As Bob Dylan so eloquently crooned back in 1964, the times they are a-changin’.
Your humble narrator remembers the dark days of government-run liquor stores in Alberta, when the five liquor stores in the city of Calgary closed promptly at 6pm on weekdays, and were not even open on the weekends.
All that changed in 1993, when the newly-elected King Ralph made good on a campaign promise to privatize the liquor business. In less than a year, the surly government employees working bankers hours had been replaced by a vibrant demand-driven system that is the envy of all other Canadian provinces.
Yes, gentle reader, gone are the days of waiting in line at the dingy industrial grey warehouse to give your slip of paper to the government liquor clerk, then have your warm beer come rolling out of the back warehouse on a conveyor belt for you to take home and chill yourself.
The number of liquor stores in Alberta ballooned from 200 to 1300 within the course of a year, and the available selection was increased tenfold.
At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, the new generation of boozers that were born after the first Star Wars movie don’t know how good they have it!
Unfortunately, liquor regulations largely stagnated in Canada for the next 30 years, with provincial governments only recently waking up to the fact that we no longer live under the yoke of the Prohibitionists.
It took until 2012, but the federal government finally struck down a Prohibition-era law forbidding the transport of liquor across provincial boundaries. Yes, gentle reader, your humble narrator was indeed a scofflaw all those times he brought a few bottles of wine back from a visit to the Okanagan Valley in BC.
The very same year, the BC government finally allowed corkage in restaurants. Corkage is also known as BYOW, or Bring Your Own Wine. Alberta has allowed corkage for years, as have Quebec, Ontario, and New Brunswick.
Unsurprisingly, those in La Belle Provence, with its French-inspired wine culture, have the most developed corkage scene, with nearly all Quebec restaurants offering corkage services.
In another blinding example of common sense, the Alberta government recently slashed the red tape in our local beer industry, allowing brew pubs to sell their wares in liquor stores, and eliminated licensing restrictions that favoured megabreweries over small craft producers of beer.
At the risk of counting chickens before they are hatched, the Alberta government is currently wrestling with the idea of beer and wine being sold at grocery stores. The established booze merchants are not keen on the extra competition, but there are precedents in several other provinces, so it may only be a matter of time before you can buy wine at the same place as a loaf of bread.
Grocery stores are already permitted to sell beer and wine in Quebec, Ontario, and BC. Saskatchewan joined the same club just a few weeks ago, with four stores already up and running. Perhaps Alberta will be next!
Moving further east, Manitoba is not to be outdone by its prairie brethren, finally allowing liquor stores to remain open past 8pm, as well as granting liquor licenses to beauty salons and spas. Now the ladies can enjoy a glass of bubbly while getting the mud baths and seaweed wraps!
Manitobans are certainly happier with the new arrangement, as their liquor laws were last updated in 1956, the same year a brash young pelvis-shaking pompadoured singer named Elvis Presley burst onto the scene.
These are indeed exciting times for Canadian boozers, with more change in the past five years than the past fifty, it seems that our elected officials are finally shaking off their puritanical leanings, to the benefit of enlightened boozers everywhere.
With Olds College only a year away from graduating its first class of future beermakers from their Brewmaster & Brewery Operations program, our province will soon be awash in master brewers, who will surely raise the bar on beer in this province and across the country.
Now if we can only get those pesky government revenuers to unclench their sphincters about moonshine, your humble narrator will finally be able to enjoy the products of his homemade still, hidden in the reeds down at the end of the lake. Me and Granny Clampett could even get together to compare!
