On our recent trip to England, we enjoyed some British Pub Life.

Pubs in the UK are primarily places to socialise. Yes you can get drunk if you want, and yes you can often sit down to a meal, but you don’t have to do either, because you can simply go to a pub to enjoy a drink and spend time with friends. You don’t even have to sit down, you can remain on your feet and be socially mobile, free of the strictures of sitting in one place.

Pub Life

This kind of pub life doesn’t really exist in Ontario. There are plenty of places that are called pubs, even places that claim to be authentically British, but they do not contain pub life, at least not as I know it.

The first thing an Ontario pub will make you do is sit down. The vast majority are table service, and the clue is in the name, there. Yes, you can go to the bar to order, but you’ll end up sitting on a stool there because in most Ontarian pubs, you don’t pay until it’s time to leave, and they do like to keep track of you until then.

Then you’ll find that most people in an Ontarian pub will be there to eat. Again sitting, obviously, but it’s more restaurant than pub at that point, only the presence of alcoholic drinks will give the game away. Of course there’s nothing wrong in going to a pub to eat, but it doesn’t do much for the socialising aspects of pub life.

There are also the people who go to Ontarian pubs to get drunk. Usually loners, propping up the bar and being a long way from any social situation. There is something called Safe Serve in Ontario, where bar staff are trained, and certified, in dealing with people who drink too much. Safe Serve came about after an individual successfully sued a bar for selling them too much alcohol, after that individual has caused mayhem elsewhere while under the influence of the booze. Most bar staff where we live don’t worry too much about the heavy drinkers, but a place in Waterloo we visited had notices up to say that no one would be served more than two drinks. Again, hardly conducive to a social setting.

Sitting! A pub in Michigan.

There are clubs, with music and dancing, that are far more pub-like that actual Ontarian pubs. But they have a different vibe altogether, and you lose the social aspect when you have to shout to get even the most basic conversation heard. Not pub life, in my view.

We were in a pub in Whitehall, London, on the day of the Cenotaph Remembrance Parade, and it was packed with people who’d been parading. So many were standing in groups, clutching drinks, and enjoying just talking with one another. Drinks were bought and paid for at the bar, and taken to the standing huddle, so that the socialising could continue. Now that’s pub life.

We also visited a pub in Wapping, where most customers were sitting to eat, but there was a group of friends at the bar, standing and drinking, and getting really quite noisy. That, though, was pub life too; people enjoying themselves and their group laughter was infectious. No one was drunk, for sure, but they were all enjoying that social freedom that you can achieve with a couple of drinks – although of course alcohol isn’t necessary if you don’t want it to be.

The Duke of Sussex in Waterloo, one of our pub life stops

I’m never going to find pub life in Ontario because the culture is different, despite claims to the contrary by people who run pubs here. I’m certainly not going to give up my easy North American lifestyle just for a bit of pub life, but when we go back across the Pond, the pub is one of our first ports of call.

Even Charlie like a bit of pub life now and again