Simple pleasures – we all have them. One of mine is walking around looking at old buildings. In Northern Ontario, they stand out to me like vestiges of more prosperous times; a time when American and European industrialists flocked to this region to exploit seemingly endless tracts of timber, or to break ground on a new mining venture.
One of my favourite buildings is the old St. Mary’s paper mill here in the Soo, an amazing Victorian-era relic built with stone that was dredged during the construction of the locks on the St. Mary’s River, and fortunately spared the wrecking ball after the mill’s closure.
Not long ago, while visiting Thunder Bay, I drove down Simpson Street, a depressed part of town that you learned as a kid to stay away from. On my recent visit, though, I marveled at the old brick buildings that line the street and would have likely housed the economic heartbeat of Fort William – 60 to 100 years ago; it really was like stepping back in time.
Another reason I enjoy these old buildings is because they endure over time; there was a certain amount of disappearing craftsmanship that went into their design and construction; they were anything but prefabricated and they stood as symbols of the promise this region once offered to those in search of new economic opportunities.
I think this very same allure is present to some degree in today’s craft beer industry; it’s that sense we get when we’re enjoying a hand-crafted pint of beer, that we’re also engaging in a more artisanal time, when local economy thrived and we knew where our goods came from. Sure, in some cases ‘craft beer’ is just a marketing ploy; but, in other cases it exists as a shining antithesis to all of the globalized streamlining and degradation of quality and ceaseless commercialization of crap that tends to pervade our lives.
Lake of the Woods Brewing Company. Photo provided. One place in Northern Ontario where the historic, artisan spirit is alive and well is the Lake of the Woods Brewing Company in Kenora. It’s an easy place to bypass if you’re heading west and eager to get to Brandon, Manitoba, but it’s worth the stop.
I myself have only been there once, this past summer; my cousin and I stopped for lunch and had a fantastic meal with fantastic beer on a street-side patio on a sunny day in July, all amid throngs of tourists enjoying Kenora’s laid-back culture while pumping money into the local economy.
But the experience has stuck with me for reasons beyond the food and beer. Lake of the Woods Brewing Company is housed in a fire hall built in 1912. From the by-law designating the building as a heritage property in 2008, the former fire hall is described as the oldest municipal building in Kenora, with industrial Romanesque architecture and “Tyndall stone lintels, copings, sills, keystone and quoins,” for those of you with a propensity for the masonic.
What also greatly interests me is that the building was essentially rescued by a local businessman, Taras Menzie, in 2011 after the building was declared surplus by the city, the fire department having been moved to a new, modern station.
Menzie obviously, and correctly, saw an economic opportunity in the old fire hall because he invested over $2 million to retrofit the building and started a very successful craft brewery that’s now a must-visit attraction if you find yourself in Kenora.
It makes me wonder what other opportunities like this exist in our region. I feel that all too often we’re quick to point out the costs of maintaining these heritage properties in Northern Ontario, favouring instead to bulldoze our historic legacies to make room for parking or another Tim Hortons.
I think there’s a lot of potential value in our regional economy to be derived from maintaining and showcasing our old buildings because they’re appealing to today’s youth, as well as the affluent; a potential means to draw people into our communities, particularly when they house breweries serving up delicious beer!
In some ways, the old ways are becoming the new ways. Anyways…
Until next week!
Jason McLellan is a self-professed beer geek. He wants the world to know he's damn proud of his Northern Ontario roots, even though he couldn't catch a fish if one jumped in the boat. His columns run Wednesdays at 12:00 p.m. Find him on Facebook: Jason McLellan with the Beer Up North banner.
