George B. Capel, 1863. Photo: McCord Stewart Museum
By Shawn MacWha
Local Journalism Initiative
When most people think of Lennoxville and beer, their minds likely turn, perhaps a little fuzzily, to the Golden Lion (or, if you prefer, Le Lion d’Or). First opened in 1986 this pub was at the vanguard of Canada’s microbrewery revolution. Since that time, it has served locals, students, and visitors alike with a variety of bitters, lagers, stouts and ales to sooth the soul and fire the imagination. But long before this institution crafted its first pint, another brewery also made fresh beer for hard-working and thirsty locals.
The Lennoxville Brewery was one of the very first beer makers to be established in the Eastern Townships. Opened by British immigrants Thomas Austin and George Slack in 1837 it was located on four acres of land between what is now Queen Street and the Massawippi River in lot 12, range 11 of Ascot Township. Powered by a water wheel, the brewery pulled the water needed for the brewing process directly from the river via a series of pipes. Inside the brew house there was a large cast iron kiln to dry barley, a malt mill, and other vessels necessary to the art of making beer including two large copper kettles and all of the required cooling and storage equipment. Local wheat, barley, hops and clean water were all readily available and the brewery had an impressive capacity of 1,260 litres per batch.
This was, however, a difficult time for a small-scale brewery to open in the Eastern Townships. The region had not yet been reached by any railways and there was only a rudimentary network of roads and trails. As such it was both difficult and expensive to transport beer out of the area to the larger markets of Montreal, Quebec City or the United States. Additionally, the local population was insufficient to permit the business to grow. Only three years earlier, in 1834, there were fewer than 200 people living in Sherbrooke and while the influx of immigrants to the area following the founding of the British American Land Company undoubtedly brought in additional customers there were simply not enough local drinkers to allow Austin and Slack to make any money. To complicate matters, at least from the perspective of aspiring brewers, there was an active temperance movement in Canada during this time committed to riding the country of alcoholic drink. In November and December 1841, for example, R.D. Wadsworth of the Montreal Temperance Society toured the Eastern Townships and while he made many converts to his cause he also noted that the recent establishment of the brewery in Lennoxville had undermined his efforts.
In the face of these pressures the owners were actively trying to sell their brewery as early as June 1841, billing it as “a desirable opportunity” for “emigrants and others” in the Quebec (City) Gazette. Unfortunately for them, they were unable to find a buyer and the enterprise went out of business in the summer of 1843. By this point Austin had moved to St. Johns (Saint-Jean-sur Richelieu) where he was working as a trader while Slack had relocated to Eaton. In an attempt to recoup at least some of their investment the defunct brewery was auctioned off by James Scott at the Merrick’s Hotel in Lennoxville on March 11, 1843 and was purchased by Charles Anderson Richardson, the town’s postmaster, for the modest sum of ₤213 (approximately $46,000 today). This sale included the brewery, granary, stables, all equipment necessary for the production of beer and the land upon which it sat. Alas, for reasons that are lost, Richardson could not pay for his newly acquired brewery and the property was seized by Sheriff Charles Whitcher later that autumn. The site was once again put up for auction at Whitcher’s office in Sherbrooke on October 10, 1843 at which time it was purchased by G. Weston who then went on to sell “Lennoxville Beer” throughout the region for the next 15 years.
In 1858 Weston sold the brewery to George B. Capel, a native of Salisbury, England who had just immigrated to the Eastern Townships following a stint in India. Soon after acquiring the brewery Capel partnered with Robert Atto, a local farmer also from England, to run the business. In what must have been a great relief to the drinking public Capel and Atto ran an advertisement in Sherbrooke’s The Canadian Times newspaper that they would “spare no pains to keep up a constant supply of Good Ale and Beer” to the area. Capel, it should be noted, was a man of keen entrepreneurial spirit and less than a year after buying the brewery he also partnered with local soap manufacturer E. Moe and started selling soap directly from his brew house. Much more importantly, in 1863 Capel discovered copper on his farm south of Lennoxville and lost no time in developing what would become the Capelton Copper Mine. He was also instrumental in founding a number of other companies during this period including the Magog Petroleum Company in 1866 and the Dominion Gold Mining Company the following year before he sold his various businesses and returned to England in 1868.
It is not clear if Capel’s departure from Canada marked the end of the Lennoxville Brewery or not. The last mention of the brewery in any Sherbrooke area newspaper occurred in the summer of 1859, long before Capel returned to England. The Coaticook Historical Society, however, has suggested that the brewery was in business until sometime around 1875. This is supported somewhat by a record of a Thomas Guinan working as a barber at the “old brewery” in Lennoxville in 1876. It would certainly seem that the brew house was closed by then, but that the reference to the former establishment was still recent enough to be meaningful. Regardless, whenever its closure occurred it did not appear to be a newsworthy event which is a pity given how important the enterprise likely was to the earliest inhabitants of Lennoxville. Slàinte Mhath.
