Canada's History

Strange brew

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At some point in the neolithic period, around seven thousand years or so ago, a gust of wind blew some wild yeast into a clay pot filled with grain. Then it rained.

The temperatur­e was warm enough to ignite the chemical process that we know today as fermentati­on. Some time later, the owner of the pot returned, imbibed the strange brew, and, in so doing, likely discovered the world’s first hangover.

It’s incredible to think that something created completely by accident, such as alcohol, has evolved over time to become a multi-billion-dollar global industry. Since that serendipit­ous, theoretica­l first fermentati­on, successive societies — from the ancient Egyptians and Chinese to the Greeks, the Norse, and others — have sought to perfect the craft. Their creativity certainly knew no bounds. They fermented honey and created mead. They fermented grapes and — voila! — wine was born. Potatoes, rye, rice, apples — you name it — someone, somewhere, at some point, likely tried to transform it into booze.

Alcohol’s mind- and mood-altering qualities were often connected to the gods, from the Greeks’ Dionysus to Rome’s Bacchus to Christiani­ty’s Jesus, whom the Bible says transforme­d water into wine.

Throughout history, alcohol has been the source of merriment and misery. The American inventor Benjamin Franklin once claimed that beer was “proof that God loves us.” Here in Canada, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald — an infamous imbiber — quipped to a political rival that the public preferred “John A. drunk to George Brown sober.”

For many Canadians, though, the abuse of alcohol was no laughing matter: it destroyed families, lowered productivi­ty, and fuelled crime. By the turn of the ninteenth century, churches, temperance societies and women’s groups were leading the charge to have booze banned.

In this issue, author Daniel Francis recalls the tortuous route Canada took in enacting prohibitio­n — and why it ultimately failed.

Elsewhere in this issue, a pair of feature articles explores the complicate­d legacy of the Group of Seven, which held its debut exhibition one hundred years ago in 1920, while another article recounts the tale of the Tsilhqot’in people’s historic efforts to exert sovereignt­y over their traditiona­l territorie­s in British Columbia.

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 ??  ?? A man in Toronto carries a keg of beer in September 1916 — six months after the Ontario Temperance Act prohibited the sale of alcohol in that province.
A man in Toronto carries a keg of beer in September 1916 — six months after the Ontario Temperance Act prohibited the sale of alcohol in that province.
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