Just a few local Canadian notes on Elaine's history of brewing.
Saskatchewan has had a tradition of government involvement in brewing.
(Compared to the US, Canada has also had a tradition of provincial government
monopoly
marketing for hard liquor and for beer. This is perhaps partly based upon
the old Christian CCF philosophy that if you can't stamp out sin at least
you can socialise the profits of it. However in many provinces women were not
allowed in beer parlours until just a few decades ago, then later they were
segregated for a while in many provinces.
Liquor marts did not display liquor but prices were marked on a
wall and you filled out slips for the clerk to fill the orders. Some local
muncipalities in Manitoba are still dry and do not allow liquor sales of
any type.) Saskatchewan
has had government owned and worker owned breweries. I believe that the
government still has an interest in one Saskatoon brewery. During one period
the government brews were not very popular. The government solved this problem
through socialist planning. Each brewer was given a quota and hotels had
to purchase so much a percentage of beer from each brewer. At the end of
the month if you went in many hotels all you could get was government brew
as hotels had to sell off their government brewery quota.
A strange phenomenon I have noticed in Canada is that large brewers
such as Labatt's, Carling-Okeefe's, and Molson often get licences to brew
brand name foreign beers and then turn them into something almost identical
to popular Canadian beers. This has been done with Carlsberg, Lowenbrau,
and Budweiser. Only Budweiser seems to have had any success. As soon as
the licensed product is available the imported Carlsberg, Lowenbrau, etc.
disappears from the liquor stores. I expect this is because they don't want
ayone to compare the original with the licenced product.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
