Brewing tradition
Craft breweries are the latest craze and we have two really good ones in Medicine Hat. But it’s not actually a new industry to our town.
In the beginning, the North-West Mounted Police tried to keep control of the CPR construction workers by banning liquor altogether, but bootleggers and moonshine continued to be a problem. Morrow reports the first brewery was operated by Butler and Flynn, but it couldn’t have been for long. Two local ladies, Annie and Molly (look elsewhere for their nicknames), imported contraband booze from Montana, hiding their stock in the sagebrush near town. They filled containers in their brassieres and bustles and went about distributing their illegal wares.
The first serious brewer was Thomas W. Ireland, born in 1844 near London, England, who emigrated with his wife Amelia and children in 1875 and found work with the CPR construction office in Hamilton. By the spring of 1883, he had taken a homestead at Pense, near Regina, but didn’t know anything about farming, so he carried on west, arriving in Medicine Hat in December 1883.
Ireland soon erected a wood frame building on Main Street, now gone but about where the Monarch stands today, which housed his Saskatchewan Brewery, named for the local river which supplied the water delivered in watercarts for the brew. The hops for his hop ale came in on the CPR. He bottled his beer in quart bottles with a red label. In January, 1885, Ireland was charged with selling liquor but the case was dismissed.
On July 2, 1887, it was reported that he “still continues to manufacture first class sparkling hop ale at his brewery on Main Street.” The News of July 16, 1887, says that P. Smith opened the “Sask. Brewery Saloon” on South Railway, and that Thos. Ireland and A.R. Tracey were operating breweries. However, on Nov. 10, 1887, the Department of Inland Revenue announced that hop beer brewers in the North-West Territories were to be closed. Ireland had other plans despite ill health, and erected the third brick building in town in 1888 but died in 1892 at age 48, the first person buried in the “new” St. Barnabus cemetery by Seven Persons Creek.
The Medicine Hat Brewing Company started at the peak of the local boom in 1913, even though the temperance movement was in full swing. It was was founded by Charles V. Drazan of Palouce, Washington, and located in a wood frame and later adjacent brick building on Industrial Avenue near Medalta. He operated his business until 1925, when the business is listed as being under the Management and Presidency of Gus Hodel. The brewery advertised itself as "Manufacturers of Old Fashioned Lager Ale and Stout," and was brewing local suds until about 1928. The building continued to stand until a fire in 1975.
So, our two new craft brewers are part of a long local tradition after all.