This is not a rhetorical question. The system is a bit of a quagmire that continues to confuse me. Back when I lived in Edmonton, all a regular tippler had to do was load up a car (or a friend’s car) head down to the bottle depot and give ‘em all the empties. Case closed.

Here it’s not so easy. The general idea is this. You head down to your local dépanneur — a.k.a convenience store — and you buy your caisse of Griffon or Boréale or Belle Guelle or maybe some fancy import. You pay about $7 for a caisse of six. Then you pay an extra $1.50 for a bottle deposit and taxes. Then you go home and drink your beer with your hearty meal of chili. Or you buy several cases and you have a party; and all your pals come around with cases of their own.

But then, weeks later, you notice that you have a small mountain of beer bottles in your kitchen; moreover, your cat views this mountain as her own personal Everest and dedicates herself to conquering it several times a day. In the process, she causes all sorts of mayhem until eventually you can’t take it anymore. You declare, “I’m returning these damn beer bottles if it kills me.” And you head down to the dépanneur where the majority of the bottles were purchased and you ask nicely, “Can I return these bottles to you?” And they say, “How many cases you got?” And you say, “Oh, 18 or so.” And they tell you to come back another day when the kid who takes care of those things will be around. So you come back another day, but the kid’s not there. So you give up and go to the small supermarket on St. Denis and Gounod. But there they start interrogating you about what kinds of beer bottles you’re attempting to return. Are they Molson? Are they brown bottles or green bottles?

“They’re mostly Boréale,” you announce.

And what if some of these cases do happen to be imports? What then? The cashier gestures to the beer fridge over yonder. Provided your empties correspond to the beers we sell over there, then we’ll take ‘em. So I need to bring in a clipboard and cross reference my imports with those in stock in this supermarket? Oh hang it all! I’ll just return my domestic beer and let the imports fester a little while longer in the kitchen.

Banchi needs the exercise.

Would not help me return the empties

Would not help me return the empties

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