History tells us that Breton explorer Jacques Cartier saved his scurvy-plagued men with native-sourced spruce beer. Iced in at the mouth of the St. Charles River early in 1536, he brewed up a beverage rich in vitamin C. Only it wasn’t spruce beer. The local Iroquoians instructed him to use what they called Aneda, now believed to have been white cedar, Thuja occidentalis.
First Nations peoples did drink a non-alcoholic medicinal tea made from the tips of black spruce, Picea mariana, it being richer in vitamin C than cedars. So it was to various Picea species that French, British and Dutch colonial settlers turned when it came to a spruce brew-up – alcoholic or otherwise.
Swedish botanist Pehr Kalm recorded that spruce beer ‘is chiefly used by the French in Canada.’ Imported wine being prohibitively expensive, the habitants resorted the easily available brew. By 1752, a writer on Cape Breton Island was praising it as ‘la bière très bonne.’
The Comment section of online publications is the new front in the ongoing Cancel Culture Battle.
Big Tech and Big Media are gunning for the Conservative Voice—through their Comment Sections.
Canada Free Press wishes to stay in the fight, and we want our fans, followers, commenters there with us.
We ask only that commenters keep it civil, keep it clean.
Thank You for your patience and for staying aboard the CFP ‘Mother Ship’.
READ OUR Commenting Policy
Support Canada Free Press
