It was worse before Brewers' Retail (the name before The Beer Store). You needed to go to Molson for Molson, Labatt's for Labatt's, Carling for Carling, Dow for Dow, etc., and there was nowhere to buy anything brewed in Canada but not in Ontario since the LCBO could only sell international imports (by written order, with nothing on display).

If anyone has watched the move “Strange Brew”, that’s exactly what the LCBO stores looked like in the 1980’s.

No advertisements, no product on the shelves, just a person standing at a register taking orders and you case of beer magically arriving on a conveyor belt.

Weird to think about now.

That's what the Beer Stores looked like (and still do where I live). The LCBO stopped looking like that in the 1970s, except no conveyor belt: they would hand you your package in a brown paper bag, and you had to sign your order form. Also, the LCBO did not sell beer because that monopoly went to Brewer's Retail.

Very similar to how pot will be sold in any province that doesn't have the government selling the pot. Local jurisdictions have, or will have, so many restrictions on when, where and how pot can be sold that competition will be extremely limited.

Saskatchewan was especially egregious. They had a lottery system to determine who would get a license to sell pot.