Nicholas Pashley is a Canadian writer and retired bookseller who ought to be better known in the United States. His earlier book, Notes on a Beermat, had an endorsement from Bill Bryson, and Pashley is very Bryson-like both in his comedy and his approach to writing. Indeed, the last third of the book, in which Pashley drinks his way across Canada, from Halifax to Whitehorse, is very much like what Bill Bryson would write if he ever wrote a Canadian beer travel book.

Cheers! is billed as a history, and does accurately describe the history of beer in Canada. But this isn’t a straightforward account. For example, in a chapter on the consequences of Prohibition in Canada, he notes that Canadian provinces imposed all sorts of peculiar prohibitions. British Columbia tried to ban women from drinking in bars, on the grounds they would be corrupted. Provincial regulators then mandated, until the late 1940s, that women had to be served in the “Ladies and Escorts’ Lounge,” while men could drink by themselves. Men, however, could only enter the “Ladies Lounge” if they were escorting a woman.

Ontario regulators until the 1970s barred drinkers from standing up to order a beer, on the theory that forcing drinkers to sit down encouraged moderation. A drinker in Ontario was breaking the law if he carried his beer from one table to another.

Pashley credits Quebec for teaching Anglophone Canadians how to have fun while drinking. “I can remember drinking outdoors at Expo 67 in Montreal, an activity still strictly illegal in much of the country at the time.” Falling airfares in the 1970s enabled Canadians to visit Europe, ”where drinking wasn’t considered a social disease,” and return home and successfully lobby Canadian legislators to remove arcane restrictions.

Quebec still offers Canadians many examples of joie d’vivre in beer drinking, in Pashley’s view. He contrasts the laid-back atmosphere of Montreal’s Mondial de la Bière with the more puritan Toronto Festival of Beer, where, before he entered, he had to face “the kind of frisking I haven’t experienced since I spent a day at a major conspiracy trial of Black Panthers in the early ’70s.” The Festival of Beer, he writes, “isn’t a proper beer festival. There’s no beer judging here, and considerably less quality beer than used to be the case. But there’s a lot of loud music and pretty girls.”

Americans should know more about Canada’s beer culture and traditions. Nicholas Pashley’s Cheers! is an entertaining and delightfully quirky snapshot of Canadian beer history.

As beer lovers, we all appreciate that one of the best ways to explore culture is through beer itself. You can spend a small fortune and years’ worth of vacation time travelling around the world in search of the great beers, or you can get a small sampling of them by visiting the Canadian cultural microcosm.

And there is no better way to sample a lot of great beers in a short period of time than attending a beer festival. As long as the festival emphasizes local beers, it is the best way to taste what the region has to offer, meet the brewers behind the beer and speak with like-minded beer lovers. While visiting a festival destination, you can immerse yourself in the local beer culture, including the smaller microbreweries that may have only local distribution, and the other activities of the city generally.

And thus we present the Great Canadian Beer Festival Tour.

With beer “in his blood,” Sneath became intrigued with Canada’s rich brewing culture. He said in an interview, “This project started as a dream that would…celebrate the proud heritage brewing represents in our country’s growth.”

He’s accomplished this goal in spades.

Mercifully not starting with the Egyptians, Sneath prefaces many of his chapters with a snapshot history of Canada to place brewing in context. Highlighting such famous brewers as Bennett, Brickman, Dawes, Dow, Ginter, Keith, Labatt, Oland, Shea, Sick and a representative selection of the 1,300 plus breweries that opened across the continent from the frozen shores of Hudson’s Bay to the Yukon, Sneath demonstrates the role brewers played in the developing nation.

The book includes both Canadian and American Prohibition, pre-World-War-I brewing mergers, and the emergence of national breweries under E. P. Taylor.

As a former marketer and micro insider, Sneath brings a unique perspective to the last 30 years and helps the novice grasp the whole concept of brand image and positioning.

For many of us, this assignment would be a dream come true. Apparently, for prolific beer author Stephen Beaumont, it was a trial. At least, what else am I to surmise, when out of 1,300 beers, he finds only one “world class” beer? Pity.

Not that I disagree with his choice. McAuslan’s Oatmeal Stout is “an outstandingly creamy and complex beer,” which, according to Beaumont, contains a full symphony of “notes of coffee, raisin, date and plum in the aroma and a mouth-coating, espresso-ish body holding dark chocolate and roasted malt flavors along with hints of anise and smoke.” Amen! It’s a great breakfast beer, too!

No one can ever fault Beaumont for not taking up Michael Jackson’s call to provide descriptions about the taste of beer. He finds Labatt’s Blue to be “a light gold lager with a perfumey aroma and grassy character.” And in what must be the understatement of the year, he opines Coors Light as “subtle-tasting, thinnish.”

If a beer has character, Beaumont has words to describe it. The three-star Arkell Best Bitter from Wellington County Brewery “has a floral, lightly nutty (pecan?) character with dryish notes of caramel and hay and a mildly bitter, dry finish.” Iron Duke Strong Ale from the same brewery “is a round, malty warmer that combines dark chocolate notes with hints of allspice and port wine.” For Belgian beer aficionados, Beaumont gives Maudite, brewed by Unibroue in Chambly, Quebec, 3.5 stars. He writes, “the stylistically enigmatic but quite delicious, 8 percent (beer) is still a masterpiece of restrained complexity (it is?) with its dryish finish, earthy mix of chocolate, fruit and spice.”

Often criticized for not enjoying lager, Beaumont waxes eloquent about Creemore Springs Premium lager. This three-star “is a highly flavorful beer that is difficult to classify, said to be in the Bohemian pilsner style but more like a Vienna lager with its sweetish, malty palate and drier, toasty, faintly fruity character.” As for Creemore’s seasonal urBock, rating two stars for 2000, the author says it “showed a lightly sweet body with notes of petrol and dates and a dry, moderately roasty finish with a slight, warm note of alcohol.”

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I have reservations about some of Beaumont’s findings. For example, he calls Dragon’s Breath by the now defunct Hart/Robinson Brewing Co. balanced! His notes must have been mixed-up. This was the most gloriously unbalanced hoppy beer in the Ontario market!

This, however, is not a fault. To my thinking, two of the leading attributes of a successful beer guide are its ability to provoke heated debate and to encourage the reader to go out and learn more about the beer he/she loves from first-hand experience. This Beaumont does in spades, from his symphonic descriptions to his draconian rating system.

Throwing out the traditional language of beer and beer judging, in his chapter, “The Greatness of a Beer,” the author tells the reader to be wary of judging a beer by style alone and claims to take a “more holistic approach to beer tasting.” Balance is the first item in this equation, by which he means “that the component parts of the flavor blend together within the beer.”

After balance, Beaumont looks for character, which he describes as a beer’s ability to capture his attention. The final element in this rating system “is that intangible something—what the French would be perfectly content describing as a certain ‘je ne sais quoi.’ It is what makes a beer stand out on any occasion, irrespective of circumstance, and an attribute that takes a beer with body, character and style and elevates it to the next level.”

Along with the creation of the mystical beer rating system, The Great Canadian Beer Guide features a cursory chapter on the history of brewing in Canada, the obligatory chapters on brewing and terms, and a concise chapter on beer appreciation complete with a chart matching beer with food. The bulk of the book is naturally taken up by short histories of the respective breweries, brewpubs and, of course, the beers.

Would I buy this book? Sure. With Canada’s brewing industry blossoming from 74 facilities in 1993 to 163 today, where else are you going to find such a comprehensive listing with which to pursue your passions? And how else can you carry on a heated debate into the wee hours of the morning about your favorite tipple with “a leading international authority”—without ever leaving your chair?