The beer trail or should I say the beer bottle trail began around 8 AM Sunday morning if you wanted to get there before the Newell or Jardin boys or Mickey McEwan got there. In the winter for me it meant early breakfast, bundle up,box on toboggan and head down Minnie Sreet past Howson's dam, over McKenzie bridge up the hill to the "Royal T" dance hall. The parking lot sometimes seeme like a literal beer bottle gold mine after the Saturday night dance.In those days we got two cents apiece for them but remember a coke was only a nickel. You do the math! We started recycling early. The bottles were the long neck ones like we have today. The "stubbies" were introduced in 1961 and were phased out again in 1984 in favour of the long neck ones

Sometimes you would find full bottles in a case, that's where I think I acquired a taste for beer at the tender age of fourteen. That was when beer was wholesome, nutritious and had real full bodied flavours before the GBB (Greedy Big Boys) got into it.

In the 1940's E.P. Taylor started the trend by buying up over thirty Ontario brewers, eventually reducing 150 brands to eight.From then on quality went on a downhill slide. 

How many remember the year 1966 Dow Breweries put an extra dose of 'cobalt' in their beer to give it a more 'frothy head'. Huh!  Sixteen to twenty five people died and many became sick. Their slogan was "Wouldn't a Dow good "Now"!

Ontario beer is now sold in 'The Beer Store' owned and operated by the big monopolistic three,in fact, the Beer Store is ultimately owned by three foreign multinationals: Anheuser-Busch InBev, Molson Coors and Sapporo. In what other country does an elected government act as an enabler for a foreign-owned cartel — based in Belgium, Brazil, the U.S. and Japan — that wields monopoly power on beer sales in such a lucrative, captive market?

I can attest from personal experience that some of best beers in the world come from but not limited to are Ireland (Smithwicks, Guiness) Holland (Grolsch), Czech (Pilsener Urquell),Austria, Germany (Koln Dom Pils) to name a few.

In Germany they have a law against tampering with beer. The law originated in 1487 called the Rheinheitsgebot. Translated German Beer Purity Law. It is still in effect today. It decreed the only ingredients  in production of beer were water,barley and hops. No cobalt!

 Fortunately we don't have to drink the same homogenized,adulterated heavily advertised sexist swill the GBB (Greedy Big Boys)  'push' out the door these days with the birth of so many micro brews such as Creemore,Wellington,Mill Street (Organic),Steam Whistle,Neustadt (10w30), etc.

Lest the beer trail turns into a real beer rant lets leave it at that. I gotta go hunt for bottles, you get ten cents apiece for them now-but coke is a dollar.

Cheers.

Bob Mcintyre

Just a few years after returning to the UK we had an occasion to take my Mum to a stately home in Kent not that far from Selsdon.  Boughton Monchelsea is a small village in Kent which is the same county as the Wingham in England.  We hadn’t much knowledge of it but one of our regular weekly adventures was to take my Mum to  a stately home not too far away.  As there are literally dozens, if not, scores of these quite near Croydon we had a vast choice.  Anyway Boughton Monchelsea was our choice of that week.  It was a very nice stately home but not huge and not a Castle.  It was almost homely if it didn’t have 30 bedrooms.

 We queued up for a few minutes got our tickets and started our visit.  We were very impressed with the place - it felt quite homely almost like home.  Suddenly as we were going up the stairs Mum said - ‘here look at that - that’s you.’  There was a painting on the wall which was literally the spitting image of me and in fact could have been me and represented someone of about the same age at the time it was painted.  I was amazed - my mother was amazed- we were all amazed.  We stood there with our mouths open for several minutes and when we read the inscription on the painting it was actually of a previous Rider.  It was absolutely clear that this person was a predecessor of mine.  The painting was so detailed and so like myself it was impossible to come to any other conclusion except that there was a family resemblance so close that, in fact, almost all the facial details had been meticulously retained.

I did some research afterwards and it transpired that the house was purchased by Thomas Rider in about the 16th century.   The Riders kept it for quite a while and only actually lost possession in the late 18th century.  It was difficult to pin down the actual lineage but we didn’t need any more convincing because the painting could only have been one of my family members.  We also learned that although the RYder’s were somehow related they were of a different branch who went off at a tangent.  We also found that some earlier family members - quite a few in fact - had settled in North America.

We were gobsmacked but they didn’t want to give the house back even though we showed them the painting of me on the stairs - very disappointed.  So I bought a 4 bed exec.