TOASTING MONDIAL DE LA BIÈRE
Festival a chance to indulge in suds
The Grand Prix and the Fringe Festival spin into high gear on Thursday. But festival madness in Montreal really begins on Wednesday with the launch of the 23rd edition of the Mondial de la bière.
And how so very appropriate. Not that we encourage citizens to over-indulge on the suds, but at least the beer fest will allow us to take our minds off our everbizarre 375th birthday party and the still-unfinished Richler gazebo and the cost excesses therein.
It will also allow us to forget the fact that the city has become one massive construction zone. At least the resulting gridlock on our roads will likely necessitate imbibers to take public transportation to the beer fest and thus avoid more chaos.
Nearly 200,000 parched visitors are expected to partake in the Mondial de la bière, which runs until Sunday at the Palais des Congrès and its outdoor l’Esplanade terrace. For good reason. Patrons will be able to sip from a selection of 536 beers from around the planet, including 282 brews new to the fest.
In addition, there will be munchies, many of the gourmet variety, from 18 food pavilions with which to marry the beer. Plus, patrons can participate in a host of consciousness-raising workshops and classes.
Jeannine Marois is the force that propels the Mondial de la bière. President and co-founder, Marois has taken the fest from a local affair with a small collection of craft beers to one of the largest on this continent.
The first event took place in rather cramped quarters at Place des Arts with a mere 10 breweries involved, and it drew just 20,000 visitors over four days. Now there are more than 100 breweries — including 40 from Quebec — in a significantly more massive space at the Palais. Thirteen countries will be represented, but the major focus will be on the beers of Spain at this year’s event.
“The goal was never to make it this big, but it’s not easy to avoid with the ever-growing industry right now,” Marois says. “It’s become a little crazy. But it’s crazy in a good way with a lot of interesting new breweries sprouting up everywhere around the world. In the last five years, the number of craft-beer breweries in Quebec alone has doubled.”
Marois attributes the Mondial’s popularity to the introduction of a gastronomic element to the event over the last four years. Five prominent chefs, a cheesemaker and a chocolate expert will join forces with several of the brewers to offer high-end finger food paired with local beers. Also worth noting is the spokesperson for this edition is Montreal chef Jonathan Garnier, proprietor of La Guilde Culinaire.
“Why a chef as spokesman of a beer festival?” Marois asks. “Because it’s time to consider beer as a gourmet product. For too long, people didn’t realize just how well one could eat with beer and just how well one could cook with beer.
“Visitors at this year’s event will be really impressed by the food menu being offered — it’s most appealing.”
She’s got that right. Among the array of tempting eateries Marois has lined up this year are: Montréal Plaza, Brasserie T!, Toqué!, L’Assommoir, Bistro Laurentien La Coupole, Méchant Boeuf, Bier Markt Montréal, Rosewood, Pastaga, Au Petit Extra, Tapeo, La Prunelle and Le Terminal.
Marois became smitten by craft beer after drinking her first StAmbroise pale ale.
“It was love at first taste,” she quips. “Although I have always been a wine lover, at the end of the day now there’s nothing I love more than a pale ale. I also have a great home recipe for onion soup with a St-Ambroise stout.”
Marois had been running a small communications company when she was approached by two men about the Mondial.
“I thought it was a great idea. They then brought me in as their partner. But they left a few years later, and I’ve been alone with my team in this venture since 2000. What’s most gratifying to me is being part of something that brings such joy to the city and being able to kind of bring in summer — after we’ve endured such a long winter.”
Methinks we can all drink to that — and then some.
It may have closed 36 years ago, but Baron Byng High School remains etched in this city’s history, having produced an impressive array of alumni.
Among the many distinguished grads of the St-Urbain St. institution were: Mordecai Richler, poets A.M. Klein and Irving Layton, artists William Allister and Rita Briansky, actress Marilyn Lightstone, impresario Sam Gesser, Supreme Court Justice Morris Fish, Nobel Prize recipient Rudolph Marcus, late NDP leader David Lewis, Sun Youth founder Sid Stevens and doctor Phil Gold.
The spirit of the school and its legacy have now been preserved in the Baron Byng Online Museum — in a lot less time than it is taking the city to complete the Richler gazebo, and for a lot less money.
The online museum traces the evolution of the high school from its opening in 1921 to its closing in 1980, focusing on the achievements of its teachers, students and graduates. Their achievements cover the gamut, from the
arts to the sciences, commerce to education.
Special mention is also made to those grads who lost their lives fighting in the Second World War.
The museum allows visitors to take a virtual tour of the school as it was. Visitors can also browse through school yearbooks, memorabilia and biographies of notable alumni and teachers, and listen to the collection of the nearly two dozen oral histories.
“There was such an incredible synergy of students and teachers coming together in such a relatively short period of time at the school,” says Helen Malkin, curator of the Baron Byng Online Museum. “The period represents one of the most unparalleled eras in Montreal’s rich and oh-so varied history.”
For too long, people didn’t realize just how well one could eat with beer and just how well one could cook with beer. JEANNINE MAROIS, president of the Mondial de la bière
Daily Show host Trevor Noah comes back to town Sept. 24 at Théâtre St-Denis. The South African comic/pundit should be in fine fettle by then, what with the U.S. presidential race in full steam and his favourite target, The Donald, directly in his sights.
Guaranteed, Noah won’t be pulling his punches.
He was here last summer hosting a Just for Laughs gala and also performed at a 2013 JFL gala, hosted by Eddie Izzard.