The 12 pubs of Christmas - Toronto

Okay - the hard work is done, the pubs have been decided; it's just down to getting the drinking done now!!

Saturday the 4th of December @ 1700hrs Sharp! 

Kick off is FIVE PM sharp and we will be moving from pub to pub at a steady pace. All destinations are walkable.

There's plenty of opportunities to grab food in between venues or indeed in a venue, just send us a text or call us to see where we are if you decide to stay somewhere to eat.
...

The list of pubs in order from start to finish is:

C'est What? (67 Front street at Church)
McVeighs (124 Church St. )
Duggans (75 Victoria Street)
PJ O'Briens ( 39 Colborne Street , behind King Edward hotel)
Beer Bistro (18 King Street East)
Duke of Richmond (20 Queen St. W.- basically the south west entrance of the eaton centre)
The Imperial Pub (54 Dundas St. E. - just behind Dundas Sq)
Queen & Beaver (35 Elm Street)
Duke of Somerset (655 Bay Street, south of Gerrard)
Village Idiot (126 Mc Caul Street opposite the AGO)
Sin & Redemption (Next door to Village Idiot)
Smokeless Joes (125 John Street)


Okay - so let me know via email garthicus AT hotmail DOT com or twitter @garthicus if you'd like to come along and I'll message you my phone number. 

The waiting game

Today is the due date of our first baby......

S/he doesn't seem to want to visit us today! We'll sit tight........

Hurry up, we're excited to meet you!

Homeward bound

It's been a wonderful 2.5 years so far in Canada, I really love it here. We have great friends, great family (the few members that are in Canada) and generally a great life here. However; I haven't been home since we moved here. I'm delighted to report that I'm off home on the 14th of July for 5 days for my best friends wedding (I'm his best man). Whilst I'm delighted to be going home for a visit, I'm sure it'll be a little bitter sweet as I'm leaving behind my wife and our (soon to be born) child.. she's due in a few days and all going well the baby will be only a few weeks old when I head back to Ireland for the few days.

That aside, I'm seriously looking forward to quite a few things that I've been missing! Obviously I'm looking forward to seeing my family and of course my friends but other things I miss are; in no particular order:

Breakfast rolls/full Irish breakfast:

(Minus the blackcurrants!)


A nice bit of batch loaf:

A dozen pints in my local pub - 'The Pound' in Swords:

And of course, news, tv, newspapers etc from home:

But most of all I am really excited about seeing and tasting all the new craft beers that have hit the Irish market in my absence, particularly the cask offerings. I'll be hitting up 'The Bull and Castle' and 'The Porterhouse' as soon as I arrive to imbibe some craft beer goodness.

Hopefully I'll get to finally meet some of the Irish Craft Brewer members, in particular The Beer Nut and Barry Masterson (although Barry is in Germany!) as I've been a member of that site for a few years now and am yet to meet any of them.

So, hopefully this trip will go well, it's my first time flying with Air Transat and I'm on a pretty tight schedule. The Canadian dollar is pretty strong against the Euro too so that's a bonus.

Fingers crossed :-)

    

A month on the dry.....

In response to the thumping I gave my liver and my bank account over St. Patrick's week. I've decided to give myself a break from Craft Beer imbibing for roughly a month (well, actually a day or two more than a month). The carrot on the end of the stick is a trip to Montreal with my buddies Harry and Paul (and hopefully Greg if he can get the time off work) for a weekend of Craft Beer madness.

Whilst a month will hardly repair 12 years of damage, it will give me time to lose a bit of weight and prepare for our first baby which is due on June 6th :-)  The weekend in Montreal is in theory 'a last hurrah' before the arrival of the little one. So, right now I'm 12 days into my challenge and I thought it would be relatively easy until I saw the weather forecast for this weekend (in and around 25 degrees). Seeing as I live slap bang in the middle of Toronto's entertainment district and therefore patio central, it's going to be a bit of a killer.

Watch this space!

Brew round up

It's been a while since I've done a round up of what I've been imbibing lately, laziness coupled with procrastination is not a good trait of mine. Anyhow; some highlights of the past few weeks have been...

Catching up on my Mill Street Brewing ratings... have you ever assumed that you've tried all/most of a breweries offerings only to realize that you're missing out on quite a few? That happened to me the other day whilst at Mill Street when I realized I'd never tried their fabulous Pilsner - admittedly, I'm not the greatest fans of pils in general but this one just spoke to me, tasty and refreshing and with nice mango and fruit flavours that I can't get enough of. That evening there were also four or five other Mill St. brews tried including their one off 'Mocha Java Loco' on cask which was sublime.

A cheeky trip to Montreal with the lovely wife made for a good opportunity to try a few Dieu Du Ciel and Benelux brews that were new to me. Not too many mind you as I wasn't there for beer reasons... but here's a couple of pics..

We rented a car and drove to Old Quebec and man were we impressed, what an absolute gem of a city. Check out out pics over on our flickr site. My better half suggested that whilst we were there I might as well pick up some brews so we headed to Le Monde des Bières - a really neat Quebec beer store, whilst beer is on the expensive side in Quebec (especially the bottle deposit) it's well worth picking some up as most of it is not available outside the province. In this particular store the brewery La Barberie brew some beers especially for them.  Here's what I picked up:

 























So all in all it was a successful non beer trip yet beer trip. A few days later myself and the Toronto Ratebeer gang had our monthly tasting at my place and it ended up being a pretty messy and enjoyable affair. Good friends, good beer and good craic. What else can a man want?

Alexandra Johanna

A friend of mine has just had an incredible thing happen to her, it's almost like fiction. I'll explain it via an e-mail that I sent to George Hook today...

Hi George,

Greetings from a cold and snowy Toronto. Regarding my tweet about an Irish citizen in a spot of bother in South Africa, here’s the story:

My wife and I used to live in Dubai, my wife used to fly for Emirates, we still have quite a few friends there who are flying for them, one being an Irish girl (her name is Liz). Liz has had a history of stomach problems, ulcers etc... before Christmas she went to the Emirates clinic in Dubai (they are so large that they have their own hospitals and clinics for their staff) complaining of stomach pains and general tiredness etc. She went back to them for test results a couple of weeks ago but the clinic had lost her results, so in the interim the Doctor decided to up her ulcer medication.

On the 21st of Jan, Liz was on an overnight Johannesburg stop, she had severe stomach aches during the night - it turns out that they weren't cramps, they were labour contractions. She self delivered a premature baby girl in the hotel room and with the assistance of the staff was able to get the baby breathing and get to a private hospital. Liz did not know she was pregnant. I believe that staff in Emirates welfare department back in Dubai were initially being very good to Liz & baby but as of a few days ago (George – here’s the real kicker)  her contract has been terminated and her health insurance revoked, She's now alone in JNB stuck with USD$86k medical bill (the hospital need payments up front for the next three months worth of care for baby Alexandra) along with accommodation costs, food etc... why, you ask did they terminate her employment and revoke her insurance? Because she is unmarried. She has worked for them for seven years and they have left her stranded in JNB.

Emirates have also told her to vacate the hotel she is staying in and she now has to find alternative accommodation for the next 5 months (baby Alexandra will be in hospital for three and it will be another two months afterwards that she can travel back to Ireland)

Liz has told me that the staff in the hotel she’s in (and soon has to leave) have been superb and even had a baby shower for her in her hotel room. I have written to one of the Vice Presidents of HR in Emirates who I know and explained the situation to him as I suspect it wasn’t escalated that high up the ranks. He has said they will investigate it.

If there is a silver lining, it’s that Liz is lucky that she didn’t give birth whilst in Dubai as she would have been jailed as it’s against the law to have a baby out of wedlock.

The unfortunate part is that she’s now stuck in JNB for the next five months. There is a facebook group called ‘Alexandra Johanna’ where there are details of an account that any donations can be made to help Liz and baby out. Her family and friends have managed to raise a good amount of the medical fees but we’re still many thousands of dollars/euros away from what the hospital are asking.

Anyhow George, that’s the story. I hope it’s of interest to you. If you need more info including mine or Liz (in SA's) tel number, please let me know. 

______________________________________________________________________________________

So, there you go. An incredible story. If you'd like to help; here are the account details:

Bank: Nedbank
Branch Code: 13280500
Account Name: Mrs Louise Mickel
Account Number: 1328040364
Swift Code: nedszajj