by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Is there a single item that people around the world can look at that would lead them to respect us Montrealers for our minds instead of just our bodies? Nope. Nuthin. We don't make cars, or electronics, or anything much. Smoked meat, bagels, maple syrup, Montreal Steak Spice: it's all so tragically insipid and generic.

Then again, we export beer. For 220 years we've had brew. As steady as the St. Lawrence flows, and regular as our moon waxes, we've been pumping out the suds, thanks to a pencilnecked 18-year-old Freemason from England - along with seven generations of Molson inheritors - who have been soothing the anxiety-ridden hearts of the overworked proletariat, helping us get blitzed or just glow in a mellow beer buzz aided by the bubbly liquid that provides the most memorable experiences that you'll ever forget.

But we haven't been drinking enough of it to fend off the predators. As a result there's the sickening plan that will have our dear Molson snapped up by the redneck Coors. It's truly a match from hell, the most shocking hookup since Beyoncé met Jay Z.

I frequently manage to totally forget about the fabulously unsexy Molson beers. Molson Dry? Seems like you should be dabbing it on your armpits. It's reassuring to know that your tongue won't sweat.

I used to call Molson to pester them to let me tour of the brewery. I wanted to find out what's in that mysterious Dry. No luck. The woman reacted as if it was the stupidest suggestion ever.

Laurentide also still exists, I imagine. It was launched as the Quebec version of Canadian, as Molson fears that the despised maple leaf will cause rabid frothing-at-the-mouth separatists to hijack the company in a pitchfork revolution. The no-balls marketing strategy backfired as Sleeman's came rolling into town with gaudy maple leaf bottles and immediately grabbed a nice market share.

Molson figured they needed to try out some more bad ideas and ended up buying a cleaning fluid company called Diversey. Cleaning fluids and beers. Hey, what's the diff? It was as if Vachon cakes diversified into the sewage treatment business. And yeah, somewhere along the line a customer got a bottleful of soap, although I'm not sure how he spotted the difference.

In spite of such low moments, the family amazingly never moved to a Caribbean tax haven like every other local fat cat tends to do, thus remaining local royalty, offering us lesser folk something to gossip about, which we've been doing at least since that hottie Bessie married the chubby Herbie, even though the obvious real catch was his brother, hunky World War I hero Percival, who was shot through both cheeks before later being killed in battle. Percy's namesake descendent was later cultivated by weasel-faced Hartland to take over in the '60s, but the second Percival's fate was as tragic as the first - he blew his brains out at his country place. Two biographies recount these family tales and plenty more.

Molson returned to sanity by selling off its non-beer enterprises, bought O'Keefe and Brazil's Bavaria beer and now ranks 13th on the scale of world's biggest brewery. It remains the obvious local choice for those who want to be locally patriotic about corporate brew. The only real challenger, Labatt, owns the ever-sucky Toronto Blue Jays and is in turn owned by Belgium's Interbrew, and I'm sure you agree with me when I say screw the Belgians.

So help save one of our oldest and dearest local institutions. Be patriotic and get hammered tonight.

• • •

Countdown to Karla: Next year at this time we could all be wrapped up in the spot-Karla-Homolka game. In 10 months this bloodthirsty sex criminal hits the streets and is assumed to be moving to our parts. I'm having a recurring psychic premonition that she'll end up on my block. We get all the winners here. I've put money on it with my wife, and I always win those bets.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca