When Prohibition was declared in Alberta in 1916, breweries like the one operated by the Strathcona Brewing and Malting Company were suddenly out of business. The brick building, which had been constructed some nine years earlier, was located at 10542 Fort Hill, on the site of an 1894 brewing venture started by a German immigrant named Robert Ochsner.

It remained abandoned for the next seven years, quickly getting taken over by the undergrowth on the south bank of the river valley in todays Queen Elizabeth Park and becoming a popular derelict playground for area children. In 1923, with rumours that the Alberta government was going to ask citizens if they wanted prohibition repealed, there was suddenly new interest in the forsaken place.

Edmonton real estate agent and insurance broker Henri Milton Martin and W.L. Wilkin, founder and president of Wilkin Investments, submitted an option to buy the property to the Bank of Montreal, which had controlled the assets since 1917. They then organized a syndicate of 25 friends to come up with the $25,000, just in case.

They waited for the vote and, on November 23rd, 1923, the citizens of Alberta voted to end Prohibition. Martin and Wilkin figured they were sitting on a valuable asset and so they waited for offers and waited. But nobody seemed to want to make money making beer and so, by the following summer, they realized they were going to have to do it themselves.

They incorporated the Northwest Brewing Company on August 5th, 1924 and the company set out to sell 3,000 shares at $100 apiece and resurrect the brewery. A history of the brewery, written by J.L. Weaver, general manager of the facility in the 1960s, notes that the bank extended a $25,000 line of credit the exact same amount that had been guaranteed personally the directors. So much for faith!

Contractor Sam Mortimer was hired to rehabilitate the building and in May 1925 hired Julius Kerber as brewmaster and president. Kerber had learned the art with Schlitz and Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Getting the hopeful venture up and running proved to be problematic. Most American states were still trying the Prohibition that Alberta had just abolished and no new brewing equipment was being manufactured. And so the brewery had to make do with machinery salvaged from the Strathcona Brewing and Malting Company operation and whatever second hand gear that could be found.

A contest was held to choose a design for the label and it was won by R.B. McKenzie, a provincial civil servant. He designed a bear a bruin to be precise and it quickly became a recognizable symbol of the company and its Bruin Beer brew. In all, it took 15 months for the first bottle of beer to actually roll out of the plant and it went on sale November 26th, 1925.

Three years later, the company introduced its Bohemian Maid brand and, on the surface, the venture appeared to be doing well. But, given the aging equipment, ingenuity and binder twine was needed to keep it together. Even when the economy collapsed in October 1929 and prohibitionists launched a campaign the following year to close the beer parlours again, the little brewery in the trees of the river valley continued perking along.

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here were efforts over the years to close it down because who ever heard of a brewery in the middle of a city park? Whoever heard of a brewery with no railway connection? Whoever heard of a brewery overlooking a cliff?

Weaver wrote that, despite the odds, the brewery survived and was like a club. Anybody could come in, knock the cap off a bottle and drink to health of the Northwest Brewing Company. Jimmy Smith, the unofficial mayor of the South Side, used to lease his trucks to brewery, and often enjoyed the hospitality of the house.

Characters of the time included Brewery Bill, a jack-of-all-trades Polish-German gentlemen who was renowned for sampling the product as it came off the assembly line. Even in his off- duty hours, he kept up a steady sampling of brewery products, Weaver recalls. So much so that he used to get his letters addressed to Brewery Bill, Room 9, Strathcona Hotel.

The Board of Northwest had some of Edmontons prominent businessmen of the early 20th century. They included G.R.F. Kirkpatrick, who set up the Imperial Bank, Edmontons first, in 1891, Abraham Cristall, the citys first Jewish businessman and Cecil Sutherland, president of the Johnstone Walker department store.

In 1945, the Second World War over at last, the company began spending for a long overdue modernization. In all, more than $1 million was invested in the plant.

Calgary Brewing gained control of the common stock in 1952 and, six years later, the directors decided to change the company name for its signature product, a favourite for more than 25 years. It became Bohemian Maid Brewing Company on June 1st, 1958.

By the mid 1960s, Bohemian Maid Brewery had expanded to a capacity of 150,000 barrels of beer a year, good for annual sales of more than $5 million. Its parent company, Carling OKeefe, operated the plant well into the 1970s. In recent years, the buildings at the top of the hill, fronting Saskatchewan Drive, were demolished. Just the lower building now survives and serves as the City of Edmontons Artifact Centre.

Time has moved on but the spring still runs underneath the old building. Every winter, the spring builds a foot or more of ice along one of the deep cellar walls. Its an enduring reminder that there was once a spring in the words where a man named Ochsner started an Edmonton brewing tradition.