Biography of the Founder of the "Official Beers of the NHL" Is Good Reading before the Hockey Play-offs

 A good juicy biography is fun any time, and with hockey playoffs coming up one about the storied Molson clan, the current (and past) owners of the Montreal Canadiens, makes an excellent read for those who love (or hate) the Habs.

The Molsons: Their Lives & Times 1780-2000 is not a new book.  Published in 2002 when Molson interests had recently sold 80 per cent of its share of the club, the book says nothing about the more recent re-acquisition and active role of the current generation of Molsons.  But there's enough here to keep you reading, and to coorborate my husband's contention that there are few family histories that don't turn up a horse thief of the equivalent (that's why for a long time he held himself aloof from geneology.)

Author Karen Molson shows that it's not just us ordinary folk who have a scandal or two hidden away.  Early on she tells us that in a day when being a bastard could mean being a social outcast,  John Molson didn't marry his children's mother until the kids were half-grown.     
 
Sarah Vaughn had recently  fled the American Revolution when the aspiring brewer hired her to be his house maid for $4 a month in 1786.  He was 23 and she was 35, with a husband somewhere and connections to the English gentry.  Nevertheless she was illiterate, and apparently hard-up enough to need to work for her living.  Sharing a bed must have been added to her duties rather quickly, because the first of Molson's three sons was born in 1787.  It wasn't until  1801 when word came that Sarah's first husband had died that John and she married in the Anglican church and legitimized their children. 
 
By then John was well on his way to building the financial empire that has continued to prosper until today.   Karen Molson explains the ins and outs of its growth--the burgeoning brewing company, the steamship line begun, the railroad started, the real estate and distilling ventures successfully undertaken, and  the hockey interests won, lost and won again.  But where her book excels is in its descriptions of  complex interfamily relations set against deftly drawn vignettes of life over the decades.  These are told in the present tense, giving immediacy to her story and jazzing up what otherwise could have been a rather dry history. 

Karen Molson is a seventh-generation Molson, born to the line begun by the original John Molson's third son Thomas.  She provides a family tree at the beginning of the book which the reader will find useful since not only did the Molsons give many of their children the same names--John, William and Thomas were favorites--several of them also married cousins. 

She and her two researchers  spent years reviewing a mountain of official and unofficial documents.  Several Molsons were dedicated journal-keepers and letter-writers, and  account books and other financial records from the Molson companies have survived intact.  Thus Karen Molson is able to show us such things as just how far out on a limb  young John Molson went to start up his brewery: she quotes from his  increasingly frantic entreaties  that he get money set aside in trust for him so that he can pay for the equipment he's already bought.  We also get a sharp picture of John II through his school reports which remark that he was "a good Lad ...but the most spirited one you can imagine.  No fear of his fighting his way through the world."  To which the first John told his son:  "it will be ultimately a great advantage to you to be a man of education instead of a Blockhead."

The book was neither commissioned by the Molson family nor any of the Molson corporate interests, yet clearly Karen Molson had privileged access to many of the surviving family members and to  private letters that other researchers might find hard to see. So, while she may be frank about some of the family's sexual peccadilloes (in addition to John and Sarah's marital tardiness, she goes into detail about a Molson grandson who was caught in a hotel with a young woman of good family), don't expect dirt about how the Molsons made their millions.  In short the book is a good read for those wanting to learn about the lifestyles of the rich and famous over more than 200 years--and without a doubt  it's more interesting than a story about the horse thieves in an ordinary family, too.

By the way, please note that questionable behavior doesn't necessarily stand in the way of getting official recognition:  the picture is of a Canadian stamp issued in 1986 to honour the first John Molson.