The two World Wars did most of their damage to Canadian brewing indirectly, by closing it rather than by changing the recipe. In both conflicts the wartime instinct on every side was to send grain to the front, and beer is made from grain, so the governments that could reached for prohibition and brewing controls before they thought about rationing a pint. The story of brewing through the wars is therefore mostly a story of bans, near beer, breweries that pivoted and breweries that closed, ending in a postwar industry that was smaller and far more consolidated than the one that went into 1914.
What Wartime Control Actually Did To Brewing
- Wartime controls were about saving grain, because barley that could have been malted for beer was food, and bread and army rations outranked a working man's pint.
- The federal order in council of March 1918 stopped manufacture outright and capped imports at 2.5 percent, and it ran only until it expired in 1920.
- Surviving breweries pivoted to what stayed legal, including very low strength drinks, medicinal and sacramental sales and export markets, while the American border stayed open to smuggling.
- Wartime beer in Canada was controlled and shrinking rather than strong, and the strong wartime beer story fits the United States better than it fits Canada.
Grain First, Beer Second
The logic behind wartime beer controls was arithmetic. Barley that could have been malted for beer was food, and bread and army rations outranked a working man's pint. This is the same reasoning that drove alcohol limits rather than outright bans in both British and American wartime prohibition, where the aim was to cut the strength of beer and save the grain rather than pretend people would stop drinking. The mismatch is that a brewing industry is built on equipment sized for full-strength beer, so lowering the strength did not save a brewery, it just made the same plant make a cheaper product.
The First War Years
For Canada the clearest fact about the First World War years is how many breweries disappeared. Between 1878 and 1928, provincial and federal prohibition efforts closed nearly three-quarters of Canadian breweries, and the war years sit right in the middle of that collapse. British Columbia enacted provincial prohibition in 1917, and Ontario's Temperance Act, in force from 1916 to 1927, was restricting beer sales in the country's largest market through the final years of the war. Then the federal order in council, made in March 1918 and effective the first of April, stopped the manufacture of intoxicating drinks across the country, shut out imported beer above 2.5 percent, and forbade interprovincial trade in alcohol. Two years of that ran until it expired in 1920.
The breweries that got through those years did it by making what was still legal. Very low strength drinks fell under the threshold that applied to imports, medicinal and sacramental sales remained lawful under the older Canada Temperance Act of 1878, and breweries with an export excuse kept operating, the way some Ontario wineries did while their neighbouring breweries shut. There was also a demand the order could not touch, because the American border was open to them. Breweries in the United States were unaffected, and there was smuggling on the border, rum-running out of Windsor, Ontario, while the interprovincial trade the ban was meant to stop went on in defiance of it.
The Second War And The Quiet Decades
The Second World War tightened rationing and control again, and by then the industry had already been through a generation of prohibition. What the war years did not do was create a special Canadian strong-beer boom that anyone has documented as clearly as the stories Americans tell. If you have read that soldiers demanded extra-strong wartime beer, be cautious about the Canadian version of that claim, because the national prohibition that would have made it true in Canada had only just ended in 1920 and the country spent the two war decades buying its beer through provincial boards rather than fighting over its strength. The honest account is that wartime Canada brewing was a controlled and shrinking industry, not a booming one.
Which Breweries Survived
The survival story is really a consolidation story, and the names that come out of it are the big regional labels you recognize. Between 1878 and 1928, prohibition closed nearly three-quarters of Canadian breweries, and after prohibition ended the provincial liquor boards tightly controlled distribution, which favoured the breweries large enough to supply a regulated market. By the 1960s three companies dominated Canadian brewing, Canadian Breweries, Molson and Labatt, and they bought or merged dozens of smaller breweries, either moving their products to other plants or closing them outright. The old independent names, Alexander Keith in Halifax, Thomas Carling in London, John Kinder Labatt in London and Eugene O'Keefe in Toronto, all trace back to the nineteenth century and all ended up folded into that consolidation rather than surviving as themselves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did beer get stronger during the World Wars?
The opposite, where governments intervened at all. Wartime controls in both conflicts were about saving grain, so where beer was allowed at all it was usually allowed at a reduced strength, with a cap rather than a floor. The American idea of a stronger wartime beer for the troops is better documented in the United States than in Canada, and in Canada the years that would have hosted it were the years the national ban closed the breweries. Treat the strong wartime beer as a story you are more likely to have met in an American than a Canadian brewery history.
How did breweries survive wartime prohibition?
The ones that survived pivoted to whatever remained legal. Very low strength drinks below the threshold applied to imports were the main route, medicinal and sacramental sales stayed lawful under the older Canada Temperance Act, and breweries that had an export market could argue they were serving it, as some Ontario wineries did while the breweries around them closed. Smuggled alcohol from the United States also kept demand alive across the border. Businesses without one of these routes did not survive, which is why the independent brewery count fell so sharply across the prohibition years.
What happened to small breweries after the wars?
Most of them were bought out. Once prohibition ended, provincial liquor boards controlled distribution, and that made the large regional breweries the natural suppliers. By the 1960s three companies, Canadian Breweries, Molson and Labatt, had absorbed dozens of smaller breweries, moving their products or closing them. The independent names that had run for a century became either brands within those three or nothing at all, and the long tail of small Canadian breweries that existed in 1900 was almost entirely gone by 1970.
What The Craft Movement Inherited
The craft movement inherited a market the wars had already shaped, which is why the story matters now. Prohibition and wartime control closed most of Canada's small breweries, and the consolidation that followed left a market dominated by a few national labels with a very narrow idea of what beer could be. When small Canadian breweries started to reappear, they were filling a gap that had been empty for half a century, and the beer they made, the pale ale and the lager and the cream ale, was in some cases closer to what had been brewed here before 1920 than to what the dominant labels were selling. The long quiet between the wars is part of why there was so much room to rebuild.
