The Molsons: Their Lives and Times, 1780-2000

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and co-author
of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Infl

The Molson family, brewers to the nation, have a huge place in the
history of Montreal and Canada. The first Molson brewery, founded in the
1780s by the first Molson to come to Canada, prospered, and the heirs of
John Molson, the founder, kept the company in the family. Soon there was
a bank, a steamship line, and, in the 20th century, the Montreal
Canadiens hockey club. The company changed with the times and adapted to
new organizational forms, but the family kept its hand in the business,
whatever the changes.

Karen Molson, a seventh-generation member of the family, has done a
competent job of telling this story. Her family seems to have cooperated
fully. She has searched the available archival sources, and she writes a
serviceable prose. She can be frank about family foibles, divorces, and
minor scandals, but this history is not—and probably cannot
be—definitive. To be that, several volumes of 400 pages and more would
be necessary.

Even so, there are some very interesting figures sketched out in her
pages. Take Hartland Molson, who went off to fight in World War II as an
RCAF Hurricane pilot and was, at age 32, shot down on his 62nd sortie by
a Messerschmidt 109 during the Battle of Britain. Molson survived and
ended the war as a Group Captain, became a Senator after the war, and in
1957 bought the Montreal Canadiens. The family’s control of the hockey
team lasted more than 40 years—and that saga is worth a book all by
itself.