding a glass or two? Who is going to say “Honey, that’s enough for now…?”

LESSON 4: WE WAIT UNTIL AFTER WORK (MOSTLY)

We’re most commonly found with a drink in our hands in the evening hours of 5pm to 10 pm, with 66% of total drinks consumed within this timeframe. According to the Ipsos data, 18 percent of drinks are downed from noon to 5 pm, and 14% in the night, past 10pm. Younger generations are more likely to stray outside the evening zone. Men are also more likely to be “routine” drinkers, says Mohler.

LESSON 5: WOMEN ARE DRINKING MORE

The biggest rise in drinking has been amongst women of childbearing years and of European descent, experts say. Countries that rank high on the United Nations index of emancipation have seen a rise in female drinkers in the past number of years (these include countries such as Norway). It’s a trend that has health experts sounding the alarm, because women process alcohol differently than men. “We tend to think, in our culture, of two things: Drunk driving and liver disease,” says Ann Dowsett Johnston, the Toronto-based author of Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol, which chronicles the rise in risky drinking amongst women. “We don’t think of the 200+ cancers and diseases related to alcohol ingestion.” Fifteen percent of breast cancers draw a straight line to alcohol, she says. Women drink for a lot of the same reasons as men: To celebrate and relax. But for a modern woman laden with greater expectations on the home front and at work, it becomes both a reward and a socially acceptable coping mechanism, she says. “It’s a quick decompression tool.”

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LESSON 6: EUROPEAN-CANADIANS SKEW THE NUMBERS

Canadians of European descent are driving the upward trend in drinking, says Jurgen Rehm, the director of social and epidemiological research at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. “We have a number of immigrants who drink not a lot or next to nothing, which basically means that the increase you’re seeing [in Canadians drinking] means that those who already consumed quite heavily are now drinking more.” A new study of immigrants to Ontario found that while immigrants tend to drink less than those born in Canada, place of birth was significantly associated with risky drinking, except for people who emigrated from East Asia or Northern Europe.

LESSON 7: WE’RE NOT THE BIGGEST LUSHES IN THE WORLD

While our drinking has steadily climbed, Canadians are far from the heaviest imbibers. The Eastern European nations of Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Moldova and parts of Russia lean far heavier on the bottle and have very troubling rates of alcoholism, Rehm says. There is a long tradition in these nations of drinking until you pass out, he says — it’s “culturally acceptable behaviour” in these nations, which have long faced serious economic troubles. Canada is drinking 50-60% of what these nations consume, says Rehm, who co-authored the 2014 World Health Organization Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health. Canadians drink actually a lot more like European countries, he says. One major difference between Canada and the United States, however, is that Canadians maintain high levels of drinking after college, while Americans tend to ease off the booze, Rehm says. Sometimes that continued drinking through adulthood and parenting years leads to problems with alcohol into one’s 40s — an effect Rehm calls “plateau drinking.” “You have way less of those people in the United States,” he says.

LESSON 8: WE’RE NOT WAITING FOR THE WEEKEND

Canadians are not just working for the weekend and doing their drinking then. According to Ipsos Reid’s tracker, 40% of Canadians’ drinking happens Monday to Friday. While this habit’s pretty static across men and women and generations, baby boomers are slightly more likely to drink during the week than younger generations. “Boomers tend to be more routine-oriented with their drinking,” says Mohler. “That’s going to tie in with more weekday drinking — imagine coming home and unwinding on a more regular basis, whereas younger drinkers, Gen Y specifically, are, compared to boomers, more likely to drink around social occasions.”

Not surprisingly, many of these involve food. A full 59% of our empty booze calories go down with something at least a little more nutritious. That share of drinks from the Ipsos survey is consumed with either snacks, appetizers, a light meal or something more substantial. Thirty-two percent of drinks accompany a meal, the survey found — baby boomers eat with 36.3% of their drinks and Gen Y 26%. Typical advice around providing a “base” for drinking by pacing oneself with food assumes the drinker is heading out on a bender, Mohler says. These data suggest the drinking is far more moderate — there’ll be one glass of wine with dinner, so no real concern about getting wasted. Forgacs credits the way the Canada’s wine industry has become more sophisticated since the 1970s, and liquor board publications like Ontario’s Food and Drink magazine promoting wine, beer and spirit pairings with food. “We, as customers have a pretty good selection of domestic wines to choose from, way more and way better than decades ago.”

A SHORT HISTORY OF BOOZE

1810s Forget coffee. Most labourers took a shot of whiskey at morning and afternoon breaks as a “stimulant” and incentive to keep them hard at work.

1820s-1830s Critics of drinking at work emerged as focus on commercial and industrial capitalism took hold. “The broad middle class became teetotallers and wanted everyone else to do that,” says Craig Heron, author of Booze: A Distilled History.

1840s A wave of revival campaigns tried to get people to sign on to alcohol prohibition in Canada.

1850s New Brunswick passed legislation banning alcohol, but it only lasted a few months because it was such a failure. It came close in what’s now Ontario and Nova Scotia.

1915-1917 All provinces except Quebec passed prohibition legislation. Meanwhile, First World War soldiers were given rum in the trenches to “keep them from going over the top,” Heron says.

1927 Ontario opened its first liquor stores, lagging behind other provinces such as Quebec and British Columbia which did so first. “The great experiment with prohibition was a huge failure,” Heron says. “There was a great deal of bootlegging and rum running.”

1934 The first public drinking places, called “beverage rooms” opened up. There were strict rules against merrymaking, Heron says, in order to maintain control. Men only.

1947 Sees the first taverns, where entertainment and food is allowed. Women are permitted, but in segregated rooms that men can only enter if in the company of a lady.

1985 Consumption of alcohol peaks in Canada, at roughly 9 litres of pure booze per person. Drunk driving legislative efforts have been ramping up.

1995 Alcohol consumption has lowered dramatically, thanks in part to the drunk driving awareness efforts and a newfound emphasis on health and wellness.

2015 Twenty years after alcohol consumption levels dipped, they’ve climbed right back up again — not quite to 1980s levels, but close.

With files from Victor Ferreira

Sources: Ipsos Reid Alcohol Consumption Tracker, Statistics Canada, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health World Health Organization, Canadian Liquor Board annual reports