Results tagged “lcbo”

The success of and interest in Toronto breweries has taken off as the push to eat and buy local food has branched into the beverage industry. With big names like Steam Whistle and Mill St. battling it out with emerging brands like Great Lakes, the industry is seriously booming in this city.

For a while, it looked like the furry little critters inhabiting Toronto's waste-addled sidewalks and gutters were the only ones getting a break this week. It's bad enough to have the trash piling up in the city's green spaces, themselves untended for the duration of CUPE local 79 and 416's labour action; it's worse that there's such incensed, heat wave–crazy rage that motorists are taking it out on the picketers with their cars. But then we caught wind that the LCBO—our sweet, sweet LCBO—would throw down as well, possibly walking off the job this morning at 12:01 a.m. You can take our services, you can pollute our streets, you can thicken the bouquet of an already fragrant Queen West, but our booze? We're lucky the frenzied, last-possible-second shoppers at Queen's Quay and elsewhere didn't riot yesterday.

As Maclean’s reported last week, alcohol sales at large Canadian retailers were up seventeen per cent this past October in comparison to October 2007, while the Globe and Mail reported in December that the sale of high-priced liquors, such as champagne and ice wine, were way down. This isn't surprising: when times are tough people tend to hit the cheaper bottles a little harder. But sales of inexpensive liquor aren't just up at retailers—in order to save money, more and more Torontonians are making their own booze or turning towards Toronto's on-premise beer- and wine-making establishments.

According to the Canadian Press, the Ontario Government and the LCBO secretly raised the minimum price of a case of twenty-four bottled beers last month, from $24 to $25.60. The price hike, which has already come into effect, was not an economic decision, but rather part of the LCBO's 1993 decision to enforce social responsibility. Apparently, a 24 for $24 was just too much for us to handle.

It's hard to argue with Slate's declaration that the Random House Dictionary contains the best definition of velleity:

Ontario will spend more than $2 billion this year to improve provincial roads and highways, widening the QEW and 401 and repairing over 450 kilometres of highway, as well as building and repairing over 100 bridges. In related transit news, the government is spending $5 million on a commission that will study exactly how much cooler cars are than nerdy bicycles, and how many more chicks a guy driving a car gets as opposed to some cycling dork.

If you happen upon a group of tourists decked out in Chicago Bears regalia (with or without helmets) on your daily commute to work in the next few days, we think we may know the reason why. The Chicago Tribune recently informed its readers that a visit to Toronto would be well worth their while. The author of the article—who claims to have visited Toronto 137 times—recommends "10 Things To Love" about Toronto; let's see how your list compares.