The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) is a provincial Crown corporation in Ontario, Canada established in 1927 by Lieutenant Governor William Donald Ross, on the advice of his Premier, Howard Ferguson, to sell liquor, wine, and beer through a chain of retail stores. Such sales had been banned outright in 1916; thus, the creation of the LCBO marked an easing of the province's temperance regime (see Prohibition in Canada).
LCBO stores are generally the only stores allowed to sell distilled spirits in Ontario. Currently, the LCBO is one of the world's largest single purchasers of beverage alcohol products. Beer is also sold by the Brewers Retail Inc., which operates using the name The Beer Store, and is owned by Molson Coors, Anheuser–Busch InBev and Sapporo Brewery. Wine can also be found in a number of stores operated by wineries and licensed to sell their own brands. However, the LCBO is by far the largest wine retailer in the province.
Licensed bars and restaurants may resell alcoholic beverages, but they must be consumed on the establishment's premises. The bars and restaurants themselves must buy their products from the LCBO, The Beer Store, or directly from Ontario wineries and breweries.
Read more about Liquor Control Board Of Ontario: Pricing, Profits, History, Debate Over Privatization, Recycling Program, Cellared in Canada Controversy, Age Verification Controversy
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“No power on earth or above the bottomless pit has such influence to terrorize and make cowards of men as the liquor power. Satan could not have fallen on a more potent instrument with which to thrall the world. Alcohol is king!”
—Eliza “Mother” Stewart (1816–c. 1908)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Midway the lake we took on board two manly-looking middle-aged men.... I talked with one of them, telling him that I had come all this distance partly to see where the white pine, the Eastern stuff of which our houses are built, grew, but that on this and a previous excursion into another part of Maine I had found it a scarce tree; and I asked him where I must look for it. With a smile, he answered that he could hardly tell me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)