Canadian Breweries

Canadian Breweries Limited

Industry	Brewing
Founded	1930 (as the Brewing Corporation of Ontario)
Successor	Renamed Carling O'Keefe in 1973
Headquarters	O'Keefe Building, 297 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario

Canadian Breweries Limited (CBL), originally the Brewing Corporation of Ontario, was an Ontario-based holding company in the brewing industry. The company was founded in 1930 by a merger of two breweries, Brading of Ottawa and Kuntz of Kitchener-Waterloo. Under the direction of its top executive, E. P. Taylor, the company bought or merged many of the smaller competitors existing after the repeal of prohibition. The new company closed many plants, reduced the number of beer brands and built new, larger plants to produce enough beer for a much larger geographic area. By the 1950s, the company had reduced the number of beer brands from approximately one hundred to six. Canadian Breweries became part of a large conglomerate of manufacturing and consumer businesses controlled by the Argus Corporation in 1945.

Canadian Breweries was one of the "Big Three" Canadian brewers (along with Labatt and Molson) that dominated the Canadian beer market for many years. In 1969, Canadian Breweries was acquired by a subsidiary of Rothmans, which renamed the company as Carling O'Keefe in 1973.^[1] After some changes of ownership, the company merged with Molson, which later merged with Coors to form the Molson Coors Beverage Company in 2005. Molson Coors continues to produce Carling brand beers, including Carling Black Label and Old Vienna. Another brand, Red Cap, based on Carling Red Cap, is brewed by the Waterloo Brewing Company.