O'Canada

Dublin, Ireland, on a Friday evening. Doheny & Nesbitt is one of Dublin’s oldest and most popular watering holes. These pictures show that early in the evening it’s doing a pretty steady trade, and by later on there is a hefty throng of people drinking and smoking outside — so much so that pylons are in place on the road to remind patrons not to migrate too far out in front of the establishment.

Doheny & Nesbitt, early Friday evening during August, Dublin.

A big part of the reason for crowds to congregate on the streets outside Dublin pubs (especially in the evening) is that this is the only place folks can smoke. So they take drinks outside and have a fag and a smoke and a natter. Rumour has it that many a new friendship or indeed relationship gets struck in this way!

Doheny & Nesbitt, late Friday evening during August, Dublin.

Meanwhile, in Canada, things are rather different! Canadians, like the Irish, are not allowed to smoke inside pubs. But if they need to have a smoke, they will take it outside, but their drink remains behind! We think this is because laws pertaining to drinking in public property are far stricter in Canada, than they are in Ireland. But it’s also probably partly a cultural thing.

It’s a Friday night. First let’s see what’s happening at the Wolf and Firkin, Friday night at 8.

Empty sidewalk outside the Wolf and Firkin, one of a chain of low-quality fake English pubs.

Down the street to the Queen and Beaver, a very nice place with good food. It was filled with people drinking, eating, talking, and laughing … but nothing was happening outside.

The pub was crowded and noisy inside, but outside, nothing.

Finally, in the Annex, around 9 pm, to Harbord House, where our quest ends.

Two lonely smokers grab a puff outside Harbord House in downtown Toronto

Purchasing alcohol looks quite a bit different in Ireland and Canada, with Quebec being a bit of an exception, and closer to the Irish way of doing things.

In Ireland, you can purchase alcohol very easily and in many places. That’s not to say they don’t ask for ID in these places; they do. Also a Canadian visitor friend of mine, who wanted to buy some whiskey to take home, noted that you can’t purchase any alcohol in stores before 11 a.m. – seems reasonable enough! But in Ireland if you want to buy alcohol you can go to a supermarket, a local grocery store, or an off-license. Off-licenses sell alcohol only, a bit like the LCBO in Canada, except they are not government owned, but rather private enterprises. Sometimes off-licenses are stand-alone affairs, and other times they are attached to a pub, as shown in the picture below, or may form part of a store.

In Canada, the sale of alcohol is closely regulated, and (except for Quebec) it can only be sold in a few locations. In Ontario this is called the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario), a crown corporation, and the only other place you can buy alcohol is The Beer Store, a privately owned chain of retail outlets. While the Beer Store is privately owned, the nature of government regulations for the sale of alcohol, means that the Beer Store commands a near-monopoly on the sale of beer in Ontario. In other provinces there is a similar set up, though because each province has it’s own control board, the names differ. The only exception to this tends to be retail establishments owned by wineries, where they have a license to sell their own labels.

So in Canada, you’ve got to be organised, when you need alcohol. You can’t just decide on a statutory holiday, that you’d like a bottle of wine, or very late on a Sunday evening, ’cause the LCBO and Beer Store type of establishments are going to be closed. Also depending where you live, you may have to walk a bit. In contrast, in Ireland, the grocery store type affair stays open late, and some supermarkets, e.g. Tesco, are open all night, in some locations. Also given the range of options for purchasing, a drop of the hard stuff, is never far away.

A A pub called “The Malt House” in Dublin with off-license attached. This is quite a common site in Ireland.	The Liquor Control Board of Ontario regulates the sale of alcohol in Ontario and the LCBO is the only place where you can buy all types of alcohol. Similar regulatory boards exist in other provinces.
Here you can see wine for sale in a Spar, a common chain of grocery stores in Ireland.	The Beer Store, also government regulated in Ontario, sells beer from all over the world, as well as stocking many varieties from Canadian microbreweries.	When you enter a beer store in Canada, this is typically what you'll see. The actual beer itself, isn't on shelves, but the brands available are clearly viewable. You then ask for what you want, and it gets retrieved from a back storage room.

In Ireland, that would be rain, thank you very much, and lots of it! And well, yes, you guessed it (it wouldn’t take Einstein), in Canada, there’s no shortage of snow in the winter, though they tell me there’s far less of it in Toronto these days, than there was, say, for example, in the 1970s.

A pretty common site (almost all year round) when you look down in Ireland - wet pavement, wet road, wet cobblestones (well cobblestones, there are less of, though Trinity College Dublin and Temple Bar do have 'em).	I like this picture because it shows how much snow you can get in Toronto (this is a particularly bad dump!). But it's dumped all over the patio furniture and barbecue. And due to the hot summers using the barbecue a lot is pretty common! Not so in Ireland.
This is a fantastic YouTube video Sophie Bury’s brother dug up, showing how wet and wild the Irish weather can be! Also demonstrates Irish humour in action, as these lads film a fake promo for the Irish Tourist Board, encouraging tourists to visit and enjoy the weather!	Graffti and Icicles - Winter in T.O.

If you’re having a cup of tea of coffee you’re probably going to want some milk and sugar. Or cream and sugar. Or maybe just milk. Or just cream. Or just sugar. Or maybe you prefer an artificial sweetener, the fake sugar stuff. You get the idea.

In Ireland in cafés and restaurants you’ll often see a little jug of milk out on the table. They just leave the stuff out on the table for people to use! How can do they this? Because Irish people drink so damned much tea. (According to the Global Marketing Information Database, Canadians spent $9.70 per capita on tea in 2008 but the Irish spent €25.3 or $40 at today’s exchange rate. I couldn’t find current tea consumption figures in GMID but we’ll dig into it.) The Irish are sloshing down so much tea, usually with milk, that the little jugs empty quickly and it’s not just sitting around going bad. Also Irish people must worry less than Canadians about people sneezing and coughing in their public milk.

In Canada there are two ways of getting milk into your tea (or cream into your coffee) at a coffee shop: frpm cartons, which are usually housed in a metal container to keep them cool, or annoying tiny little plastic containers that hold about 5 ml of liquid. If you like a healthy dollop of milk in your tea you’ll dump about five of the things into your cup and throw out a messy handful of dribbling plastic. Probably one of the things will explode when you open it and get milk all over your shirt.

A lovely jug of milk, a small selection of nice sugar, and some flowers. You know this will be a nice cuppa.

Milk and sugar in plastic containers, soy milk in cartons, different sugars and sweeteners in packets, all on a grotty table with spilled liquids and a gaping garbage hole. Get away quickly.

There’s a line in one of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder novels that I never forgot. It goes something like: “It’s a fake Irish pub. You know how you can tell it’s fake? They serve food.”

In Ireland people go to the pub to drink. (Usually Guinness.) In Canada they go to the pub to drink and to eat. Going down to the pub after work means eating dinner. Canadian pubs (which are more commonly fake English than fake Irish) have large menus with lots of options, while at Irish pubs you’re lucky if you can get a bag of chips (“packet of crisps”) or some peanuts to let you take on some ballast.

As evidence we offer an Irish pub menu and a Canadian pub menu. The Irish pub is Gaynor’s in Leenane in Co. Galway in the west. Leenane is a very small town, but if you’ve see The Field (1990, with Richard Harris and Sean Bean) then you’ve seen Leenane and Gaynor’s. It’s now also called The Field Bar. The menu offers homemade vegetable soup, “ham, cheese, tomato, onion” sandwiches (I’m not sure if that’s four different kinds, one kind, or you can pick and choose) which you can have plain or toasted, scones, and tea, coffee, and Irish coffee to drink. Just enough to keep you going through an evening of enjoyable drinking and talking.

The Canadian pub is The Duke of York in Toronto. It’s just north of the University of Toronto and used to be my favourite pub, but has gotten larger and more corporate over the years. (My favourite pub now is Harbord House.) The menu is oversized and encased in plastic. A few of the many options: curried chicken rolls, nachos, calamari, several kinds of burgers, a club sandwich, Portuguese sausage, linguine, beef bourgignon, chicken wings, and the usual bangers and mash or fish and chips. Notice the menu also offers you a Cosmo or a “Cinnamon Toast” as special drinks to try. Why? I was there last week and all I wanted was a cheese and onion sandwich, but no.

The large, unwieldy menu at The Duke of York. This is a pretty standard menu at corporate fake English pubs in Canada.

The simple menu at Gaynor's. For Irish pubs this is a big menu.

In Ireland the beer market is dominated by a few big brands, which you tend to see in every pub you enter – Guinness, Smithwicks, Heineken, for example, are everywhere!

And when it comes to stout, Guinness certainly dominates supreme. However, it is worth noting a couple of nice offerings in the stout department, which are also Irish, though lesser known. One is Murphys, manufactured in Cork, and in that part of the world, Corkonians identify it as “the” stout. Beamish is another Irish stout, also hailing from Cork.

When it comes to microbreweries, Canada wins hands-down in the authors’ view. Microbrews in pubs are rarely found in Ireland, while in Canada they are common, and there is a huge amount of variety. The authors are most familiar with Ontario options, e.g. Steam Whistle, but Quebec, B.C., Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and many other parts have a fine selection to offer also. In Ireland there are a few pubs, like the Porterhouse Brewing Company in Dublin, that brew on premise, and sell food and microbrews on site, but microbrews simply don’t seem to have been allowed to penetrate the pubs in Ireland, and thus are a far rarer sight, than is the case in Canada.

This photo was taken in a pub in Castletownbere in Co. Cork, where Murphys is, simply put, "the official pint of us".	Shown here is a six pack of Steam Whistle, manufactured in Toronto, Ontario and seriously good beer! (Picture obtained on Google Images courtesty of a creative commons license).
Porterhouse Brewing Company is one of the few places you can go in Dublin if you want to enjoy a microbrew.	Moosehead, another fab tasting Canadian microbrew, manufactured in St. John, New Brunswick. (This picture courtesy of JcMaco's creative commons license on flickr)

Sophie talked about Bewley’s and Tim Hortons in an earlier post. Here’s an in depth look at the crucial question of what to have with your drink.

At a Tim’s, you’d have a coffee. (I think theirs tastes horrible but gazillions of people disagree and drink it like it’s laced with something even more addictive than caffeine. They do make a niced “brewed tea,” which is what normal people call “tea.”) You might make it a “double double,” which is two sugars and two dollops of cream. And to go with it you’d order a Timbit, their name for what’s usually called a “doughnut hole.” Which when you think about it is a bit rude.

At Bewley’s you’d order a pot of tea and a scone. Less Canadian, more Irish … more civilized, better tasting.

A nice cup of tea at Bewley's on Grafton Street, with a scone. Note the milk jug, butter, jam, and the little madeleine that comes with the tea.

A cup of Tim Hortons coffee (for takeout) and a glazed Timbit. If you wanted sugar, milk, or cream, they put it in for you behind the counter before handing it over.

While having a cuppa at home is a mighty popular past-time in Ireland, having one while out and about also proves exceedingly agreeable to many folk. And there are certainly many, many options in terms of places to go and have said cuppa. Equally, there is no shortage of options in Canada. Both countries have the big worldwide giants like Starbucks, though interestingly enough the first Starbucks only came to Ireland a few years ago, while Starbucks have been in around in Canada for many years.

But what about the coffee and tea retailers founded and headquartered on native territory? Here are a few examples below:

Bewley's of Grafton Street, originally opened in 1927, is now owned by an Irish entrepreneur, Patrick Campbell and his family. It's the last of the Bewley's Cafes in Ireland, and a treasured Dublin landmark. The demise of the Bewley's cafes was a significant event for many Irish people, and to this day one of the blog authors, Sophie Bury, experiences a pang of nostalgia literally every time she hears the place mentioned! This Tea Emporium was a hangout for old and young over many years, where cherry buns, almond rings, and hearty Irish teas (sausages, beans, chips etc.) were served up in cosy surroundings.

Tim Hortons is something of a national symbol or cultural fixture in Canadian Life. It was founded by Canadian hockey player Tim Horton in the 1960s, and is famous for the coffee and doughnuts it serves, and seriously beloved by many Canucks. Lineups (both drive-through and in-person) and quite a common sight at Tim Hortons. And the sheer number (close to 3,000 across Canada in 2009) is a testament to their popularity.

Butlers Chocolates, luxury Irish chocolates, are something for which Ireland is deservedly well regarded. It was founded back in the 1930s. In 1998 the same folks who make these chocolates started establishing cafes throughout Ireland. Teas, speciality coffees and other hot beverages can be enjoyed here. The chocolate one receives with every hot beverage purchase is a well-received gesture.

Second Cup, founded in Canada in 1975, is Canada's largest speciality coffee shop chain. It is headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, and has 360 retail stores across Canada.

This is the first in a series of posts re similarities and differences in drinking (alcohol) that the authors have observed between Ireland and Canada.

So we begin with the question: Is there a national drink of Ireland or a national drink of Canada, i.e., some alcoholic beverage you’d think of and say yes that’s quintessentially Irish or Canadian?!

Well in the Irish case, this seemed pretty easy. Let’s face it, most people probably in and outside of Ireland would think of Guinness. Not only does it seem to be available in practically every pub in Ireland but there is signage everywhere, whole stores that sell Guinness paraphernalia, and the list goes on.

As to Canada, well yes, of course, there is Molson’s and Labbatt’s, which are Canadian beer brands and have been around for years. Should they be beer of which Canada can be especially proud, well, that’s open to debate. Certainly they get consumed a whole lot.

But the authors thought that if you were to pick a drink that not too many outside of Canada have heard of, and to which Canadians tend to be rather partial (while non-Canadians tend to be rather appalled, at least initially, of the news on what this cocktail contains!), you might mention the Ceasar. Take a look below to learn more…

Guinness, Ireland's national pint? And not just stout.	The Caesar, arguably Canada's national alcoholic cocktail. It typically contains vodka, clamato juice (mixture of tomato juice and clam broth), Worcestershire sauce, tabasco sauce. It is typically served on ice in a celery-salt rimmed glass, and often garnished with a wedge of lemon or lime, and a celery stick. YUMMY!
Guinness signage and other promotional gizmos abound in Ireland.	Clamato juice, a mixture of clam broth and tomato juice, which comes in spicy and not so spicy varieties, is added to vodka to make the Caesar.

This is the first of a series of posts about what having a cuppa looks like on Irish soil versus Canadian soil.

The tea culture is a strong one in Ireland, to put it mildly! We’ve heard tell that the Irish drink more tea than the British, in fact. According to Lyon’s tea web site,  there are 4.24 million people in Ireland, and 3 million of them drink tea, giving us one of the highest tea consumptions in the world.

And this culture has been epitomized through characters such as Mrs. Doyle in Father Ted, as is explained in this “Mad About Tea” Daily Spud post. Her existence would lack a whole lot of meaning if it weren’t for the daily ritual of making the Fathers’ tea. And when, in one episode, they think they are doing her a big favour by giving her a tea maker, the audience realizes soon that she is literally devastated to have one of her favourite occupations threatened by a machine. And as such, she destroys said machine!

So when at home, odds are in most Irish households, a lot of tea is being consumed at any one time, and that the tea on offer would be one of two brands (the two big tea giants of Ireland). If household occupants hail from Southern parts, especially Cork, odds are they will be consuming a cup of Barry’s tea (established in Cork and still owned and operated there), and if from Dublin or its environs, the tea of choice is Lyons tea (taken over by Unilever in 1996, but originally a company with Dublin owners). And elsewhere it could be one or t’other.

In Canada, a “regular” tea, manufactured on home turf, is often Red Rose. It’s orange pekoe, which seems to be the staple, “normal” tea for many Canadians. Compared to an Irish brew (which can involve up to three teabags a pot), it’s a rather timid brew. But nonetheless, very palatable!

Canadians, while very partial to a cup of tea, the authors find, are by no means in a league with the Irish, and on average would tend to drink more coffee relative to tea, when compared with the Irish. But we give credit to Canadians, who seem more inclined to drink herbal (note h silent in Canadian English, but not in Irish English) tea. But in recent years, perhaps as a result of recent Celtic Tiger yuppiedom (hey remember one of the blog authors is Irish, so can say this!), the herbal variety is much more common now in Ireland too.

Barry's, a brand of tea, manufactured in Cork, Ireland.	Red Rose. A Canadian brand, that is a staple in many Canadian homes.
Lyons, manufactured in Dublin, is a very popular brand of tea in Ireland.

Red Rose is famous in Canada for its advertisements with the line “Only in Canada? Pity.” This 1989 TV ad shows one of the usual English stereotypes: