Ian Coutts. Brew North: How Canadians made Beer and Beer made Canada. Toronto: Greystone Books, 2010.
In many Ontario bookstore shelves, one can see what amounts to a microcosm of the public’s perception of beer as it compares to its classier and more socially respectable brother, wine. Somewhere between “Barbecuing” and “Cocktails”, one will invariably find the alcoholic beverages section, which amounts to a few shelves at best. Aside from highly technical home-brewing manuals and silly one-off volumes of “Top 100 Beers to Try Before You Leave this Mortal Coil”, there really aren’t that many books on beer to be found, unless one knows where to look. By contrast, there are literally dozens of wine companions, wine guides, wine histories and so forth, which provide that extra bit of class that so fits in with the Chapters/Indigo middle-class barista and home decor ethos. Now, I will check myself at this point and resist the temptation to enter ‘rant mode’ regarding our (changing) cultural bias that favours wine over beer (one theory, proposed by Garrett Oliver, suggests that wine has become the drink of respectable society in part because, linguistically, the word ‘wine’ is originally from the divine language of Latin; the more proletarian ‘ale’, however, is a product of the lowly and less-refined Old English/Germanic tongue). I mention this only to make a point that, if one wants to explore the rich and fascinating history of beer, one must do some serious hunting, whether it is on Amazon, beer websites, university collections, or from bookstores that sell more esoteric fare. Public perceptions of beer have really only changed for the better in the last thirty years or so, so there hasn’t really been much time for the literature to come along for the ride. But books on beer are out there, and if you happen across one, they can truly be fascinating reads. Like this one, by Canadian author (and fellow Kingstonian) Ian Coutts. Coutts is a bit of a journeyman in the literary world, having written or co-written volumes on the Titanic (with Robert Ballard, discoverer of the wreck in 1985), on North American birds (with wildlife painter Robert Bateman), as well as books on science, food and nature geared at younger audiences.
However, when first picking up Brew North, I was both concerned and intrigued by the cover design, to the point where I questioned picking the book up at all. I wasn’t too impressed with the toque-sporting beer-swilling beaver on the front, which I felt was yet another hokey appeal to the kind of ‘Canadiana’ one finds at cheesy gift shops. I half expected this book to be packaged alongside little bottles of maple syrup and “Moose Droppings” candy. My eyebrows also rose slightly at the phrase “...and how beer made Canada.” Now, as I’ve ranted about before, Canadians like to spend an great deal of time boasting about our nation’s affinity for beer (compared to the Belgians, Germans, Czechs and even the Americans, though, we are lightweights), and thus I was worried that Coutts would fall into the trap of overstating Canada’s brewing achievements and its relationship to our history, and would merely play into the Don Cherry/”My Name is Joe”/Canadian, Eh? monomyth. Fortunately, this was not the case. Brew North does an excellent job of linking this wonderful beverage to the development of Canada as a nation, thus validating the wording of the book’s rather bold title. Brew North proved to be a great little read and a wonderful introduction to the history of brewing in Canada and its role in shaping the culture of our country.
Coutts’ history begins, like so many other histories of Canada do, with the indigenous First Nations peoples; however, this particular side of the story is surprisingly brief. Unlike the peoples of Mesoamerica, the original inhabitants of Canada did not independently develop their own alcoholic...
