Let me tell you about how things change in Ontario.

In 1837, the rebels in Upper Canada met at breweries. They met at John Farr’s brewery and they met at John Doel’s brewery. John Doel was a Methodist. He wanted exactly the same thing that the rebels wanted: responsible government, democracy and a slightly smaller slice of the pie for the fat cats running the show.

If you know your history, you know that the rebels met at Montgomery’s Tavern and proceeded to march down Yonge Street. They probably met at Montgomery’s Tavern because they were marching against troops commanded by John Colborne. They were ill equipped to fight a man who beat Napoleon’s Imperial Guard at Waterloo. The fact that they bothered at all meant that they were very brave and possibly slightly drunk. They never had a chance.

Change came in Ontario through demographic shifts and through consensus building and it took a long time. A lot of that was done by Methodists who built schools and churches and temperance halls. Some of that was done with money they’d earned selling beer. They changed the mores of society and they changed opinions. In Ontario change doesn’t come from the barrel of a gun. It comes through waiting and working patiently. When William Lyon Mackenzie was finally allowed back into the province it was John Doel who sold him back his property and the Methodists had already changed Ontario.

It’s hard to say how much responsibility anyone has for the changes made by the province to Beer Sales on Thursday. Martin Regg Cohn did some sterling work, at first annually around Christmas and then more frequently over the last six months. Ben Johnson over at Blog T.O. has left nary a feather unruffled in bringing the public’s attention to matters beery. Just about every beer writer in the province has made some contribution, including but not limited to Stephen Beaumont, Crystal Luxmore, Dan Grant, Chris Schryer, Nick Pashley, Robin LeBlanc, Greg Clow and David Ort. There are others, too. If you’re left out, be sure it’s not intentional. We reached critical mass so quickly over the last year that it’s hard to keep track. (ed. note: I can’t believe I left out Josh Rubin. Dude’s great.)

I don’t know how much responsibility I can claim, but the answer is “some.”

I wrote nine blog posts about The Beer Store and, with Alan McLeod, one book that summarized its place in the history of Ontario. The link to the book is to the right.

The first three blog posts didn’t exactly fall on deaf ears, but they reeked desperately of policy wonk. The first post talked about the basic problem with reform (that the issue only cropped up every six months). The second post talked about the OCSA commissioned study written by Anindya Sen and the reason it had failed to persuade. The third post talked about the OCSA’s second study, which I had discussed with Dr. Sen and which talked about economic theory.

Eventually I realized that asking people to understand any economic theory more difficult than supply and demand was going to be fruitless. It doesn’t matter that you’re right if you can’t explain why you’re right.

The fourth blog post was simply called Understanding The Beer Store. By this point I was researching their history with Alan and I realized why people couldn’t get their heads around the business model. To this day I still hear people say “but they must make money.” All you have to do is explain that it doesn’t need to be profitable because it’s saving its owners money. The foreign owned Beer Store was actually preventing its owners from having to push capital into the economy.

The good part about creating easily understood talking points is that they filter out to other places. People started talking about that. The Convenience Store poll from November 2013 said 14% of the population polled were aware of the foreign ownership. By the time I got Lorne Bozinoff to run polling for me in April of 2014, we were up to 22%. I wanted pure data so we made the questions as neutral as possible. By this time, I think everyone realized that the key to the situation was raising public awareness on the issue. All we had to do was keep the flag flying so people would see it. Critical mass of coverage helped a LOT.

I wrote to my MPP, Eric Hoskins who was Ontario’s Economic Development Minister at the time highlighting the massive potential for economic growth. I encouraged others to do the same. I can’t tell you if anyone did, but I’d hope it’s a positive number. I wrote later about the Ontario Problem and the inequity of the situation and how the demographics had changed. When Ontario’s brewers were tempted by The Beer Store in January, I rallied ‘em by aiming for St. Crispin’s day and letting it rip. Eventually, I simply wrote about the necessity of change.

I got name dropped in the C.D. Howe Institute study on The Beer Store and on the Agenda with Steve Paikin. I somehow got a professional polling firm to work for me for free. I co-wrote the history of beer in the province of Ontario (which seems Machiavellian in retrospect, but I’m not that clever. I lucked into that.) which made me into the go-to media interview on The Beer Store’s history. I was interviewed on Global Morning and CBC Radio One (three times this month). I was interviewed by the Globe and Mail and Metro and wrote my own columns in the Sun. I helped Adrian Morrow at the Globe fact check his figures on the beer store’s cost offset after I was let go from the Sun.

I retweeted others and others retweeted me. It was a group effort. The important part was keeping the ball in the air; making sure that the narrative didn’t disappear from the airwaves and from the internet. We fought The Beer Store for the best part of two and a half years. It’s owned by companies with billions of dollars of assets and I fought them with no budget and facts and arguments and rhetoric. I didn’t lose my temper and I didn’t raise my voice and I didn’t give up.

I see people complaining about the changes that have been instituted. That they’re not enough. That they’re a smokescreen. That the Liberal Party are only making changes because they’re in dire financial straits.

I’ll take it.

The thing is this: We’ve got the demographics. We’ve got 245 breweries extant and in planning. We’ve got grocery stores we can browbeat and campaign against. We’ve got MPPs we can write. We’ve got a rabid base of craft beer fans and we’ve got momentum. We just won a thirty year fight and people are worried about whether we can get craft beer on grocery store shelves.

We can. We just have to keep pressing forward politely and persistently.