Old newspaper ads - Dow Beer

We had cable television installed in our building and the installers discovered a roof access that I didn't know existed. It led into a mostly empty airspace between the roof and the ceiling where I found a pile of dried out old newspapers. They looked very old indeed and I gingerly brought them down to my office where I discovered they were the remains of most of two days of Le Devoir from 1948. Quite a find! I took several of the full pages and had them mounted and laminated so we can put them on the wall. I got two front pages, an entertainment section (with all the old movie houses of Montreal advertised!) and a great sports section ("Le Montréal triomphe de nouveau du Jersey City"). However, there were several pages that were half-deteriorated and extremely delicate. I cut out several gorgeous advertisements from them and will scan them and share them with you here.

Here is the first one:



The title reads "Jumping from the train, he saves a child from the waves... And wins the Dow Prize!"

Dow was the big beer brand here in Montreal back in the day (they built the Dow Planetarium) until rumours went around that their beer had dangerous chemicals that made people die. It's weird because I don't think they have anything to do with Dow Chemicals. The brand never recovered (there was actually some chemicals in it used to make the head foamier that did make some people sick). Awesome ad idea here, though.

Addendum: Here is a link to the CBC archives with a really fantastic newspiece on the whole Dow story. So many great beer quotes here and just an amazing look at the state of beer drinking back in the day.