Based on the number of cars I see with Ontario license plates in the lots of the area’s Wegmans and large liquor/beer stores, I’d say “across the border”.
That sounds downright regressive to me, personally. 
I assume this had something to do with the ban on non-refillable beverage containers on the island? I remember the one time I visited PEI (in the late '90s), there was no soda in cans either — only in bottles.
In Québec, alcoholic beverages can be bought in either dépanneurs (convenience stores), grocery stores or through the government-owned SAQ (Société des alcools du Québec) stores.
Deps and grocery stores carry beer (no limitations on beer selection carried), non-variety/non-vintage wines (“Red Wine” and “White Wine” but not “Chardonnay” or “1998 Merlot”), as well as malt beverages and mixes such as Smirnoff Ice.
The SAQ has a couple of different stores whose selection varies depending on the type of store, but in general carry hard liquor, wines and import beers. The SAQ Express will have a smaller selection of the most popular liquors and wines, while the SAQ Classique and SAQ Sélection have increasingly fancy and extensive ranges of products. The SAQ Dépot carries bulk wines and liqour, often at a slightly better price, but with less selection than in the other stores. The SAQ also issues licenses to bars and restaurants, and is the provider of alcoholic beverages to these establishments, although it is possible to privately import wines and such (and many restaurants do).
Bars and restaurants can serve alcohol to patrons who are 18 years old and older (admission to bars requires people to be 18+ as well). I believe dépanneurs/grocery stores can only sell alcoholic beverages between 10am-11pm, though I’m not sure about the start time. Most stores will close at 11 because the income drops considerable after that time! There are no legal restrictions on selling alcohol on Sundays. The SAQ stores tend to close between 5 and 10pm, depending on the type of store/location.
Prices are generally higher than in the US. Wine prices are generally about 2-3$ more than what you’d pay for the same bottle in Ontario, but beer is considerably cheaper, with 24s of Coors, Labatts or Molson often selling for 19-22$, but smaller breweries are more expensive. We often buy MacAuslan, Boréale or Belle-Gueule beers and I think a case of 12 is usually in the 14$ range.
Duty free shop? Though I guess at that price it would still be cheaper even if you had to pay duty.
To some extent I wish bottles were still standardised like that. These days the folks at the beer stores can get quite tetchy if you bring them back unsorted. On the other hand, it’s cool to have different, sometimes decorative bottle styles.
Glass bottles? Refillable ones? Filled and distributed locally? I suppose the last might be too much to hope for.
Apparently not. http://www.grrn.org/beverage/refillables/Canada.html
I heartily approve. 
Not really much price difference between the Duty Free shop (at the Blue Water Bridge) and the corner liquor store. Heck, the duty free shop still had to charge Michigan’s stupid can deposit!
My experience with most of the things I personally want to buy at a duty free shop is that they raise the price by the amount of the duty anyway. Plus, the duty on importing Canadian beer into the USA can’t be all the much anyway. Molsen and Labatt cost the same as the domestics everywhere (hell, in Michigan we regard them as domestic!).
At the time, I was able to enter Canada with two cases duty free.
Just as a reminder, duty free stores sell stuff that was imported into the USA for sale duty free, with the requirement that it leave the country upon purchase. The Canadians will still charge duty upon entry if the merchandise is subject to duty. Two cases of beer aren’t subject to duty.
I remember buying a 24 of Heineken at the Port Erie duty-free shop, and it seemed cheap to me (something like $30 compared to $46 at the Beer Store).
The wine store you’re referring to is called “Wine Rack”. They carry specific Canadian wines and have a slew of locations throughout most cities that stay open until pretty late at night. They are owned by Vincor Canada which is a division of Constellation Brands (huge wine company).
ETA: I think, although I may be mistaken, that they have locations across the country and sell local wines depending on where you live as well as the stuff like Jackson-Triggs.
Stubbies came into being as they could not, as easily, be used as a weapon in a bar fight, like a tallboy with the bottom smashed off, just not so easy to keep hold of.
The deposit on beer bottles is to keep them from piling up on roadsides and in parking lots. This way, no matter who drops them where, they are picked up and returned by homeless people etc. They had a deposit on them long, long before recycling/reuse became the rage.
Every morning, while walking my dog, I see the rummie’s sorting their nights collection, in the parking lot, waiting for the beer store to open!
Don’t forget gas stations! 
When I was still living in NDG, I used to get my six-packs at the Esso on the corner of Decarie and Sherbrooke.
The Boyfriend and I were recently in back in Montreal and he was floored by the walk-in beer fridge in the tiny gas station we were in.
Saskatchewan used to have similar stores to the one shown in the clip above, but we had to fill out a little slip with what we wanted and have it passed to us over the counter. That was in the 1970s.
Pubs had to be attached to a hotel at that time, and (much earlier) had separate entrances for “Gentlemen” and “Ladies and Escorts,” with a divider down the centre of the room. There are still a few two-entrance pubs around, but the dividers are long gone.
I used to get a lot of free beer because of stubbies. Hold the bottle with your little finger below the base, put a quarter on top, walk your hand up the bottle far enough to turn the quarter over, and walk back down. If you drop the quarter, chug the beer, buy a round for the table, and try again. My hands are wide enough to do it easily (and I’d start out sober) but some people just don’t know when to give up.
They’re bothered by unsorted bottles? Huh, when I worked there, and there were 17 different bottle types, sorting was part of the job. You took the bottles at the counter, paid the deposit, and sent the bottles to the back. Then, when you had time, you went in the back and sorted them. Getting “tetchy” when a customer arrived with unsorted bottles probably would have got us fired.
Saskatchewan just recently passed a law that allows liquor to be ordered and delivered outside of a store - like, now you can order liquor like you do take-out or go through a drive-thru.
Offsales were just recently allowed to sell hard liquor as well. But an offsale has to be attached to an ‘onsale’ establishment, so most of them are located off of bars or hotels.
True. I tend to think of gas station stores as dépanneurs anyways, though, so in my mind, I hadn’t forgotten to mention them at all! 
There’s a very small dep near here with a walk-in beer fridge that appears to be approximately the same area as the store itself. A large part of the store is filled with 24s that aren’t chilled. There are also a few other items, but it’s mostly beer. then there’s this place. Awesome selection of Québec brews!
Or small-town insurance stores.
The Wine Rack is one of several such chains, each of which is owned by a different wine producer (although Vincor scooped a lot of them up even before it was taken over by Constellation).
Yup. Thats what I meant. Typically clientèle who were not finished drinking for the evening would take some beer with them. Off-sale locations were not required to be attached to a hotel however.
We were unlikely to sell anyone more than a dozen bottles though. As in I dont recall it ever happening. Nothing stopping people from getting their friends to order too though.
The one I was thinking of is indeed the Wine Rack. The tend to stay open until 6 on Sundays. There is one that is open to the unheard of hour of 11pm on weeknights.
They do charge a hefty tax, but they also make a rather sizeable profit, as I understand it. From the LCBO’s website:
That amazes me only because there are only 10 million or so people in Ontario.
Obviously, some very thirsty people!
Seriously, Ontario (and to somewhat the same extent) certain other provinces, has historically taken what my Toronto high school friends and I used to call a “Grandma Grundy” approach to alcohol: it is evil and sinful and must be rigidly controlled by government and taxed heavily in order to discourage consumption. I well remember, as a child, accompanying my Dad to the building with “Liquor Control Board of Ontario” on the sign outside–Dad would fill out a form stating what he wanted, take it to a cashier who would accept payment and issue a receipt; then Dad would take the receipt to another counter where another man would go in the back and come out with a bottle, which he would carefully wrap in plain brown paper before handing it to Dad. The Beer Store was slightly easier; you just called your order to the man behind the counter and your beer would roll out from the back, like in the Bob and Doug movie.
Times have changed, and now many (if not all) LCBO stores and Beer Stores are self-serve, attractively designed, and staffed by knowledgeable people who will gladly advise on what wine to serve with what, what cocktails can be made from that spirit, or what makes this microbrewer’s beer different from that microbrewer’s. Licensing laws have eased too, allowing for bars to stay open later, for example. But there continue to be elements of the “evil and sinful” attitude: a popular argument whenever the subject of selling beer and wine in corner stores comes up, concerns keeping alcohol out of the hands of children because little corner stores couldn’t be trusted to check ID as often and as carefully as the big LCBO and Beer Stores do. Taxes on alcohol are often referred to as “sin taxes,” and come in various flavours: federal excise, provincial excise, PST, GST (or I guess HST in Ontario now), and one or two other levies (do beer cans still carry an environmental levy?), if memory serves.
The end result of all this is a system where there is effectively no competition that might put goods on sale simply to attract more customers, where prices remain high because they are legislated that way, and where the consumer has no choice in where to purchase. Some Ontarians do head for Quebec, New York, or Michigan; but I’d guess that for most Ontarians, the time and effort spent in getting to these places eats up any savings earned on purchase. But overall, it seems to me that the “Grandma Grundy” approach to selling alcohol (evil and sinful, requiring rigid control and heavy taxation) still occurs in Ontario and most other Canadian provinces.