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Publisher: McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 1955.
Hard Cover, 398 pages, 6.25 x 9.25.
Item #1306
This book was published in 1955 -- the result of three years of intensive research by author Merrill Denison, who undertook the project with a grant from Molson. It is an exhaustive look at the Molson family and brewery, and its impact on the community. Probably the definitive work on the Molson dynasty, and a super rare book as well. An Excerpt from Chapter 3: No description of Sarah Molson has come down to us, and there are only faint clues as to where or when she and John first met. These place the locale in Canada during his first visit there, probably at Caldwell's Manor. If this was indeed the case, another reason has been established for Molson's studied reticence about his earlier Canadian activities. In addition to being young, self-willed, and at outs with his guardian-grandfather, he was probably in love. In whatever circumstances it began, the romance of John and Sarah Molson was of the life-long kind and was consummated soon after Molson's return to Canada in 1786. Before June is out we find him hiring a housekeeper for four dollars a month and renting a house from M. Bergevin for $3.50 a month. The house was on a lot adjacent to the brewery, and there John and Sarah began their honeymoon in August, with the Monarques, Barsalous, Bergevins and other Canadian families as friendly neighbours. Brewing could not begin until the coming of cool weather in October, but in the meantime there were many things to do. The little brewery needed repairs and replacements, made necessary by Pell's indifferent stewardship; the seed barley brought from England had to be distributed among farmers willing to grow a crop; casks had to be found, in a community in which as yet there seem to have been no coopers. There were also old acquaintances to be renewed and new ones made, against the day when Molson's ale would first begin to flow. Recorded in John Molson's small, home-stitched "waste book" are the minutiae of that first summer, meticulously itemized with a quill pen in hand-ground India ink: the names of farmers — Barsalou, Monarque, Logan; purchases of hardware and other materials for the burgled brewery; payments for casual labour, and for food and household necessities for the dwelling house — a side of beef, two lambs, candles, a broom, a spool of thread — and so on. Wages are reckoned in dollars and cents; brewery and household supplies in livres and coppers, the old French currency; merchandise in pounds, shillings and pence. A page headed "Money taken out" lists doubloons, joes and half joes, louis d'or, crowns, ecus, livres, coppers, dollars, guineas — the hodge-podge of hard currency, drawn from half the countries of the Atlantic, that would prevail in Canada for almost half a century to come. Only one worker is mentioned by name — Christopher Cook, who was hired at four dollars a month after malting began in September — but from the quantities of beef, veal and lamb charged to the dwelling house there must have been others. They were paid fifty cents a day and ate like anacondas. In addition to the waste book, actually a kind of catch-all in which were recorded all money transactions, business and personal, Molson also kept a diary. In it he wrote, with a triumphant flourish, on July 28, 1786: "This day bought 8 bu. of barley. MY COMMENCEMENT ON THE GRAND STAGE OF THE WORLD." A sense of humour must have inspired the entry; yet it was prophetic, as was a letter to Philip Ashley written a few days later: "Have begun to buy barley about 15s. a quarter. Labour is not dear — porter now sells for £5 5s. a hogshead — draught-at 1s. a quart retail . . . My future prospects has [sic] the most flattering appearance." The portent of the concluding sentence need not be questioned. Compared with other living costs — "30 lbs. of beef, 3s. 6d.; 2 qrs. veal, 4s. 2d.; quarter lamb, 1s. 8d.; 5 doz. eggs, 1s. 41/'d." — beer was a commodity to conjure with. By the end of August the brewery was ready for production and Molson had scoured the countryside on horseback in search of barley. The first load was brought in on September 1, from the village of L'Assomption down the river, by Joseph Bernard, perched on the high dash of his heavy, two-wheeled cart. There were forty-one bushels in the load and Molson paid £5 Halifax or $20 cash for it at his brewery gate. Whether our young brewer found the weather unusually favourable or was just impatient to get his hand in, he began his first malting early in September. Then as now the process was a simple one. Now it is mechanically conducted and positively controlled: then it called for arduous hand labour and empirical manipulation. Its purpose is to start the chemistry of growth, and we have learned much about that chemistry. But in John Molson's day the saccharometer and even the thermometer were new-fangled gadgets, and Antoine Lavoisier had yet to publish the treatise that marks the birth of modern chemistry — Traite Elementaire de Chimie (1789). Malting was still one of the "ancient misteries," a rigidly disciplined, formalistic ritual customarily learned by patient apprenticeship and long experience; and Molson, let it be remembered, was a neophyte with no one but John Richardson to instruct him. First he would have to clean the barley by the best means at his disposal, probably hand-winnowing at the open door of the malting, then steep or soak it for forty-eight hours to begin the germination that nature contrives by her spring rains on the farmer's open fields. With the perceptible softening of the husky outer covering, tested between the teeth or fingers, the maltster would decide when the soaking should be ended and would then pile his barley in heaps on the malting floor, clean scrubbed to get rid of dust and dirt — or even holystoned, perhaps, after the long weeks of observation aboard the Everetta. It would remain there for ten days and sometimes longer, gently heated by the mysterious energy of its own awakened chemical resources but carefully watched and turned at intervals lest it overheat or sweat too much, until that moment when the tiny rootlets and growth shoots had developed to the point the maltster thought sufficient. Germination concluded, the malted grain would be spread thinly on the floor to permit its drying, and the first batch of green malt would be ready for the kiln.
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