WRITE DIRECTION: Searching for a beer

ANOTHER difference that I found interesting while in Canada was their treatment of the drinking age restriction of 18 years, while it remains at 21 in the USA just over the border.

Canada has a very liberal policy of allowing the purchase and use of marijuana, but I’m not aware of that being age restricted, although that may well be the case.

As a tourist, during their summer days of 30 degrees or more, it was quite normal to seek out a cool beer at lunchtime, but it didn’t prove to be quite as easy as that.

On such a day travelling among the classic villages of the playgrounds of the really rich and famous, the Lake Muskoka area, we made such a stop at a classic village hotel, asking for a beer to go with our lunch.

Sorry I can’t serve you with that as I’m under 18 years old, said the sweet young thing.

Can you please then have a senior member of staff serve us?

Sorry, there are seven of us on duty today and we are all under the 18-year age limit and this is strictly against the law.

May I then ask if it is unusual for a pub not to serve beer?

I was informed that today their duty was to serve meals and only soft drinks rather than beer or spirits on this mid-weekday.

So, what are our options for having a cool one with lunch?

She said you can buy beer by the bottle or packets of six cans at the nearby grocer’s store, but you can’t drink it on their premises.

So, we tried that but were told that we could only buy one bottle each but were later informed that retail general stores were allowed to sell more than that but because this was such a new regulation, it was heavily policed, so the sellers were somewhat protective.

I’m happy to advise that we did get a beer each, to go with a take-away lunch, but then headed to a grassy area beside a church and the river which wound its way through the village, after passing through a small hydro power station which supplied enough electricity for some 2000 homes in that general area.

They have three of those hydro power stations nearby providing low-cost power. Maybe we should have been asking for a schooner of local lake water.

Very interesting to encounter the different treatments for selling drugs and beer in a country so similar to that of our own but so protective of their residents.

By John BLACKBOURN