Literary Review of Canada reviews Matthew Bellamy’s “Brewed in the North: A History of Labatt’s”

Matthew Bellamy presents an engaging history of one of Canada’s oldest and most prominent beer companies in his recent release, Brewed in the North: A History of Labatt’s. Carefully investigating the origins of John Kinder Labatt’s brewing operations in London, Ontario, Bellamy goes on to present a thorough and unconventional account of Labatt’s tumultuous rise. This story is one of great importance to the construction of a Canadian national identity; only through rigorous scholarship could the author develop a serious, sensitive critique of the beer giant’s representation in the country’s cultural imaginary. Readers need not drink beer to revel in Bellamy’s unique analysis and to recognize the heavy implications of the beer empire on a century and a half of Canadian life.

Dan Malleck reviewed the book for the December issue of the Literary Review of Canada’s magazine. His piece opens with a meditation on the relationship between materialism and Canadian identity. However, the things we associate most with Canada often reach far beyond the country’s borders. He asks: “How did we get here?” Below, you can read an excerpt from Malleck’s review.

“In Brewed in the North, the Carleton University historian Matthew J. Bellamy traces the growth and internationalization of what was arguably at one time the most Canadian of breweries, John Labatt Limited. From the birth of the company’s namesake, John Kinder Labatt, in Mountmellick, County Laois, Ireland, in 1803, through to the takeover by the Belgian juggernaut Interbrew, in 1995, Bellamy tracks the growth of what was once a small regional brewery in London, Ontario, run by immigrants whose interest was in creating a business that would support their families. He runs through the various business decisions of Labatt’s descendants, the exigencies of expanding sales opportunities, the challenge and potential of railway-based market growth, the threat of Prohibition, the opportunities of wartime austerity and post-war boom, the need for a truly national brewery and the hurdles to building one, competition, diversification, divestment, predatory investors, and the final big sellout. It is a remarkable ride.

In history, context is everything, and Bellamy is a master at providing it. Not content to say that Labatt was born in Ireland, moved to London, England, and then to London, Ontario, he draws from a range of sources to add texture to each environment. As a result, we gain an impression of what life may have been like in Mountmellick, in the British capital, and in the latter’s Ontario namesake. Bellamy provides a sense of how those environments shaped Labatt’s business and life decisions. There may be a certain overreach in such context (we cannot really know, for example, if Labatt’s life in England had “cemented in his mind” the importance of speedy and reliable transportation, or if he even paid any attention to the canal business in Mountmellick), but the detail does give us a story and analysis that is never dull or pedantic. And throughout, it remains informative and rooted in the main concepts of social and business history.”

To read the rest of the review, click here.