Why this is just fascinating.

Bill D, it's a clear indication of your artistic personality that you have happened upon The Best Beer you can get in Ontario. Creemore it is!

But I'm kind of amazed that you have some--is it sold there? Or did someone bring it to you special? Cause there is one thing that separates Creemore from all the other fine micro-, mini- and designer-brewery products. (Designer beers are fancy-label, small quantity beers actually produced by major breweries--say no more). They make a fine lager, and INSIST ON IT BEING SOLD FRESH. They allegedly go to every retailer and pub that carries their product, once a week, remove any unsold stock, and replace it with fresh. That's why it sells for $2.65/500 ml bottle in the LCBO, and why it's worth it. Fresh beer is so much better!

That is particularly a nice quality at pubs, where it is less expensive than your Guinness and other imports. Bill you really must come up and experience some quality time at a few well-polished horizontal-woodwork establishments with me. May I suggest the Stewart Park Festival in Perth next July, and I will introduce you to the sublime delights of "Ontario assisted suicide", available at Fiddleheads pub: their special poutine made with Guinness-laced gravy, washed down with draft Creemore. (Single malt chaser for the health fanatics).

"What's poutine?", I hear you asking as your nostrils perk up.
Why it is naught but the very best French Fries (as we still refer to them, bound as we are to tradition and multiculturalism), deeply soaked in a mixture of the aforementioned specially annointed gravy, and melted cheese curds, served in this case on a lovely ceramic platter, in other cases in a styrofoam box.

Oh, man. We're not allowed to spend a fin on this delicacy very often...(clutches chest and starts to topple in dramatic slow motion)

I bet you're wondering how poutine came to Ontario. The food, not the former prime minister, (as of yesterday) who is another story for anodder day, dere. Maybe you're not wondering, but tough. I'm drinkin' IPA (can't afford Creemore, pls send $$), so you're gonna hear about it. Scratch that, I finished the IPA (Wells, a good party bottle but it goes flat too quick after you open it...not like that luscious Creemore) and am now into something euphemistically labelled "STRONG PREMIUM LAGER".

It all goes back to another time and place, the fifties in Montreal. Those were happy days, mon ami. Brador in the brasseries, (an unheard of 6.5% active ingredients) and a chipwagon by every curb, liberally doling out the poutine to the happily inebriated habitants of the brasseries. "In a slow week, I'm in here seven days," one of them said to me.

It seemed like the bon temps would roulant pour tout le journee, mais non. The owners of the brick and mortar restaurants were not tres contente avec le status quo, huh uh. Many of them had interesting connections both with the municipal council and with some local citizens lacking official titles but with certain tres persuavis ways about them.

That is why, one sad summer, the length and breadth of Isle de Montreal, hundreds of old stepvans, many of which hadn't moved in years, were having old tires pumped up or in extreme cases replaced, plywood skirting removed, and batteries charged, for their last fateful voyages.

Finally, with a last wave to the tearful children and the forever hungry brasserie patrons who gathered on the corners to mark the end of the good old days, the converted bread and milk trucks lurched off down the 2 & 20 and finally swayed across the long bridge over Deux Montagnes and rolled west to ply their toothsome trade somewhere in Ontario.

Onward surged the ragged fleet of entrepeneurial spudcutters.   Many a venerable Grumman Stepmaster and Chev Curbside came to rest in a gas station parking lot, wherever its running gear heaved its last dying sigh of metal-on-metal, in little Ontario towns with funny names like Marmora and Moonbeam, and within hours were open for business and becoming part of the day-to-day life of Ontario the Beautiful...and thus were we introduced to the food of the gods.

Except in The Glebe, a tony Ottawa neighbourhood where they sicced bylaws on them, and occasionally resorted to vigilante action to keep their sidewalks respectable and cholesterol-free...figures.   

This saga was chronicled in John Steinbeck's great novel "The Gravy of Wrath".
...

Well, you asked. Or, actually, you didn't. Whatever.

W-O
Mixed Up In Moonbeam