A potentially game changing development in the retail wine business in BC: the Everything Wine chain has been sold to the Pattison Group. EW currently has 3 large \”big box\” locations in North Vancouver, Langford (Victoria) and Surrey. This sale means that three of BC\’s largest retail wine stores will now be owned and operated by one of BC\’s most respected businessmen and retailers, Jim Pattison. The licenses held by EW are the original \”independent wine store\” licenses, which means that they receive a larger \”wholesale discount\” than most of the private liquor stores in BC.
Month: August 2011
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Prohibition is Hot Topic
The Globe and Mail has an interesting article today on the upcoming Ken Burns documentary covering America\’s (and Canada\’s) experiment with Prohibition. Apparently, Prohibition and that era is now a \”hot topic\” … mainly because the whole thing was such a failure … PBS describes it as follows:
Prohibition turned law-abiding citizens into criminals, made a mockery of the justice system, caused illicit drinking to seem glamorous and fun, encouraged neighbourhood gangs to become national crime syndicates, permitted government officials to bend and sometimes even break the law, and fostered cynicism and hypocrisy that corroded the social contract all across the country.
Unfortunately, in Canada today, we still need to get rid of the remnants of Prohibition-era thinking from our laws: the prime example is our out-dated law from 1928 which prohibits the inter-provincial shipment of wine direct to consumers.