Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
As we now move from writing to editing and proofing the Ontario book, the question of my understanding of things related to publishing has come to the forefront of my brain. But, just when one’s brain is melting, you see a lovely thing like the lower left corner of a Victoria image of the Grenville Brewery in Prescott. Click on the picture above for a wildly large version of this corner of the image. It’s from the Library and Archives of Canada, part of the Molson Collection.
As Jordan and I wrap up the writing and rewriting of our book on the history of beer in Ontario, it is interesting to go back and revisit stretches I wrote a couple of months ago. Of all the bits in the book from 1610 to today, I had not expected the mid-1900s to be all that thrilling when we signed the publishing contract. Not the case. The pace of social change in the second quarter of the century alone occurring along with the advance of modernity could give you whiplash. Certainly at the heart of that time is the massive fact of World War II but the flow of cultural change was only accelerated by the war. This was reflected in both commercial restructuring of the beer market and shifts in public perception of the role of beer in the community.
Boak and Bailey invited us all to post some long writing this weekend so, in support of an increase in new long writing related to beer and brewing – including new forms of writing – I give you excerpts from a late draft of Ontario Beer: A Heady History of Brewing from the Great Lakes to the Hudson Bay. Final tweeks continue…
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In 1927, at the close of the Province’s dalliance with prohibition, Brewers Warehousing Co. Ltd. was founded as a brewers’ distribution co-operative. The provincial government retained control of the sale of wine and spirits through the LCBO, but beer, with its lower alcohol content, could be distributed by the hundreds of mom-and-pop stores. Initially, the brewers were involved only in wholesale operations, jointly warehousing and distributing their product to stores operated by private contractors. But in 1940, the brewers bought out the contractors and took over the stores, changing their name to Brewers Retail Inc. The stores were later renamed, creatively, The Beer Store…
Labatt also took its place in the war effort. In 1943, it was reported that not only were patriotic efforts such as war bond drives undertaken but trucked shipments were moved back to railroads while a trade school for army motor mechanics was operated out of the brewery’s garage. The brewery also ran a series of weekly panel cartoons on good citizenship standards under the title “Isn’t It The Truth by TI-Jos”. Topics included household prudence, supporting price controls, rumour mongering as treason as well as the evils of the black market. In doing so, the brewery clearly was associating itself with middle class as well as patriotic values…
Wartime on the home front changed social attitudes to public beer drinking. Higher employment and earning levels increased disposable income. Hotels serving beer to men and women no longer carried a dangerous air so much as a patriotic one. Increased accommodation for beer sales also served the financial interests of business and governments during the war. Beer sales more than doubled during the war years and the Federal excise tax on each gallon of beer brewed increased by 36%. Further, a difference in the relative level of taxation in Ontario caused a significant shift in drinking patterns to beer from spirits.
Two forces combined to impose upon the expansion of beer sales in the second half of the war: a renewed temperance movement and resource scarcity. Under direction of the Prime Minister Mackenzie King, temperance as a countervailing patriotic theme was promoted causing a public clash between King and EP Taylor. At the same time, the national Wartime Prices and Trade Board imposed a quota system to distribute beer as it would other commodities which created shortages. In March 1943, when Kingston received an increased allocation to reflect troops being stationed there, other communities received a reduction in their share. Overall, a 90% reduction was imposed on beer distribution, beverage room hours were restricted and, as a result, the beer casks were dry when the night shift at the factory ended. Some took to wearing “No Beer – No Bonds” buttons.
After victory was won, the topic in one of the last editions of Labatt’s “Isn’t It The Truth” series was the return of the young soldier to the family home. When mother tells him there’s no rush to get a job, he replies “I’ve been doing a man’s job for four years. Now I am all ready to get going here at home.” Now, Labatt was associating itself with the sort of moral productivity that continued into the post war boom. Life in Ontario was a worth working hard for as well as fighting for. The brewery continued that theme in 1946 in a series of ads asking Ontarians to do all try can to make tourists from the United States feel welcome with hints from “a well-known Ontario hotelman” including that in business dealings, Canada’s reputation for courtesy and fairness “depends on you!”
The new economic opportunities led to changes in Ontario’s brewing industry addressing the need for consolidation and succession in light of financial success. In 1945, Canadian Breweries falls under Argus, E.P. Taylor’s larger holding company. After spending the first years of the war at the top levels of the British effort to maximize production, Taylor had returned home in 1942 exhausted to focus on Canada’s war efforts a member of National boards as well as to prepare for the future of his brewing empire. Well before the war had ended, he had given instructions to have modernization and expansion plans in place for facilities to be ready for brewing in Waterloo, Toronto and Ottawa as soon as the fighting ended. He also moved to secure assets in the malting industry as well as in an American brewery to reduce his exposure to Canadian government policies as he took steps to meet what he believed was a post war boom market for beer.
In December 1945, something happened in Ontario that had not occurred for over 30 years. A new brewery opened. The Peller Brewing Company in Hamilton. It was founded by Andrew Peller, a former brewer with the Cosgrove brewery who was backed by Hamilton businessmen. Although it operated independently for only eight years, the bricks and mortar brewing facility he built shows up a few more times in the province’s brewing history. Peller went on to open a daily newspaper in Hamilton that soon failed but moved on to create one of Canada’s first large scale wineries, makers of Baby Duck and Peller Estates brands. In brewing, he is perhaps best remembered for getting around the restriction on advertising by opening an ice company and plastering the brewery’s trucks and ads “Don’t Forget The Peller’s Ice” with the emphasis on the Peller.
The new Liquor Control laws of 1944 and 1947 divided the administrative functions of retailing alcohol from licensing. These changes created the fourth legal regime beer drinking Ontarians had to live with since the beginning of 1927. They represented a further unraveling of the temperance web of control but not an elimination. The LCBO was still able to announce in a publication in that year that there was no reason Ontarians should not be able to buy what they wished if they were law abiding and financially able. It was still the role of authorities to sift who was who. Changes to the law were brought in by another change in provincial government with the Liberals being replaced by the Conservatives of George Drew in 1943. The new laws brought in by Premier Drew sought to distance it from allegations of political patronage in the distribution of licenses and also to respond to public attitudes. In April 1944, a Gallup poll indicated that 73% of Ontarians now rejected any steps toward prohibition.
The brewing industry was interested in public opinion as well. In a private polling undertaken in 1946 and 1947, attitudes of Ontarians were measured related to beer ads in the media as well as the management of breweries and retail outlets for beer. The polling, conducted on behalf of Quebec brewers Molson, captured post war perceptions at a time of further changes to the province’s Liquor Control Act. A drop was noted from 90% to 80% on the question of whether beer was an intoxicating beverage. The shift was even bigger drop for those under 30. A great one-year jump of 40% to 88% was recorded for support for Brewers’ Retail stores with far higher marks for their management compared to hotel beverage rooms.
These opinion polls capture not only post war changes in public attitudes but also changes to the system of selling beer in Ontario which came into force on 1 January 1947. Announced the new further relaxed regulations, Attorney General Leslie Blackwell confirmed that throughout the war years beer consumption more than doubled from 24,000,000 gallons in 1939 to 51,000,000 in 1946. The old rules were described as restrictions which amounted to partial prohibition which were being “disobeyed by increasingly large numbers of otherwise law-abiding citizens.” Apparently the generation that wanted to get to work after fighting the war wanted a beer as well.
The changes in attitudes behind the polling reflects the social leveling that occurred through the years of economic depression followed by years of war. The hand of political influence was no longer an accepted norm. Nor was the moral superiority of your dry betters. Brewers were involved. Labatt was staking a claim for beer as a normal part of life by placing ads in newspapers asking for public support of the St. John’s Ambulance Society, sponsoring events like a UK food drive and organizing safe driving demonstrations at small town Legions…
At the end of the first half of the 20th century, Ontario was undergoing social transition. It was just a few years from the first human rights legislation protecting against discrimination in employment and accommodation. The Progressive Conservative party was still in the early years of a forty-two year run of uninterrupted power. The population of the province expanded over 20% in the 1940s and the economy was booming. E.P. Taylor controlled 50% of the provincial beer market compared to 20% for Labatt. At the century half way point, Ontario’s brewing industry and beer itself was changing to keep up with the race forward.
Good news to the west end of the lake as Left Field Brewery moves from “brewing” to “brewery” by opening up an actual plant soon to get me that oatmeal brown of theirs on a more regular basis. There is an open house this Saturday at the nearly open site which I can’t attend but I was really pleased to see this part of the notice under the plain and simple heading “Don’t Drive”:
Since you’re presumably coming to drink beer, please walk, take the TTC or grab a cab. If you or someone in your group must drive, you should know these three things; 1) Limited parking can be found along Greenwood Ave. and some other neighbouring residential streets, 2) We are the new kids on the block and would hate to peeve off our new neighbours by having guests parked in or blocking their driveways. Please only park in designated areas. And by far the most important, 3) Please do not drink and drive.
It has been some time since I launched Beer Bloggers Against Drunk Driving to a decidedly chilly response that included an email suggesting one should not discuss things that do not “promote craft beer.” A recent thread over at the BAers place took a more honest position, offering a range of views but largely admitting that good beer is not always a positive in every context. So, good to see that Left Field is starting out in its own bricks and mortar stage of life on the right foot and telling people to leave the car elsewhere as part of their prime marketing message. Stuff like that gives one reason to pay attention in a more and more crowded market.
With all the talk of bubbles and schisms, it is good to be reminded that the path to success for any good brewer is normalcy. If a brewery is accepted and its beers stand along taps and bottles of well accepted beers and bought along with them does anyone care what those other beers are?
That is what I saw at the Loose Moose in Toronto last night. Local craft brewers lined up again macros and imports. Local beer drinkers having whatever they liked without a sneer either way. People were paying attention to the game, the food and their friends without any concern for appearances. Loud music but not too loud for the smallest kid. Uncle Jordan picked a good spot. Not a snifter was in sight, thank the Lord. I had an Eephus by Left Field as well as Nicklebrook’s Headstock with my burger. Two of my favourite Ontario craft brews. I could have had a Coor Light, too, which is or is close to Ontario’s best selling beer. Peaceful coexistence. The food was good sport pub fare and the prices reasonable for the city.
So, if good beer is absorbed without being assimilated, if it takes its place without insisting others leave… isn’t that victory?
A few hours on the fourth floor of the Royal Ontario Museum Saturday found me looking for beer stuff in the exhibits. Just a game. You think of how pervasive beer has been in western culture and how places like museums like to not discuss it all that much and it starts to be a fun game to play for a tired mind after a long night in a noisy hotel. Fun? Time passing maybe. Temper maintaining perhaps. Anyway, there was some fairly interesting stuff to be found.
Like that friend of Bertie Wooster who passes time when walking through London by imagining golf shots, I think about the beers I would have from these museum pieces. Not hard when the drinking vessel in question is a 1750s Silesian glass tankard but what about a fourth century Sudanese clay drinking cup. Clay asks for something like thin boozy porridge but there’s not much of that going around these day in this civilization. Chip shot into the Shaftesbury Memorial pool at Piccadilly.
Then I think about the techniques the curators are using to get the beer stuff into the displays but not really mentioning. In one room of the exhibit, two Georgian silver tankards are in the back placed on bookshelves along with other curios as if they were not really used for drinking beer at all. In another display, pewter pots are lined up in a row to describe weights and measures as opposed to the uses to which they were put. The weighted and measured. Odd. No pottle. The fifteenth century mead drinking jug made of spruce sits next to the leather canteen in a daring juxtaposition of old things, weirdly shaped and made out of strange stuff. Two iron glanced off Shakespeare’s forehead neatly carries on down Charing Cross Road. Kids are getting tired feet. Me, too.
We took the subway back to the hotel, three stops south to Osgoode the TTC car as empty but for us as the sidewalks had been on the way north earlier. The kids said that Toronto was nice but it was no Montreal. I knew what they meant but it was not a bad Toronto, either. University Avenue looked like the MIT area of Cambridge if the MIT area of Cambridge had stopped being built in 1973 or so.
So, we are working through the final draft of the history of beer in Ontario and I realize something has been staring me right in the face for quite a while now. Here is the passage in question:
The early ships’ crews considered its beer of great importance and even survival. In 1668-69, the crew of the Nonsuch over wintered on the James Bay coast and reported upon their return:
…they were environed with ice about 6 monethes first halting theire ketch on shore, and building them a house. They carried provisions on shore and brewd Ale and beere and provided against the cold which was their work…
See what I missed that was sitting right before my eyeballs? They brewed ale and beer. The news was reported in issue 408 of The London Gazette, too. Not that they made both ale and beer but that they survived a winter in the Canadian Arctic. The Nonesuch was small and tough, custom picked to both survive the trip to the edge of the known world and be hauled out of the water to avoid the crush of ice. Only 53 feet long, a replica can be found in a museum in Manitoba. Manitoba? Yes, well, after the British Parliament’s Canada (Ontario Boundary) Act of 1889 introduced a boundary that divided the former Rupert’s Land that included the watershed of the big bay, including much of what became Ontario’s north.
Got it? Wonderful. But let’s get back to the point. They made two things to drink. Two fermented beverages. Why? You are stuck in a situation that may as well be the dark side of the moon, you have cleverly brought a survival space pod as well as sufficient supplies (think food in tubes) to make it though the six months of frozen horror… and you make two types of booze? Why the heck do you do that? Well, just a century and a generation before the voyage, the benefits of ale was described in 1542 by the physician Andrew Boorde in his book A Dyetary of Helth. The key was conveniently referenced by Martyn this week: “Ale for an Englysshman is a naturall drynke.” Yet he is also the man who wrote:
If it do come by an hurt in the head, there is no remedy but pacience of all partes. If it do come by debilite of the brayne & head, drynke in the mornynge a dyshe of mylke, vse a Sirupe named Sh’upus acetosus de prunis, and vse laxatiue meates, and purgacions, if nede do requyre, and beware of superuflous drynkynge, specially of wyne and stronge ale and beere, and if anye man do perceuye that he is dronke, let hym take a vomite with water and oyle, or with a fether…
….so it is hard to know what to believe. Especially if you remember what Pepys said folk on ships got up to when they were on the ale on April 30th, 1660:
After that on board the Nazeby, where we found my Lord at supper, so I sat down and very pleasant my Lord was with Mr. Creed and Sheply, who he puzzled about finding out the meaning of the three notes which my Lord had cut over the chrystal of his watch. After supper some musique. Then Mr. Sheply, W. Howe and I up to the Lieutenant’s cabin, where we drank, and I and W. Howe were very merry, and among other frolics he pulls out the spigot of the little vessel of ale that was there in the cabin and drew some into his mounteere, and after he had drank, I endeavouring to dash it in his face, he got my velvet studying cap and drew some into mine too, that we made ourselves a great deal of mirth, but spoiled my clothes with the ale that we dashed up and down. After that to bed very late with drink enough in my head.
Is that what they were doing with that ale up there in the Arctic in 1668? My heavens.
Milestone? Ramming over 400 years of history into the form of one book tends to make you forget milestones. Too many fly by. Jordan and I are coming to a final point with all the text placed in one spot with a real beginning, middle and end. With still a few weeks to go and without spilling too many beans… what have I learned?
=> An iPad mini is not unlike a shovel. Years ago, I kept an acre vegetable garden and dug it and turned it every year with just a shovel. One Saturday morning I said “to hell with this” to the sky and bought myself a bright red $1000 Toro rototiller that could be started on turf and, before moving forward, would straight drop down turning the ground to gorgeous fertile soil. I called it “Lil’ Shiva” for obvious reasons. Two days ago I bought the 15.6 inch laptop on sale that I am typing on now. Not squinting as much all of a sudden.
=> I am glad I shared in the writing of The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer with Max first. It got a lot of mental content out of the way but also got me in the habit of sitting down and pounding out 400 or 800 words not as a stand alone thing like these paragraphs but as part of a bigger statement. I’ve started its sequel.
=> Ontario’s general history is far more interesting than folk would tell you. Huge chunks of the social and political story can’t fit into the narrative solely for reasons of scale. It is sad that there is no well known book simply called The History of Ontario as there are similar works in other, more self-aware jurisdictions. The story of the provinces brewing gives some hints as to why that book might not be on a bookshelf near you. You will have to wait, however, until June to see what I mean.
=> I have far more interest and even affection for big institutions like the Hudson’s Bay Company and big people like E.P. Taylor. Rather than being the massive faceless corporate monoliths they might be taken for today, they each were cutting empires out of the hinterlands in their way. Consolidation was inevitable in the brewing industry in its day just as much as it was in the automotive industry. Today, we don’t expect to buy cars made in our own local communities. Why would Ontarians of 1890 or 1949 care any more whether their beer was local? PS: Labatt > Carling even if it was smaller until their last competitive decades.
=> How about the beer? If Labatt were to bottle its Export IPA circa 1900, it might well blow more than half of the craft beers brewed today out of the water. The beer I would really like to try most, however, is early 1800s ship’s beer. Simply brewed with few ingredients and low alcohol, it is one of the lost brews that would have been an utterly common place thing in a shore town like mine two hundred years ago. Common as Kleenex or coffee in a paper cup.
So, there you go. An update or sorts. Still plenty of writing and editing to come but the end is near. Then another book. And maybe another if things work out.
Coming 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.
Is it just me or does the expression on Beau’s Hogan’s Goat bear a slight resemblance to the brewery’s co-founder Tim Beauchesne? A sample arrived a few days ago and, while I am pretty sure I have had the beer before, “spiced” beer of any sort is not something I hunt out. Same with weizenbocks like the sample of Burly Goat sent by British Columbia’s Granville Island Brewing. Yet, given how often I am wrong, I really should check in on my prejudices. Besides, Tim-Goat is giving me a mean death stare from that label. Better do something.
Hogan’s Goat pours a bright caramel under a slightly orange cream head. The almond malty aroma leans slightly to gingersnap. A very pleasant first foamy gulp: rich nutty malt with a late showing of herbal hops. Sweet with nods in the malt to apple, raisin and even old fashioned brandy butter sauce. What spicing there is gets neatly placed. The overall effect is a bit barley candy, a bit herbal lozenge and more than that in beer. You particularly notice the orange peel when you burp. At 6.9%, strong but not over the top. BAers have the love.
Burly Goat is a beer in the style of Aventinus and a respectable homage. It has that spiced weizen yeast in common with its mentor and displays how wheat, when stronger, starts to move from simply grassiness to something itself rustic and spiced in the way that rye is. It has that beefy gravel hue that would be a turn off in any other sort of beer. Green grass, marigold, pumpernickel, a bit of almond in a drying brew. Herbal leathery aromas. You could soak a pork shoulder in this very nicely. Just one rating by a happy BAer.
What did I learn? I was reminded that I like beers like this and that domestic craft can make them with verve. Or is it panache?
A rather swell personal essay about one man’s love of a beer in today’s Globe and Mail:
Then one weekend last spring I was told they were out of Export in six-packs. I tried again the next week. Same story. The third time, the guy they call Red shook his head and said, “Sorry, they are not making it in six-packs anymore. I guess the six-packs aren’t selling very well.” I ordered two six-packs of something else and made my way home. I think I left the store paraphrasing T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in my mind, “I grow old, I grow old, I still like my beer cold.” I was brooding over whether to switch brands or throw away my aversion to drinks packaged in aluminum. Neither option appealed to a man set in his ways.
I think I am developing a soft spot for big industrial brewing. Maybe not like the guy in the essay but not so far off. See, I am hitting the mid-1900s in the Ontario brewing history that I am writing with Jordan. And I am writing today about how, as might be expected, EP Taylor looked out into the world at the outset of the 1950s and saw nothing but markets and opportunities. In 1952, he buys Quebec’s National Breweries, the company born of consolidations which had first inspired Taylor’s initial plans in 1928. In the same year, Carling Black Label was first brewed under contract in the United Kingdom. In the years that followed he expands operations in the US and buys breweries in Canada’s western provinces. Taking on the challenge, competitor Labatt bought breweries in Manitoba and British Columbia while building a new brewery in Montreal. Their original location in London Ontario also underwent large scale expansion. With the move by Molson into the Ontario market in 1955 with the building of new 300,000 barrel a year brewery on Totonto’s waterfront, the province’s big three brewers which would dominate the next thirty years were established. Whammo.
It’s all so positive and happy. Ontario’s population expands by 20% over the 1940s and the 1950s are pure economic boom. I may not want to drink the stuff that they are brewing but it’s all quite the rush.
