Last Canadian Beer: The Moosehead Story

By Harvey Sawler

A look at the history of a family beer business and how they’ve managed to maintain strength in an increasingly competitive industry.

Featuring important insights from the company’s current executives and employees, Last Canadian Beer: The Moosehead Story is not only a fascinating company history, but also a candid look at how a small New Brunswick business remains competitive in a difficult global marketplace. While other Canadian beer brands long ago sold out to American and European interests, Moosehead has remained fiercely independent.

Last Canadian Beer is the remarkable story of a time-honored business, a complex family, and a beloved beer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 19, 2009
• ISBN: 9781551098227

Book preview

Last Canadian Beer

The Moosehead Story

HARVEY SAWLER

978-1-55109-822-7_0001_001

Copyright © Harvey Sawler 2009

E-book © 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

Nimbus Publishing Limited

PO Box 9166, Halifax, NS B3K 5M8

[phone] www.nimbus.ca

Printed and bound in Canada

Author photo: Stephen MacGillivray

Oland family and Moosehead historical photos courtesy of Jennifer Paterson and Moosehead Breweries Limited

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

       Sawler, Harvey, 1954-

       Last Canadian beer : the Moosehead story / Harvey Sawler.

       ISBN-13: 978-1-55109-691-9 (bound)

       ISBN-13: 978-1-55109-738-1 (pbk.)

       ISBN-978-1-55109-822-7 (e-book)

1. Moosehead Breweries—History. 2. Oland family. 3. Beer industry—

Canada—History. 4. Brewing industry—Canada—History. I. Title.

HD9397.C24M66 2008    338.7’663420971    C2008-905679-5

978-1-55109-822-7_0001_0011

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Canada Council, and of the Province of Nova Scotia through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage for our publishing activities.

For Charlotte Stewart

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I – Perseverance

A New Country

A Timely Windfall

The Explosion and Aftermath

Sibling Rivalries

The Dream My Father Had

Riding the Tiger

New Blood

Part II – Independence

Collegiality and Competition

The Underdog

Reputation and Loyalty

Image

The Brewery America Built

Part III – Inheritance

Keepers of the Trust

Succession

The Royal Jelly

Appendices

Acknowledgements

Preface

What goes around, comes around. In July of 1980, while working in the public relations department at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, I was assigned to drive Philip Oland and his wife, Mary, from their hotel to a string of events. The couple was in town for the national meetings of the centre’s board of directors, the Fathers of Confederation Buildings Trust, of which Philip was a long-time member. I was only twenty-six years old, and the Olands had entered their seventies, but the distinguished fourth-generation businessman and his wife treated me with the utmost regard. He was reserved, cordial, and interested in my career. She was the more lighthearted of the two, smiling constantly as I recall. Amid the highbrow and old-money attitude associated with some of the members of the trust, I found the Olands’ considerations to be un–common and refreshing. That they treated me as an equal has never left my memory.

Twenty-eight years later, fate had it that I began research on the story of Moosehead Breweries Limited and the Oland family. As I started the project, the ink was barely dry on my book about the business dynasty of another Canadian family, the Irvings, the third-richest family in Canada and 129th on the 2007 Forbes billionaires list. Writing that book, Twenty-First Century Irvings, was partly an exercise in refereeing those who are for the Irvings and those who are against them. They are an extremely controversial family (frequently referred to as the Irving empire) that always evokes strong emotions, especially from those who resent them the most: anti-capitalists, environmentalists, and those who generally feel hard done by. When a friend placed a copy of the Irving book in front of a teenaged bookstore cashier, the friend was abruptly asked, without provocation or solicitation, So are you for or against the Irvings? Such attitudes are engrained in the Maritime culture.

As I began my research and examined the Olands and the story of Moosehead, the public’s widely differing perspectives on the two families became very striking. Everyone, it turns out, seems to like the Olands. As a journalist and writer intent on fairness and balance, the oft-repeated, unending platitudes toward the present-day family members concerned me. Was this a story of some legitimate value, or would it descend into a gushy tribute book? Given that both the Irvings and the Olands are based in New Brunswick (even though the Olands have deeper roots in Nova Scotia), and that both families own multi-generational family businesses, the contrast between the two families is noteworthy. From the public’s point of view, it was as though I’d gone from writing about the devilish Irvings to writing about the Oland angels. (Moosehead chair Derek Oland spoke to me about the Moosehead brand having a halo in the minds of many consumers.) Of course, the Olands are not angels; they’re just ordinary people with reasonably good qualities and normal foibles. And likewise, the Irvings aren’t devils; they’re just frequently perceived negatively.

A key difference between the two families is that the Olands were prepared to talk to me. They are naturally open and forthcoming people, while the Irvings are naturally cautious and secretive. After more than a year of trying, only J. K. Irving, the eldest son of famed Canadian industrialist K. C. Irving, finally agreed to cooper–ate in the development of Twenty-First Century Irvings. In contrast, getting to know the Olands was effortless. Every member of the Oland family, as well as those within their company, made him or herself accessible to me without the slightest hesitation. Access is important, since it allows the subjects to say their piece, to tell their version of the story.

When we began our first interview, Derek Oland said point-blank that he did not want to be involved in a puff piece. He has lived up to that statement in every respect; everything worth asking was open to discussion and answers. Sixty-six-year-old company CEO Bruce McCubbin, the first non-Oland to run the business, was initially a reticent interviewee who also made it clear that he did not want to be interviewed unless the book had a purpose, such as providing a message of value for other business people. The reader will be the judge of that, but after a couple of questions, McCubbin settled in and seemed to appreciate, if not enjoy, the building line of inquiry. It was as though his first tendency, an exhibit of the mutual trust he and the Olands share, was to protect the family.

This book admittedly shows the Olands and Moosehead in a positive light, because frankly, that is the way the world sees both the family and the company. Maybe it has something to do with the business they’ve chosen to be in. The Irvings’ oil and forestry businesses invite controversy—environmental concerns, industrialization, and the perception of them pillaging the land—while the Olands’ beer company is all about social interaction, conviviality, and the sharing of happy times.

This project was not begun to record the family history of the Olands. Rather, it was to understand how a small, independent New Brunswick brewery endures in the face of multinational corporations and how it might survive the future in a competitive industry where a single digit change in market share can have serious consequences. However, following the family’s history became unavoidable, for Moosehead’s endurance is very much a by-product of the Oland family’s story—their hardships, their pluck, their multi-generational association with the military, their unending dedication to beer-making, their reputation, and their keen sense of independence.

The New Brunswick Olands and Moosehead Breweries are also known for many firsts: among other things, the first brewery to introduce a long neck bottle into the Maritime market and the first brewery to sell a cone-top beer can in Canada. They might also be the first (and perhaps only) family in Canada to have beer depicted in their official heraldic crest. Much more than being about the merits of these firsts, however, this book is concerned with the merits of being last—the last family to independently own a Canadian brewery of any scale. Of the approximately 140 in–dependent breweries in Canada when the company began in 1867— coincidentally almost at the very moment Canada was born—only Oland-owned Moosehead remains.

But one question remains: how long can New Brunswick’s family-owned Moosehead Breweries continue to succeed in such a fiercely competitive business world?

Introduction

"I don’t want to be the biggest.

I just want to be around the longest."

– Derek Oland, executive chair,

Moosehead Breweries

Along with his family and his business, there is also a special place in Derek Oland’s heart and mind: a seaside woodlot at New River Beach on the New Brunswick side of the Bay of Fundy. The thirty-two-acre site is the one refuge where Derek works alone, cutting and harvesting logs, reliant upon no one and in need of nothing other than his gumption and the machines he loves to tinker with and operate. This is as close as Derek will ever get to his original dream of being a farmer. I think the mechanical aspect is the sort of farming stuff that I just love, he says. I love to work in the business world, but I get a great deal of satisfaction from being out there cutting and loading a load of logs. The woodlot is his true sanctuary, his respite, his hideaway from the responsibilities at one of New Brunswick’s most important companies.

A visit to the woodlot provides evidence that in addition to white shirts and well-fitted suits, there are also plaid jackets and forest-green overalls to be found in Derek’s wardrobe. This diversity in apparel—from white to blue collar—places him somewhere between corporate executive and woodsman, although as a magazine article once stated, with his tidy, short-cropped beard and glasses, he looks more like a high school history teacher. In his executive workaday world, everything is reliant upon meetings and collab–oration. Here on the woodlot, it is just Derek and nature and its elements. Time spent here makes him feel free and self-sufficient, a metaphor for the multi-generational trait of independence that has spurred on his family’s enduring entrepreneurship. Placing the logs he has harvested on his household fire is gratifying, but the deeper sensation of independence comes through the act of being able to disappear into this secluded world of mixed forest, white-tailed deer, and fresh air. Thirty minutes away, in Saint John, Derek has a typical executive office where for years he’s kept alive the tradition of family enterprise handed him by his father Philip (P. W.) and three previous generations.

Derek has been working both the family business and the Fundy woodlot with care for years. For the sake of his family and the business, he has been cutting a path toward corporate succession based on advice from qualified professionals, informing forty-two-year-old son Andrew in November of 2007 that he was to become company president the following April, thereby ensuring that at least six generations of Olands would be directly inside the brewery business. (Derek’s other son Patrick is now also on the corporate team as assistant controller.) Putting his sons in those positions was undertaken with deliberation and according to plan. Derek is so well-informed now about the emerging science of family busi–ness succession that he has become something of an authority on the matter and has even spoken publicly about it. On the woodlot, meanwhile, he cuts a different but parallel path by gradually removing the balsam firs that are close to the end of their lives and by carving an all-weather road through the centre of the property to allow for year-round access and harvesting. As with the business of succession, this is no random exercise: Derek is following a woodlot management plan developed by a professional, qualified forester.

Following that plan—and with the rural British and Nova Scotia blood that flows through his veins dictating that he can–not toss aside anything of value—Derek sells the pulp and stud wood he doesn’t use for his household to J. D. Irving Limited through the York-Sunbury, Charlotte County Woodlot Owners’ Association. He’s fully conversant about the fact that the stud wood selection has to be a minimum of five inches in diameter at the top and one hundred inches long to make decent-grade two-by-fours. He makes his hobby sound so soulful, enriching, and simple, that but for the hard and dirty parts and the sinking thigh-deep into snow with every step, you wish you could be in his boots. It is very relaxing and satisfying to be able to go to the woods and get trees down safely and to be able to use the wood for productive uses. I’ve recently moved from doing this by ATV and a semi-manual log trailer to using a four-wheel drive tractor with a Métavic Wheeler hydraulic log trailer. (This is all Greek to a city boy from Ontario, but part of the mechanical vernacular for the most senior Oland.)

Like anyone with a home workbench or a garage with pegboard walls full of tools, a lover of machines has to have a proper place for them. On the fringe of the woodlot, Oland had a permanent garage built to house his prized equipment. His four sons call this his Toy Box, a good-sized modern shed with enough room for his tractor and log trailer, wood chipper, log splitter, and other lumberman’s gear. Inside, there’s a small cordoned-off room with a lightweight, deck-style recliner chair, a radio, and a small, three-selection novelty Moosehead beer vending fridge which, at the push of a button, dispenses cans of Moosehead Lager, Moosehead Light, or Alpine Lager. This verifies that the Toy Box is more than just a place to store machinery; it’s an excuse for enjoying local camaraderie. On most Saturday mornings, I am joined there by some like-minded friends who help and afterwards enjoy a beer, admits Derek. When most people say they’re sitting down to enjoy a beer, it’s all well and good. But when you’re an Oland, enjoying a beer is ritualistic: the experience is tied to your very being.

Derek’s effort to improve the woodlot reflects one of his personal mantras: when he hands over his company, he wants to hand it off in better shape than when he received it. In the annals of Canadian business, the opportunity to improve and pass on a 140-year-old company is an extremely rare privilege. But he and his sons are all descended from the woman credited with holding the original family business together through a succession of trials and tribulations: Derek’s great-great-grandmother Susannah Culverwell Oland. The family matriarch was born in England in 1818 and emigrated to what would eventually become Canada with her husband, John James Dunn Oland. Husband John had a hand in the business, but it was essentially Susannah who started the brewing company which, throughout the Maritimes today, remains as readily associated with the name Oland as grocery stores are with the name Sobey, chocolates are with Ganong, and gas stations are with Irving. My great-great grandmother was a very shrewd businesswoman, Derek believes. She was well ahead of her time and managed to, while she was living, endow the Oland family with a great brewing tradition.

Susannah was part of the first group of laureates named to the Junior Achievement Nova Scotia Business Hall of Fame in 1993, alongside the likes of grocery magnate Frank Sobey and Blueberry King John Bragg. She, much more so than her husband, is every Oland’s common denominator. It is Susannah who today’s Olands refer to with the most pride when they reflect upon their family legacy. Interestingly, she stands alone as the only female family member ever to be involved directly in the company. She is the genetic and motivational ground zero for the men who’ve been fit enough to carry her legacy.

There was a time when men who sold beer commonly had substantial girth; it was a defining stereotype of the industry. But Derek Oland runs three to four times a week for thirty-plus minutes at a time regardless of whether he’s at home or on the road. He looks lean, healthy, and much younger than someone approaching his seventies. He sets a good example for