Category: Law

The Many Friends Of John D. Aikens

image195Coming to the end of the first draft of the Ontario beer history Jordan and I are writing, I find myself in the spring of 1927 at the Toronto hearings of the Federal Royal Commission on Customs and Excise. Officials from every major brewery in the province are being grilled under cross examination on their business smuggling beer into the United States. The glimpses of honesty through the lies are just good clean fun. When the manager of Carling was asked if they couldn’t make a profit at $1.75 a case, he replied “well, you can’t make a large profit.”

But of all the people in the witness box, I like John D. Aikens best. A shipping clerk, he appeared in the middle of row upon row of owners and business managers. While he cannot claim to be like Washington who never told a lie… he couldn’t tell a good lie. See, while all the others were crafting their tales to place all sales beyond the border and therefore beyond excise taxation, young Aikens tried to make everything better by letting the Royal Commission know he only sold illegal beer to his friends. That’d be OK, right? By the time the legal inquiries and hearings were done, the Supreme Court of Canada found it likely that O’Keefe bootlegged 17% of its production for cash within Ontario. That’s a heck of a lot of friends. And over $420,000 in back taxes.

The Best Christmas Present For Ontario Ever?

I hadn’t thought of an attack on Ontario’s beer retailing weirdness from the Federal level but that may be just what is lining up for 2014:

A spokesperson for the Competition Bureau confirmed Friday that it’s “currently examining the differences between the beer industries in Ontario and Quebec and exploring the effect that these differences have on competition in each province….” “The bureau chose to focus on the beer industry as there have been a number of conflicting reports as to why the price of beer varies between Ontario and Quebec,” Phil Norris, a spokesperson for the Competiton Bureau, said via email. Sources told Global News Beer Store officials and others have been interviewed by the bureau. Regulators were “collecting information from industry participants,” Norris said.

Collecting information? I suppose if the mandate is limited to assessing a nutty regulatory system’s effect on pricing one must make a study of the obvious. As Jordan has detailed, the pricing arguments may not be all they appear but for me that is not the point. I have no interest in limiting my choice when it comes to my shopping whether for beer, cheese, shoes or books or anything. I buy at least half my beer ever the course of the year in Quebec or the USA. I’ve gotten the occasional wee lectures from overly eager border guards telling me I should not buy in the States but, really, when you allow yourself to take consumer product advice with folk with sidearms where are we?

I am happy to pay full freight. I am happy to declare purchases at the border, support local and support actual well crafted just about anything. But, when it is all boiled down, what I am most happy with is the idea of reducing the intermediaries. I prefer two parties to a transaction, the maker and me. Add a third as retailer and I am not upset but getting into wholesaler, bonding firms, distributors, importers and clearance certificate issuing laboratories and you start seeing not only why a simple product like beer is over priced but over wrought. As in what hath this system wrought?

At the moment – as it has since 1927 in Ontario – it hath wrought market constriction to the point one cannot be sure of value or even preference. We get what we are given and are expected to line up and praise the short shelves of selected goods. No thanks. I’ll continue to take much of my money elsewhere until that changes. If that takes a prosecution of the provincially regulated monopoly by Federal officials, so be it.

Ontario: In 1998 Did “IPA” Mean Macro Gak Or…?

image60This in interesting… well, to me at least. It is from the 1998 debate in the Ontario legislature on the imposition of regulation on the Brew On Premises trade. BOPs do not exist everywhere. In Ontario, they are sort of a hybrid between home brewing and macro brewing where you can go to a business and order a batch of beer from a menu, participate to a certain degree with the person running the place but get to use proper brewing set ups. In 1998, they fell under government regulation. But that’s not the interesting thing. This bit of the statement by MPP Mike Colle from 2 November 1998 is:

The appreciation of fine beer and fine Ontario wine has really exploded in Ontario in the last couple of decades. At one time, it was rare that you would go into a restaurant and see a bottle of wine on a table; you would see people having everything but wine. Now you can see Ontarians of all stripes enjoying good Ontario wine, and also they’re enjoying good beer. At one time it was just your basic beer that Ontarians were drinking. You remember the ones drinking old IPA? I call them the old IPA drinkers. Well, we’ve gone beyond the old IPA and we see people now appreciating fine-brewed micro-brews or speciality beers by the major manufacturers and brewers. It’s part of Ontario’s socioeconomic fibre that drinking beer and wine as part of your meal, in moderate, controlled fashion, is quite acceptable, It’s an industry that employs a lot of good, taxpaying Ontarians.

Apart from the weird idea that beer and wine are for mealtime, notice that reference to IPA. Likely what’s being referenced is a beer like Labatt IPA and that IPA from a point in our collective memory at its final days of popularity – before the lighter beers we all bear a certain responsibility apparently to dislike now, beers like Labatt Blue and 50. So, like now recalling the reputation of disco dancing in the age of New Wave, we are a few times removed from the beer in hand, the beer in the slur. In 1998, Colle is 53 so may be recalling the IPAs of the late 40s and early 50s. This could, in fact, be him visiting the brewery’s cask room in the 1940s. A beer with Victorian roots. The ales of his uncles perhaps.

Even just fifteen years on, it much be hard to fully appreciate the slur. What did IPA represent that was so different from “fine-brewed micro-brews”? Like Ten Penny to a Maritime kid, was it musty? Too grainy? It must have meant something to him as he referenced it three times in quick succession.

 

Ontario: Toronto’s 1877 Temperance Debate

4303Working away last night on the history of Ontario beer and brewing while Jordan was dilly-dallying over beer in the 1980‘s, I was looking at issues related to the beginnings of temperance and specifically references to the “Dunkin Act” of the Province of Canada, named after politician Christopher Dunkin and repealed in 1878. See, before Canada became a country – sorta – in 1867, there was this other country called… Canada which existed under a constitution that lasted from 1841 to 1867. It was named after the upper end of New France, conquered in 1760 by the British which was named, you guessed it, Canada.

Anyway, the Dunkin Act was the short name for The Canada Temperance Act of 1864 under which municipalities could vote to declare themselves “dry” – meaning free from alcohol sales. When Toronto ran its vote in 1877, a committee of those working for the “no” side kept notes of the debates and, after they won the day, published them. The accounts are full of spicy Victorian rhetoric like the passage above spoken on 23 July 1877 at the Coliseum on Alice Street. Apparently the Sally Anne held meetings there, too. I shall endeavour to work the making of pants too tight to sit down in part of my daily patter from herein out.

And, as the rest of that passage illustrates, the temperance movement may have had quite a valid point in those times. Not only was there a mass of drinking going on but there were other things triggering the movement. The rise of mechanical workplaces needing greater sobriety, the development of a greater sense of individual responsibility compared to more carefree status-ridden Georgians of the first third of the century and, not least of all, the development of a mass middle class of skilled tradesmen and less affluent professionals. Concurrent with this was a pretty sharp u-turn in medical thought which shifted daily alcohol consumption from a principled part of a robust diet to a poison to the body and society. It is interesting to watch this shift happen in less than half a generation just as southern Ontario gets fully mapped out if not yet populated.

We are prone to associate ourselves with history’s winning sides but few of us would not side with the goals of the reformers at this stage of the debate. The are, after all, dreaming and fighting only for the lives we live today. In the story of Ontario beer takes something of a side seat in the debate at this point, the real enemy being whisky. In fact, just a few days before on the 10th of July one speaker, surely coincidentally named O’Keefe, got a big cheer from the crowd when he said he was pro-Temperance, though not in a legal imposed form, and also in favour of light wine and beer. Poorly made cheap rot gut? Who sides with that now?

Ontario: Women And Beer Before Temperance

sessionlogosmThis month’s edition of The Session is about women and beer which, if you think about it, represents 50% of everything in our beery culture. Sure it does – as long as you have your methodology correctly aligned. So, there should be a wide range of topics. For me, I noticed a few things along the way as Jordan and I have been researching and writing the history of brewing in Ontario and especially things prior to 1860 that are well worth sharing. Why 1860? Temperance and trains, of course. The whole society changes when trains and temperance get a major foothold.

The thing is that – before temperance and trains – beer seems to be a townie drink, a drink that you get when you are within reach of a brewery or a transit point. Consider this as you consider that, as set out in the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1991: Public Eating Proceedings, in the chapter “Temperance Hotels and those ‘Damned Cold Water Drinking Societies’” Powers and Duncan describe at page 238 how Catherine Parr Trail:

… gave advice to immigrants in 1852 and included recipes for making beer, noting the absence of the ‘sweet well flavoured home brewed beer of the English farmhouses. Unfortunately, she said, “the taste for beer has often unhappily been superceded by that of whiskey.’ She provided recipes for treacle beer, beet beer and maple beer as an alternative to whiskey.

See, once you get anywhere away from town and a cartloads of hooch is heading your way, it is going to have the most concentrated form of the stuff on it unless there is a compelling reason not to do that. And until trains and temperance push to the forefront, there just isn’t a reason. And see Parr Trail missed the “sweet well-flavoured home brewed beer of the English farmhouse”? This backs another thing we suspect: that there was not a lot of surplus barley floating around Upper Canada even well into the middle third of the 1800s. One farmer interviewed in his old age recollected that he didn’t even see barley until he was in this twenties in the early 1840s. Which leads to beet beer on the frontier. You do what you can.

So, what was the place of women in such a culture. Fortunately, I have my copy of In Mixed Company by Julia Roberts reviewed back here in 2010. Roberts has a chapter in her book entitled “Public Life for Women in the Era of Separate Spheres” which discusses the experience of women in Upper Canadian taverns. And I have a handy copy of Wives and Mothers, School Mistresses and Scullery Maids: Working Women in Upper Canada 1790-1840 by Elizabeth Jane Errington, a historian who I have had the pleasure of meeting. Errington’s books has quite a number of observations of the intersection of women and alcohol in the colony during that period.

And what do we learn? One thing is that women were present in taverns as daughters, wives and widows working under or as licensee but also as travelers stopping at the inn and even local drinkers. Roberts indicates that as early as the 1830s inns were advertising special separate provisions for female customers. These provisions were further divided by class and included separate entrances, parlors and waiting rooms as well as balconies. And in some cases they are recorded as drinking alcohol including beer:

At Robinson’s tavern in Prescott, “Sarah” charged half a pint of beer in 1844… Widow Wilson lodged at Robinson’s for two and ah half weeks starting 31 October 1847. On her first day, she charged a glass of whisky, a glass of brandy and several pints of beer. She then stuck to beer and her tally on the last day of her stay was fifty-six pints, an average of three pints a day. Treating others accounted for part of the total.

As the title indicates, Errington’s book focuses on the working life of women. She notes that even when a couple ran a tavern together, as noted by one traveler in 1797, the husband ran the farm while the wife ran the tavern. As the post-Revolution economy evolved, wives were less involved in maid’s work and more often acted as hostesses especially in more established hotels. On the frontier, however, things were not as genteel. Errington quotes from Susanna Moodie on the preparations for a work bee when neighbours came to achieve some collective goal:

…our men worked well until dinner time, when, after washing in the lake they all sat down to the rude board which I had prepared for them, loaded up with the best fare that could be procured in the bush. Pea soup, legs of pork, venison, eel, and raspberry pie, garnished with plenty of potatoes and whisky to wash them down, besides a large iron kettle of tea.

Women and beer? Before the rise of temperance as a political force to be heeded and before the train when barrels of beer could be gotten in as far as the rail line went, it was a townie thing in Upper Canada. And women were there as they were everywhere.

Encouraging Good Beer North And South

A couple items in the news caught my eye this week, one from here in Ontario and one from New York to our south. Up here the news is this:

The LCBO’s redesigned and relocated Laird and Eglington location in Toronto will showcase a new 1625 sq-ft cold room boasting a prominent craft beer section spanning up to 160 linear feet of shelf space. Craft beers will be arranged by beer styles (ie. IPA, Stout, Lager, etc.).

That’s a relief. I was worried it would be arranged alphabetically or by the primary colour on the cap. Basically, the provincial monopoly on better drink is opening up one new store and it will have a bit more space for good local beer. Fabulous. 13 million Ontarians. 160 feet of shelf space. It’s the subject of government press releases. By way of contrast, the law down south in the State of New York is aiming to spread the goodness of good beer a bit more broadly according to this news item:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says 14 local farm breweries have opened statewide as a result of legislation that took effect in January. The law created a farm brewery license for those who rely heavily on locally grown farm products for their beer. Under the farm brewery license, brewers do not need an additional permit to serve beer by the glass.

While there is still concern that not all the breweries that open do not actually hire that many staff, it is clear that this great law is opening up new meanings for real and local when it comes to NY beer. And creating rural employment and wealth. Heck, they are even letting farm stands sell nearby wine as a means to boost jobs in small communities. I suspect a lot of this is due to the guidance of departing Ag Commissioner Darrel Aubertine, my near neighbour over the lake, a guy with whom I did once sit and have a beer. Practical laws to use good beer to generate wealth.

Do the changes to our south make the news up here worthless? Not exactly, but it sure puts things in perspective. Notice how lobby groups need to be involved, masses spent up here on updated retail space. Swankification. In New York, farmers are freed up to seek a share of the market, to expand it. Which makes better economic sense? Which speaks better of the government’s attitude to its own citizens?

Ssshhhuuuusshh – Don’t Mention Cascazilla!!!

Oh dear.

Toho Co., Ltd. is responsible for crafting the giant monster’s original cinematic adventure back in 1954. The creature’s enemy, the robotic Mechagodzilla, was brought to life in 1974. Not surprisingly, the company isn’t exactly thrilled with having these characters ripped off in the US. According to The Daily Meal, Toho has taken issue with the products manufactured by New Orleans Lager & Ale Brewing Company. Apparently the Godzilla creators feel that Mechahopzilla beer violates a few copyright laws. As a result, the company has filed a lawsuit against the brewer. The folks at Toho reportedly filed the lawsuit after the brewing company decided to ignore requests to halt the manufacturing of Mechahopzilla beer.

Yikes!! What about that beer from Ithaca? You know, the one whose saving grace now, as Craig noted two years ago, might be the fact that Ithaca is the site of Cascadilla Falls. But who knows. Anyone can sue anyone, right? I’ve been enjoying Cascazilla on a regular basis for over eight years now but I have to admit that were it to be called something else it would be just as tasty. Which does put a lot of beer branding in context, no? I mean is it one thing to get fetishistic over “lambic” but is there anything intrinsically related between any particular beer and any particular word? I think not.

Beer words are wonderful. They are ancient and monosyllabic. Guttural and descriptive. But for the most part they are irrelevant, aren’t they. A beer by any other name is just as sweet. No?

There’s Nothing Like Bulgarian Beer Baron Crime

What is better on a slow summer Saturday afternoon waiting for the Yankees to face the Red Sox, a BBQ pork shoulder slowly sweating away its fat, than a tale of shadowy intrigue, corruption and Bulgarian beer?

The prosecutors will probe now if Borisov has obstructed a Customs check in Mihov’s “Ledenika” beer factory and evidence of trading influence, Deputy Chief Prosecutor, Borislav Sarafov told “Sega” (Now) daily. He says Borisov, Tanov, and former Finance Minister, Simeon Djankov, who is mentioned in the conversation, will be questioned. Until now the authorities limited themselves to searching for the person who leaked the recording, which was made with Special Surveillance Devices, SRS. 47-year-old Mihail Mikov was the owner of the three Bulgarian breweries, (hence his nickname “Misho Birata” – i.e. “Misho the Beer”). Mihov was also head of the Bulgarian Basketball Federation since 2008 and the Honorary Consul of Brazil in Varna.

Now that’s some old school brewing industry influence and skull duggery going on. I hope you didn’t expect any particular insight beyond that. And who could want more? A Bulgarian body. An allegation of an injection simulating heart attack. And three breweries. It’s like an eastern European version of Murder She Wrote. Where is Angela Lansbury when she is needed?

The Law Of Brewing In New York In 1665

Nothing more fun than asking the librarian if they happen to have a complete set of the colonial laws of the state of New York and being told that, yes, in fact that could be found right over there. The Duke of York’s Laws for his new royal colony from 1665. See, while most colonies were set up as private interests under a charter from the Crown, New York was to be the model and ultimately the administrative centre of Britain in North America. Or rather England at that point in time. Here is the full text which includes these provisions related to brewing:

That no person whatsoever shall henceforth undertake the Callingor work of Brewing Beere for Sale, but only such as are known to have Sufficient Skill and knowledge in the art or Mistery of a Brewer, That if any undertake for victualling of Ships or other Vessels or Master or owner of any such Vessels or any other person shall make it appear that any Beer bought of any person within this Government do prove unfit, unwholesome and useless for their supply, either through the insufficiency of the Mault or Brewing or unwholesome Cask, the Person wronged thereby, shall be and is hereby enabled to recover equal & Sufficient damage by Action against that Person that put the Beer to Sale.

What do we see? First, it regulates the sale of beer, not brewing. Second, you can’t sell a beer for drinking on board that sucks. That’s it. Pretty straight forward. One assumes that the ban on the sale of “unfit, unwholesome and useless” beer for ships was made law because if you were do that in the land word would get around pretty quickly. Off the coast in a whaler? Takes a bit more time and the unconscionable business practices by brewers might be not be the first thing on the mind compared to, say, not dying at sea. I do like the word “useless” as it implies “use” which begs the question what is the use of beer. As we all say together as we gather at the pub – sanitary hydration.

There are more detailed laws relating to the keeping of Inns and Ordinaries. You need a certificate from the local constable and a license from two justices if you are selling at a volume of less than a cask. The beer has to have at least four bushels of malt to a hogshead and doors close at nine at night. Prices are set and fines established. The interesting thing is that these general rules are still the sorts of rules you see today in laws in Ontario, the true descendant of colonial NY. The function of the public house or inn as a place of relative safety, food, drink and sleep is a necessary then and now.

By the way, nice meaty paw, no? It’s like a live action library shot. If there were library bubblegum cards and I was in a set, that would be my photo.

Your Friday Night Beer Blog Reading Highlights

It’s a distracted time. The game between Toronto and Boston is interfering with the game between Toronto and Boston. The first thunderstorm of the spring is moving through giving parched seedlings out in the garden as heavier duties of life nibble at the back of the mind. Yet, it is a warm Friday evening. The kids are out. The smells of that season we Canadians call “not winter” float in through the one open window as the first large drops pat pat pat on the bags of compost waiting to be settled into their plots on the next dry day. As good a time as any to see what’s going on out there on the internets.

→ In two weeks or so, I have a chance to hit the one orchard estate perry maker I know of in Ontario. Which makes me utterly jealous of Pete Brown. A folk music, cheese and perry/cider fest. Pleasures unimaginable.

→ Please just leave Bieber alone. In Canada, he is now a grown up… sorta.

→ Jeff makes some very good points on the impending reaction from big beer should what’s been considered (for about five years now and still maybe a few more to go) as craft beer not eat itself or, who knows, actually gain a significant market share… as in something approaching 20%. Me, I am quite comfortable knowing that big brewers will quite happily flood the market if need be with cheap and excellent beers inseparable from those offered by the current profitable puritans of craft marketing. I do like his idea that the approach is to add more flavour to lagers but I think this is but one prong of attack. Watch your flank, big craft.

→ Boak and Bailey started early and didn’t have to deal with the thug.

→ Stan then Craig reacted to a xenophobic article on how US craft brewers woujld teach Germany a thing or two by being boring and hoppy and achieving <1% marketshare. No consideration on the role of Mosel in the overall equation. Much hand wringing over ugly American interventions but, believe me, far better than dealing with the ugly side of Canadians.

There. The hockey is 1-0 in favour of my team at 8:23 pm while the baseball is the same score for… my team. JINKS! Better quit while I am ahead.