North Bay, Ontario: The New Ontario Brewery

The New Ontario Brewery led a short but eventful life in North Bay. Established in 1905 by a group of businessmen headed up by James Palango, it produced a German-style lager beer. The company prospered, and enough beer was produced to supply both North Bay and surrounding communities. By 1910, the New Ontario had begun to hire “brewery boosters,” traveling salesmen who traveled by horse and buggy to locations as diverse as Cobalt to the north and Kitchener, Kingston, Ottawa and Pembroke.

However, the quality of the lager produced was inconsistent: for some unknown reason, the brewery had five different brewmasters from 1906 to 1915. By the time that a fire destroyed the brewery in 1915, the first World War I was on. Supplies were being rationed and there was a shortage of manpower. Anti-German sentiment of the time also factored into the decision not to rebuild the brewery.

A locally-owned brewery which met with more success was the Sudbury Brewing and Malting Co., Ltd. It was founded in 1907 by amateur boxer and former hotelier J. J. Doran of North Bay, whose nickname was the “Brewer of Northern Ontario.” His brothers-in-law, Richard A. Fee and J. J. Mackey, partnered in the business. Eventually, they went on to buy other breweries: in 1911, they bought the Soo Falls Brewing Co. (begun in 1900 in Sault Ste. Marie) and, in 1913, they purchased the Kakabeka Falls Brewing Co. in Thunder Bay (Fort William). They also built Doran’s Brewery in Timmins in 1929. The Port Arthur Beverage Co. marked the company’s final purchase, in 1948. Brewmeister Doran died in 1958.

In more recent times, consolidation led to the creation of Doran’s Northern Ontario Breweries, which has been known as Northern Breweries since 1979. Northern Breweries, in a deal with Molson and Labatt, sold Superior Lager and Northern Ale to southern Ontario. Finally, in 2004, Northern Breweries was sold to an investment group.

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