Not that anyone missed my musings, but Harvey and I spent Thursday and yesterday helping friends in Monson clean up some of their mess. I'm sure that all the watering holes throughout the Cape & Islands are thinking about those folks about as much as they are thinking about the hapless souls in Joplin and Tuscaloosa. (Sarcasm.) Two words: Hurricane Bob. Just remember the next time we get walloped by a storm, why should anyone else care about us, right? Karma.
Meanwhile, today's the date in 1957 that a guy named John Kinder Labatt finally got around to registering the name "Labatt's" as a trademark, even though it had been used for their Canadian ales and beers since 1895. (Of course, beer snobs would rather celebrate this date from 1907 because Guinness finally got around to trademarking the "Guinness's Extra Stout James's Gate Dublin Bottled By Arth Guinness Son & Co. Limited" that they had been using since 1862. Then, again, maybe it's not just those annoying beer snobs, but also those people who insist that they are Irish because they drink Guinness and know all the words to that goddam unicorn song. Ugh! But, I digress.)
Labatt's, as well all know, is a Canadian brew, but it was only 1837 when John Kinder Labatt first landed in London, Ontario from Ireland. (You know, the land of those annoying "humpty-backed camels and long-necked geese" songs, as well as those songs about men wandering the countryside and whistling. Or is that Australia? Again, I digress.)
Then, in 1847, Kinder admitted to his wife that he was having some sort of affair. "I have been considering this brewing affair for some time," he wrote in a letter, "and think it would suit me better than anything else . . ." So, he bought himself the Simcoe Street brewery in London, Ontario, in partnership with Samuel Eccles. When he became the brewery's sole proprietor in 1855, he cleverly renamed it: John Labatt's Brewery.
Along with a passion to brew beer, John Kinder also knew a thing or two about business. He realized the Great Western Railway, completed in the late 1850s, was the company's ticket to expansion outside London. No longer limiting beer sales to London and its surrounding areas, the railway opened new markets for Labatt in Toronto, Montréal and the Maritimes and formed the foundation for future aggressive expansion.
Not long after that, he invented ice hockey and the internet, which gave us both the Vancouver Canucks and Justin Bieber. Thus, concludes the trifecta of Canadian achievements (not counting their crappy healthcare plan, Canadian Mist the McKenzie brothers, and William Shatner.)
Aren't you glad that I'm back?
Go Bruins! Drink Labatt's!
Funny
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