B E E R C A N A DA
Canadian
Beer Day
Beer Canada launches national event
By Jim Chliboyko
The folks at Beer Canada are looking
to elevate the profile of domestic
beers even further with their inau-gural
Canadian Beer Day.
“There’s a lot of them out there (beer
appreciation days), but we don’t have one
locked down in Canada that everyone
can recognize and point to as the day
to celebrate Canadian beer,” said Luke
Harford, the president of Beer Canada,
the trade association for Canadian brew-ers
whose membership accounts for nine
out of every 10 litres of beer consumed
in Canada.
“There’s a lack of understanding or
appreciation of where beer comes from
and how it is made, and the fact that
Canada is exceptionally well-endowed
with all the ingredients needed to make
great beer,” said Harford speaking of the
inspiration behind the initiative. “Beer has
such an economic impact and brewers do
so much for their communities. With that
insight, we thought, “We need a big reason
to celebrate Canada’s culture and history
around beer and its impact.’”
The launch party kicking off the inau-gural
Canadian Beer Day will be host-ed
by Great Western Brewing Company,
in Saskatoon, Sask., on Wednesday,
October 9.
“The launch party will anchor
Canadian Beer Day into the hearts and
minds of Canada’s soon-to-be-elected offi-cials,
the beer and agricultural community
and their advocates,” said Harford.
As to why Great Western Brewing
and Saskatoon, in particular, were cho-sen,
Harford said, “It’s one of the bigger
regional brewers in the western area and
Saskatchewan is where the vast majority
of Canada’s high-quality malting barley
is produced. They do grow some malting
barley in Manitoba, they grow lots of it
in Alberta, but Saskatchewan is the ‘beer
basket’ – to steal the term from the bread-basket
– where our malting barley comes
from. And so, we thought why not situ-ate
the launch event at a brewery with a
great history and community impact right
where we get our malting barley from.”
Seeking official legislation
“The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is
the date that we want anchored in legis-lation
as the official Canadian Beer Day,”
said Harford. “As we get into future years,
we hope to grow the event and generate
enough energy and interest in it that we’re
able to secure an Act of Parliament recog-nizing
the day.”
Harford said in addition to the pro-motional
aspect, Canadian Beer Day will
be an attempt to get the members of
Canada’s domestic beer industry on the
same page.
“The beer sector is not in a healthy
state, sales-wise,” he said. “Per capita con-sumption
of beer is down and despite our
economic impact, the beer industry faces
many challenges, including taxes and
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