Celestin 'Whiskey' Thomas Middlechurch Brewery

Historical settler brewery. Manitoba Historical Society documents Celestin Thomas beginning brewing in 1859 and opening a larger brewery on a Middlechurch river lot in 1862, recognized in later sources as the 'first brewery in the West.' This earlier Middlechurch operation is kept separate from the Winnipeg Brewery Thomas established at Colony Creek in 1873.

A summary written during research. The sourced facts are in the sections below.

1. 1859
   A log cabin at St. Paul

   Celestin Thomas, "born in Frémonville, France, began brewing in 1859 at his log cabin in St. Paul settlement" (Manitoba History no. 74); the MHS biography has him born at Biamont, Lorraine, on 29 March 1837, and farming "between Middlechurch and West Kildonan" after New Orleans, St. Paul (Minnesota) and Sturgeon Creek. His nickname came from importing beer and whisky from the United States.

2. 1862
   The first brewery outside the Company

   "in 1862, he established what is believed to be the first brewery in the region, outside the Hudson's Bay Company" (Memorable Manitobans); the older article has "a 'primitive brewery ... in the neighbourhood of Middlechurch' sometime between 1860 and 1862". Both kept.

3. 1873
   To Colony Creek — the Winnipeg Brewery

   "later moving to a location on the banks of Colony Creek where he built the Winnipeg Brewery in 1873, before the city had been granted its charter" — at Dingman's Crossing, "the southeast corner of Broadway Avenue and Colony Street", the site that brewed for ninety years more. Thomas died at 509 Ritchot Street, St. Boniface, on 27 January 1927.