A Prince Edward Island grad student came up with an interesting thesis revolving around craft beer names in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Maggie Whitten Henry is working on completing her thesis as part of the Master of Arts in Island Studies program at the University of P.E.I. The names of Newfoundland craft beers and how they relate to themes of “islandness,” is her title. 

Henry was born in Newfoundland but left at an early age. “I started to notice a bit of a pattern of themes of place in names of breweries and names of beers,” said Henry. “It just kind of popped up and I thought, ‘There’s something going on here.’ This was in 2018-19, when the [craft beer] boom was happening over there, so I wrote a paper about it.”

According to the article in CBC News, she noticed many breweries used communities as names of products, which she says is not uncommon in other places. However, she says something unique to the province is the heritage that is steeped in the titles and breweries as well.

“As far as what I found really prevalent in the Newfoundland breweries, like the landmarks and environments [are] definitely more common there than [what] would be noticed elsewhere for such a specific sort of region,” said Henry.

“A lot of natural environments, and also a lot of Newfoundland heritage, especially language, a lot of specific places. Towns, roads, landmarks and a lot of industries, energy and mining and [the] fishery. Those are sort of the main things that jumped out and a fair bit of weather [related names] too.” It isn’t just the names of beers that struck Henry, but also the locations of the breweries in question.”

“A lot of them were opening up in rural areas, which is sort of not the norm elsewhere,” she said.