Is It Canadian - Beer Edition!

Hi, I'm Tod. Welcome to Is It Canadian? The series where I tell you if your favourite brand is actually Canadian owned, or if they're just pretending to be. This episode: Beer! We're gonna start with Molson Canadian. This is kind of a tricky one. Molson Canadian is owned by a company called Molson Coors. It was the bastard lovechild of a merger between the Canadian Molson Brewery and the American Coors Brewing Company. Today you'd probably call it like a multinational company or something. It has offices in Chicago and Montreal. It trades on public markets in Canada and the US. So while it has strong Canadian roots, It's not solely Canadian-owned. It's probably best described as North American. Labatt Blue. Labatt was started in London, Ontario in 1847. In the '60s, a guy named John Moore was running it, and he sold most of it to an American company in 1966. But the California government said that purchase was against its antitrust laws, so they sold it back to Moore and a group of his buddies not even 2 years later. Speaking of owning things, did you know Labatt's actually owned the Toronto Maple Leafs for like 20 years? Until 1995 anyway, when they got bought by a Belgian company called Interbrew. It's now known as Anheuser-Busch InBev. In Bev, and so Labatt's is actually Belgian now. Cardinal Brewery in Quebec, they have a stout, IPAs, several ales, and they are locally owned in Hudson, Quebec by my brother-in-law, and you should visit if you're there because he's so Canadian he literally only owns red plaid shirts. It's kinda weird. Cardinal is Canadian. Kokanee was started in the '60s in the beautiful mountains of the Kootenays of BC. For a while, because of liquor laws, they were only actually allowed to sell to BC residents. Anyway, Labatt's bought it in 1977. Labatt, as we mentioned, is now owned by InBev, so also Belgian. Moosehead. This brewery was started in New Brunswick in 1867 by the Oland family, and this family has quite the story. The Halifax Explosion in 1917 killed one of the Olans and destroyed the brewery. In 2011, the family still owned it, and one of the descendants who was a VP there was murdered. His son was imprisoned for that, but the family still privately owns the whole thing. Moosehead is Canadian. Sleeman Original Draft. That brewery was acquired in 2006 by Sapporo Breweries, making it now Japanese-owned. Budweiser is InBev again, so not Canadian. Red Racer started as a brewpub in Surrey, British Columbia. It is owned by Central City Breweries. It's still in BC and it's still Canadian. Big Rock Traditional Ale is a very well-regarded amber ale. It comes from Alberta's Big Rock Brewery, started by a guy named Ed McNally because he thought that Alberta beer was crap. True story. Actually, he was also a lawyer that helped a group of barley growers sue the Alberta Wheat Board in the '80s. Through the course of the case, he learned that the Alberta climate produces two-row barley that is kind of perfect for malting and had access to glacial water from the Rockies. At the time, most barley production in Alberta was just used as cattle feed, but he decided to open up a craft brewery. He died about 10 years ago. It is publicly traded on the TSE. The stock's been on kind of a downward trend or so for the last decade, Anyway, uses Canadian product, employs Canadian people, sells in Canada, but is publicly traded, so probably a mix of nationalities in there. And finally, Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale, a popular IPA from Nova Scotia, owned by Labatt's, which means it's also owned by those damn Belgians again. So there you go! Follow me for more breakdowns of what brands are actually Canadian and which are only pretending to be. Tell me in the comments what other brand you think I should do next, and follow me on Bluesky and Twitch. Hi, I'm Will Tomkinson, the co-founder of Cardinal Brewery, and now here is your Daily Otis.