Lost Breweries of Toronto by Jordan St. John

Author:Jordan St. John
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2014-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

While the Don River would have originally run directly next to the East End Brewery, the straightening of its course meant that breweries could have their own rail sidings, greatly enhancing their ability to export product to other parts of the country. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

When Robert W. Defries sold the brewery in 1868, it was to the partnership of Thomas Allen and Hugh Thompson. Thompson was largely involved in agricultural societies in the city but was, in the context of the brewery, the moneyed interest. Thomas Allen was the one with all of the brewing ability, although it was a trade that he had taken some pains to learn during his sixteen years in Toronto. Allen had served at Ridgeway during the Fenian Raids of 1866 as a sergeant in the Tenth Royal Regiment, which may have made him an attractive prospect for the purchase of the brewery to Defries. Mark Defries, Robert’s brother, had been one of the few casualties of the Queen’s Own Rifles at the same engagement.

Allen was originally from County Armagh in Northern Ireland. He had intended to come to Canada in 1850 at the age of twenty, but the Atlantic crossing was so treacherous that winter that the ship returned to Cork. He attempted the voyage again in 1851 and, finding himself unemployed in Toronto, went to work for his cousin. By this time, Samuel Platt was a partner in Enoch Turner’s brewery and distillery. Thomas Allen was likely in the employ of that concern until 1855, when Platt closed it to diversify his business interests. Allen would end up working at the Copland brewery for a period after that, his credentials secured in the brewing world.

Allen purchased Hugh Thompson’s interest in the brewery, now styled the East End Brewery, in 1875. His entrance into political life began in 1877, as he became an alderman for St. David’s Ward. He was politically a staunch Tory and Ulsterman and was a founder of a lodge of the Orange Order. He would continue to serve in his capacity as alderman throughout the 1880s and ended up bringing his son into the partnership in 1880. Oliver Henry Allen stayed with the business for only five years before joining the army. He was lieutenant in the flying column of militia that was sent to put down the Riel Rebellion in 1885. Oliver would marry and settle in Revelstoke, British Columbia, becoming the first brewer in that location.

Allen would sell the business in 1888 to the man in Toronto who most needed his own brewery. Lothar Reinhardt was not like the other brewery owners of the late Victorian period in Toronto. For one thing, he had a formalized education in brewing. Reinhardt was born in 1842 in Cologne and had been a brewer from early adulthood. He had attended what was, at the time, one of the only brewing academies in the world at Worms in Germany. His apprenticeship following his studies was completed at Paulaner, which had been secular since 1802.

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