Bill Wright and Dave Craig, 300 Years of Beer: An Illustrated History of Brewing in Manitoba. Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, 2013, 208 pages. ISBN 978-1-926531-71-7, $35.00 (paperback)
There are many books about the history of brewing in Canada, but precious few that document the industry specifically in Manitoba. Certainly none is as upto-date as this one, which brings us well past the loss of Molson’s and Labatt’s, to the modern era of the new Fort Garry, Half Pints, and Farmery brewing companies. The book is very readable and its large size showcases the rich visuals that accompany the text. While there are very few references to lead the reader to deeper details, this book offers as complete a picture of brewing in Manitoba as the casual reader might need. Clearly the book is written for a popular rather than an academic audience, though historians will likely find much of value in it as well. Indeed, the authors are not professional writers, a fact which becomes obvious, as the book is full of quirks of writing style, and minor typographical or editorial errors. Despite this, the book is a fun read, and one which the reader will have trouble putting down. This is partly because much of the book is written in the form of vignettes, drawing the reader through piece by piece—there’s always time to read one more section!
As this book is about brewing, brewers, and breweries, this book is also about the times in which they flourished. Personal histories are woven together with corporate ones, and a feel for the context is successfully conveyed along with the details of the breweries themselves. Thematically, the book offers variety rather than a formulaic presentation. There are chapters on the major breweries like Drewry’s and Shea’s; chapters on specific places like the city of Brandon and Winnipeg’s Osborne Street; and also chapters on distinct periods in Manitoba’s history like the prohibition era and the wave of consolidation that arrived in the 1950s, when Molson, Carling, O’Keefe, and Labatt entered the market and bought out existing breweries.
Perhaps the most attractive feature of the book is its rich illustration. The book has its origin, at least in part, in the impressive collection of brewing memorabilia owned by coauthor Dave Craig. As such, the book is filled with several hundred images of bottles and labels, advertisements, historical photos, and beer accessories, all of which help to tell the stories and add to the sense of what things were like for beer drinkers in Manitoba. The book is worth its price (and more) for the visual presentation of the history of brewing in Manitoba.
If there is one thing missing from this book, the geographer in me would say that it is maps. Especially in the sections dealing with Manitoba’s earliest brewing history, a sense of where things were located is hard to grasp for those not familiar with the places. Winnipegers may know where the Redwood Bridge is, or Silver Heights, for example, but maps would greatly benefit the rest of us. Moreover, the situations and surroundings of those places in the 1800s are probably not familiar to many. Historical atlases could have been mined for helpful illustrations.
Apart from this quibble, 300 Years of Beer is both accessible and entertaining, and is sure to please a wide audience. It is a book I would highly recommend to historians, brewery enthusiasts, and anyone wishing to think a little more about the heritage of the beverage they enjoy on Friday evenings.