Region & History

Canada's first brewery was built in Québec. In 1668, Intendant Jean Talon had the Brasserie du Roy set up in the capital of New France, a royal brewery meant to make the colony less dependent on imports from France. From the very beginning, brewing was part of building the country in Québec.

The story of the big names begins in 1786. That's when Englishman John Molson became sole owner of a brewery on the banks of the St. Lawrence River in Montréal, on what is now the Rue Notre-Dame. Molson is considered Canada's oldest brewery. According to tradition, he distributed barley seed to local farmers to ensure a reliable supply of raw materials.

In 2005, Molson merged with US company Coors to form Molson Coors, one of the world's major brewing conglomerates. The Montréal brewery itself closed in 2021 after more than 200 years. Even so, the Molson name still stands for the city's 19th- and 20th-century beer culture.

A second lineage began in 1993. In Chambly, southeast of Montréal on the Richelieu River, a merger created the Unibroue brewery, which drew inspiration from Belgian beers. In 2004 it bought Sleeman, and when Sapporo acquired Sleeman in 2006, Unibroue went with it to the Japanese conglomerate.

The third lineage is the microbreweries, small independent operations. Dieu du Ciel! opened as a brewpub on Avenue Laurier in Montréal in 1998. In 2002, Québec counted 33 such operations; current industry figures put the number at nearly 290. There's no dedicated protected designation of origin for beer, and no Canadian beer appears in the EU's register of beer origins.