Twenty pints o' strang ale...

I was raised in an international community where a bridge separated drinking practices. In Maine, beer and wine was sold from corner stores and "hard liquor from a "commission". In St. Stephen, New Brunswick there was one outlet, managed by a "liquor control board." During the 1940's its control amounted to prohibitions, so my dad and my grandfather did all their tipping in the United States usually at the St. Croix Hotel. In Canada, the province still maintains its stranglehold on selling liquor in the larger centers but St. Stephen has alcohol on demand seven days a week, with hours so long that local bootleggers now have a minor share of what was once a lucrative market.

I did not think that Sunday shopping for "splitter-spatter" would come to New Brunswick before it reached Nova Scotia but that was the case, and availability is still not universal here. Liquor outposts centered in small general stores throughout this province are indeed open on Sunday but many larger, provincially owned outlets, such as that in Lunenburg are only open during the summer months to convenience tourists. In the winter, Sunday drinkers have to resort to a thirty kilometre drive into the outback or patronize a local pub. Until this year, even that last was not a thorough-going option: Good Fridays are usually overcast and "so good" that everything used to be firmly closed on this day Last year one could have a beer in a restaurant or pub but the amount spent on drink had to be equal to that on food. Imagine our surprise when Ruth and I entered The Knot Pub and found it swarming with drinkers as well as eaters and drinkers. Seems the old Presbyterian ethic about the sanctity of religious holidays has tumbled and without a whimper that I have heard. Now if the politicians would simply move wine and beer to the shelves of the supermarket. That happened decades ago in Maine and people there seem scarcely worse for the change.