Brews not Bullets: Labatt 50 in Korea

A recent spat between Molson and Labatt's brewerys over the right to be the official beer of the NHL is now going to the courts.  It seems that Labatt's longer relationship with the Canadian Forces remains intact.  Product placement is a common enough practice in contemporary media, but during the Korean War, Labatt's brewery went to great lengths to promote their new brand of beer commemorating the 50th anniversary of the company.  John Labatt personally delivered 3,440 cases of  Labatt 50 to troops in Korea.  This favour was apparently appreciated, as the 57th Field Squadron of Royal Canadian Engineers dubbed a bridge they built the "The John Labatt 50th Anniversary Bridge."

RCR Soldier enjoys a beer in Korea. NAC.

Labatt continues this tradition of sending beer to Canada's soldiers, sending thousands of cans of Keiths, Blue, and Kokanee to the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.

Heron, Craig. Booze : A Distilled History. Toronto Ont.: Between the Lines, 2003. 

http://www.framingbusiness.net/archives/811
http://forums.army.ca/forums/index.php?topic=63627.0
http://www.army.gc.ca/IAOL/143000440000588/143000440000590/HTMLFiles/WSentinel_30apr.pdf

Sean Mills Podcast on the Empire Within

I have already posted my own two cents on Sean Mills' The Empire Within.  For those of us not content reading Mills' words, we can now listen to them, courtesy of the National Campus Radio Association.  Mills basically gives a short teaser to the major themes in his work, which covers post-colonial ideas within the various strains of the protest movement in 1960s Montreal.

Sean Mills Drinks Coffee

Mill's interview emphasizes the global context of the Quiet Revolution, and an understanding of the complexities of various Montreal groups.  He also addresses the rise of the various strains of the neo-nationalist movement in Quebec, and shows that the various voices of dissent during the 1960s, were acting as an alternative to this state-centred neo-nationalist refrain.

Mills speaks to the way in which thinkers such as Sartre and Memmi, were at first  skeptical towards the notion of Quebec as a post-colonial society, but were later to accept the province within an anti-colonial framework.

The rise of women in the 1960s movements is also addressed.  Women's support of the organizations of dissent started in periphery roles.  Later they demanded gender equality, not only within these organizations, but in greater Quebec society.

Admittedly, there isn't allot here for those who have read the book already, but the podcast serves as a good overview for those who haven't picked it up yet, and a refresher for those who have.

Listen to the Podcast

Hidden Hooch: Alcohol Smuggling

Dominion Brewery Invoice, Toronto, 1896.  Vitualmuseum.ca

Dominion's Club Ale, ca. 1900.  Virtualmuseum.ca

As Craig Heron's engaging history Booze (2003) explains, drink has a long history in British North America. While the story of alchohol prohibition in Canada is mainly focused on the 1920s, temperance crusaders have been active since the early nineteenth century.  By the 1870s, control over alcohol cut a major federal-provincial divide.  The Scott Act of 1878 allowed for municipalities to hold a plebiscite over the issue, and some localities became dry.  This did not stop the Dominion Brewery of Toronto, however, who sewed 4-5 dozen bottles into flour sacks for sale in "dry" districts.(Heron, 97)

Between 1919 and 1929, the sale of alcohol was prohibited by retailers and bars alike in Canada. The making of alcohol, however, could still provide a source of income.  One Alberta farmer was reputed to claim as the police were charging him, "Yes, I voted for prohibition, and I'd vote for it again.  I went broke farming."  (Heron, 240-242).  While making alcohol was still legal in Canada, the completely dry United States provided another potential market for rum-running (or perhaps rye-running) Canadians.

Pig Carcasses Stuffed with Whiskey. Glenbow Archives.

Methods of delivery were ingenious and varied.  Royal commissioners had learned of a whole host of methods which had sought to break the prohibition of liquor to the Northwest Territories in the late nineteenth century: "It was brought in secreted in packages of merchandise; in tins specially prepared and labelled "bibles"; as canned fruits, a single peach, perhaps, floating in alcohol valued at $5; in casks of sugar and rice; in packages of bottles, supposed to contain nothing but temperance drinks; in carloads of hogs or lumber, or as eggs."

Later in the 1920s, all conceivable products were again used to hide a shipment of booze.  Liquor was disguised with lumber, laths, and even packaged as Christmas trees.  Coffins were even used to try to hide liquid assets bound for the United States.  Talk about importing a stiff drink!

“Booze in Old Town Toronto.” Virtualmuseum.ca  http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/pm_v2.php?id=story_line&lg=English&fl=0&ex=00000411&sl=2980&pos=1.

Heron, Craig. Booze : a distilled history. Toronto Ont.: Between the Lines, 2003. 

Retlaw, Alberta, The C.P.R., and the Naming of Prairie Towns

A: Location of Retlaw Alberta

Due to the Canadian Pacific Railroad's massive influence on Canada's prairie West, there is no surprise that the company's station names can still be found on maps long after branch-lines have fallen into disuse and communities withered.

Retlaw, Alberta, is a prime example.  Until 1913, the area was referred to as "Barney", and that name graced the local post-office.  It was in that year that the iron road came to the area.  Apparently, "Barney" was just not dignified enough for railway executives.  The renaming of this town can be linked to a certain Walter R. Baker.  Walter was an official of the CPR, and had served as the private secretary to Canada's governor general.  Apparently Walter was an important enough personage to have his name granted to one of the CPR's railway station.  To further obscure the origins of this name, however, the powers that be flipped things on their head and named the station "Retlaw", which to the meanest intellect at the slightest reflection, is indeed Walter, spelled backwards.



To further prove the arbitrary nature of the names of a number of prairie towns, we only need to observe those headed north-west from Retlaw: Enchant, Travers, Lomond and Armada.  The first letters in these small grain hubs all lead us back(wards) to WALTER.  The last station, never built, was to be named Waldeck.

Retlaw NWMP 1916. Glenbow Archives

Retlaw had a fairly brief existence.  After the Great War, population numbers peaked at 250, which included the surrounding farmers.  In 1925 crops were especially poor, and the exodus from the area began.  Visitors to the town now will observe only a couple permanent residents.  What was once a bustling town with a bank, several cafes, grain elevators, hotel and North-West Mounted Police detachment, has now been all but eroded by the elements.

Retlaw Hotel 1914. Glenbow Archives.

A Local Historian has preserved  Retlaw's History

Retlaw is included in my online Ghost Towns of Alberta guidebook from Geotourism Canada.

“ALTAPOP: Alberta’s Annual Official Population List Publication (1960 to present).” Alberta Population. http://www.altapop.ca/opl.htm.

Aubrey, Merrily K. Concise Place Names of Alberta. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006.  

Fryer, Harold. Ghost Towns of Alberta. Langley: Stagecoach Publishing Co. Ltd., 1976.

“Walter spelled backwards | Forgotten Alberta.” http://forgottenalberta.com/2010/08/09/walter-spelled-backwards/.

 

Buffalo Skull Tombstone

Buffalo Bones at Saskatoon Saskatchewan.  1890.  University of Alberta Archives.

The sheer quantity of buffalo skulls evokes a hollow revulsion to the slaughter of the buffalo on the Great Plains.  The above picture hails from a new website from the University of Alberta Archives featuring the manuscripts, letters and photographs of William Pearce.  The site, called "A Pioneer's Perspective: The Historical Narrative of William Pearce and the Making of the Canadian West", describes the photo:


"It depicts a boy posing next to an imposing stack of buffalo skulls. The disturbing number of collected skulls stacked carefully in a line symbolizes the scale of change in the environment and local economies. Their careful organization also represents the calibrated tools of modernity which would have introduced the hunting rifle to clear the land and the surveyor's tool -- still another perspective -- to measure and allot it. The line of skulls is so long they narrow towards the horizon in another, a spatial, perspective. Symbolically, they narrow towards what appears to be a Hudson’s Bay Company fort; the buffalo giving way to colonial settlement. The photograph is striking for its strangely affected juxtaposition of death and renewal. The unidentified boy strikes a satisfied, rakish pose: he leans his tall stick towards the pile of bones, indicating the carnage, left arm akimbo. He seems proud of his work, a  wall of skulls. It is a prairie-gothic tableau predating Grant Wood’s famous painting but equally striking."

Buffalo bones at Qu'appelle, Saskatchewan. 1890.  University of Alberta Archives.

The following is an 1877 account of this wasteful destruction by David Laird, signatory to southern Alberta's Treaty No. 7.  It appears his premonition of the decline of the buffalo was all too true.

"On the third day out we first sighted buffalo, and every day subsequently that we travelled, except the last, we saw herds of the animals. Most of the herds, however, were small, and we remarked with regret that very few calves of this season were to be seen. We observed portions of many buffalo carcasses on our route, from not a few of which the peltries had not been removed. From this circumstance, as well as from the fact that many of the skins are made into parchments and coverings for lodges and are used for other purposes, I concluded that the export of buffalo robes from the Territories does not indicate one half the number of those valuable animals slaughtered annually in our country."

Kansas Pacific Railroad - Shooting Buffalo from the Train. Library of Congress.