Site History & Industrial Legacy

A Legacy of
Industrial Activity

The Brewery-Rail Lands represent a significant part of Calgary’s early history, forming an important component in the early development of the city’s industrial and economic sector. Since the establishment of Calgary and the East Calgary/Brewery Flats (Inglewood) community, properties within the Brewery-Rail Lands have been dominated by industrial uses and structures and are defined by the adjacent active railway corridor.

Locomotive hauling tank cars for Calgary Brewing & Malting Company, 1902-05 (Glenbow Archives)

The Influence of Rail Transportation

The Canadian Dominion Lands Act of 1872, the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and vigorous promotional campaigns brought an influx of settlers to Alberta from eastern Canada, the United States and Europe in the province’s formative years.

The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was formed with the purpose to physically unite Canada and Canadians from coast to coast, with key railway linkages forming the framework of Canada’s founding provinces in 1867.

In addition to establishing Calgary’s first rail connection to the east and west coasts of the country, the CPR was a major landowner and developer within Calgary, as well as a promoter of vast blocks of agricultural land it owned in the surrounding region. With its farming community and railway connections in place, it was not long before Calgary became a main shipping center with early commercial and industrial ventures taking hold in close proximity to the rail corridor.

A Rich Industrial Legacy

As the center of Calgary grew and prospered around the CPR train station, local settlement nearby at Fort Calgary and the East Calgary community continued in a different form and the historic front door of Brewery-Rail Lands became home to several industrial operations that grew central to Calgary’s economy.

Locomotive passing Calgary Brewing & Malting Company (Glenbow Archives)

Incorporated in 1892 and with property fronting onto the CPR rail line purchased from Calgary’s major landowners, Colonel James Walker and William Pearce, the Calgary Brewing & Malting Company was one of the early industries to take hold, ideally situated adjacent to the convenience of rail transport and an optimal source of water from the nearby Bow River. The venture quickly began operations and production by 1893 however was very soon re-configured and expanded in 1905 to improve on production quality and quantity. This was to be the first of many of such economic cycles and physical transformations the brewery would experience until its last major expansion by Molson Breweries in 1984 and closure in 1994.

Similar development of the land immediately west of the brewery quickly followed suit in the early 1900’s and Brewery-Rail Lands became home to several other prominent industrial uses, including a large flour and feed mill complex, a variety of ironworks, foundries, and machine shops.

From left to right: Calgary Brewing & Malting Company, Western Milling Company, Alberta Iron Works (Glenbow Archives)

More than 100 years later, the industrial operations associated with the Inglewood/Ramsay neighbourhoods have since been decommissioned and their physical presence substantially now diminished or completely eliminated with only the former brewery structures from its last expansion period being the few that remain.

Redevelopment of Brewery-Rail Lands for Calgary’s future growth in a new century provides an opportunity to recognize the significance of rail to the community’s history by creating a positive urban interface with this transportation corridor, which continues to form the character of the Comprehensive Planning Area to this day and celebrates the traditional role of industrial operations within the urban fabric of the adjacent Inglewood’s community.

Brewery Flats neighbourhood, 1920 (Glenbow Archives)

Preservation Design Strategy

Today the brewery site consists of twenty-one structures representing different times and phases of its various expansion eras. When the factory operations ceased in the 1990s, a caveat on the property restricting future use as a brewery resulted in the removal and disposal of the equipment where possible, and much of the factory now consists of unusable empty spaces. With over a century of operational and evolutionary history, the significant alterations and expansions of the interconnected structures at its central core have resulted in complex spatial relationships and structurally compromised buildings, many unsuitable and unsafe for current public use.

Historic Resources Impact Assessments

The former Calgary Brewing & Malting Company site has undergone two significant Historic Resources Impact Assessments (HRIAs) since the Molson closure in 1994. An initial HRIA was completed for Molson’s by Ken Hutchinson Architect in 1997 at the time the property was for sale and, although the background research was extensive, it was incomplete in many areas. In 2009, an application for demolition by the current ownership for a portion of the brewery suffering from structural deterioration, resulted in a second, more extensive HRIA by Simpson Roberts Architecture Interior Design. This work built upon the research in the 1997 assessment but provides a more complete overview with an expanded historical narrative, detailed photographic documentation and building condition assessments and a required conceptual redevelopment plan that chose to address the full extent of the assembled lands now comprising the Comprehensive Planning Area. The expanded 2012 historical narrative also provides for a graphic historic chronology from which the primary significance of the overall site and the extant historic fabric is determined.

Based on the findings and conclusions of the 2012 HRIA, a Covenant Agreement was formed under the Alberta Historical Resources Act in 2019, allowing protection of the site’s four most iconic and intact historic structures including:

Administration Building (1907)
Engine Room (1913)
Boiler Building & Smokestack (1905)

Until a formal redevelopment plan for the Brewery-Rail Lands application site is established, this Covenant ensures that these elements are maintained in their current physical condition until 2029 and prevents demolition and any alterations that would materially affect these buildings’ exteriors.

The extensive planning and site evaluation work associated with the 2012 HRIA provides the foundation and heritage context for the current Brewery-Rail Lands proposal, the preservation of its most intact historical structures with the creation of an historical precinct, and will continue to inform the comprehensive planning process and feasibility of future adaptive reuse and/or removal of on-site structures.

In the context of the larger Comprehensive Planning Area for Brewery-Rail Lands, a supporting design strategy serves to balance the area’s long-term redevelopment potential with heritage value and viability interpreted through the lens of key brewery structures and spaces and re-establishing a positive interface with the rail corridor. The comprehensive redevelopment vision for the future of Brewery-Rail Lands seeks to acknowledge the contribution and importance of this heritage, as well as the legacy and importance of other industrial entrepreneurs who contributed to the area’s culture, all while maintaining a strong industrial character in an authentic, contemporary urban form. The comprehensive redevelopment of Brewery-Rail Lands proposes a gradual shift from current industrial uses to a vibrant mix of residential, commercial/retail, office and light industrial.

Métis cabin restored at Fort Calgary, 2018

Métis Cabin Restoration

Adding to the already-rich history of the area and linking back to Calgary’s early origins and the contributions of its indigenous community, an historic Métis cabin (originally built as part of the NWMP Fort Calgary/Hudson Bay trading post) was re-located to the Calgary Brewing & Malting Company in the 1930’s with the establishment of the first Alberta Fish Hatchery and the creation of fish ponds as part of a grand landscaping plan for the brewery grounds. The 1875 historic Métis cabin remained on the brewery lands for over 80 years, after which it was repatriated to Fort Calgary near its original location (as recommended in the 2012 HRIA) and refurbished by the Mathison Family Foundation in 2018 as part of Fort Calgary’s Deane House and Hunt House site restoration and historical interpretative program.

Industrial Heritage Precinct

The principal recommendations of the 2012 HRIA study were to create a “historic precinct” containing the oldest brewery buildings in the south portion of the site, to acknowledge the cultural importance of the brewery to the local community, and to incorporate references to the fish hatchery and other historic industrial elements within the site’s redevelopment. This new publicly-accessible private open space will be accessible from Rail Trail Park, a proposed linear parkway, as well as from 14A Street SE, proposed to extend directly to the Industrial Heritage Precinct.