Is Canada a nation of teetotallers?

Travel and drinking: two traditional summer past-times to which the former graciously invites more of the latter. Not quite so for Canadians, however. According to national custom, travel does not merely allow us to drink more (although, obligingly, it does do that), but also reveals how very little we can drink, and under how very strangely limited circumstances.

Canada is never lacking for quirks and oddities that distinguish it from its international contemporaries; not principal among these, but certainly notable, is its apparent low regard for alcohol.

Perhaps this column should be accompanied by a health warning: there are good reasons for individuals to be wary of the time-honoured act of pursuing inebriation. But for the majority of provinces to regulate it in the way that gives them such prim enjoyment? Many of us have been close enough to an alcoholic to dread the pathetic, obliterative insanity that accompanies addiction — precisely as many of us know that addiction is not caused by allowing a couple to enjoy a glass of wine beside the river at sunset without having to pour it into a plastic Thermos for fear a bylaw officer will appear in an act of bibulous-interruptous.

Allow me to outline the extent of our ridiculousness.

In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Denmark and Belgium, people can legally drink wine and beer from the age of sixteen. And in Georgia and Moldova, from the same age they can chase it all with vodka; in Canada, provinces typically believe it is more dangerous to consume half a pint than to steer a two-ton box of steel, glass and various pointy objects through town.

Paris practically encourages drinking in public, or at least tolerates it in the way it tolerates discreet romantic liaisons; both allowances conspire to ensure that you can sit at a café and enjoy the view along with a glass of wine. In Toronto, when seated at a patio you must have a fence around yourself lest the view sees you with a drink. And this, I think, must be the great life’s work of the ostensibly pragmatic bureaucrat who is in fact a moralizer, which of course all bureaucrats secretly are, their mission being to make it as difficult to do what you want as possible, on the assumption that what you want is probably bad: To apply for a sidewalk patio, one must submit multiple sketches of not only the patio itself, but of the awnings that will shield it from innocent eyes.

Meanwhile, Japan has alcohol vending machines. China has no minimum drinking age. If Asia is the future, the future is drunk.

Now, with alcohol, as with guns and political leaders and practically everything, the United States at least is boldly pursuing its manifest destiny of making the rest of us feel better about ourselves. Thirty-three states give municipalities permission to withhold permission to drink; three of these force counties to take it upon themselves to declare their jurisdictions drinking-permissive, rather than allowing people to sell or have a drink by default. Many dozens of counties, villages and towns across the United States prevent the sale of liquor.

But while parts of the United States have forced citizens to drink anywhere from little to nothing, parts of Canada have forced citizens to drink nothing but a little sampling of alcohol. When B.C. started allowing grocery stores to sell wine, it did not allow wines from anywhere other than B.C. to be sold. We are prim for purely moral reasons no longer; we are protectionist for self-defeating purposes as well!

I suppose we’re still hung over from the temperance movement, which failed to anticipate that a prohibition of anything inspires a thrill in getting around it. And now, just as Western societies are spinning out of control, it’s doubtful they will relax very many laws around a substance that can encourage one to act almost as stupidly as whatever malign idiot forces have caused humanity to vote for people who are bent on dividing it.

Maybe that’s one more reason to book a vacation, and maybe not. So many places to go, but where to get away?

Allow me to outline the extent of our ridiculousness.