The Food Issue
2015
Grains
West
50
AGAINST
THE GRAIN
Photo: The Galt Museum & Archives
FRITZ SICK PROBABLY ISN’T A
household name, even among today’s
serious beer connoisseurs. But his legacy
to the brewing industry and the city of
Lethbridge, where he founded his empire,
lives on today.
Sick opened the Alberta Brewery (later
renamed the Lethbridge Brewing Com-
pany) in 1901. But it wasn’t a direct path
from his home in Freiburg, Germany,
where he was born in 1860. After immi-
grating to North America, he learned the
brewing trade in Ohio, California and
Washington, and tried establishing some
breweries in British Columbia before
moving to Lethbridge in 1900.
When he launched the business he
was really a one-man show, backed only
by about $8,000 in savings, his own two
hands and his skill. He was once quoted
as saying, “I built my own cooperage. I
was my own brewer, my own maltster,
my own salesman and o ce force. I
had one helper in the brewery and one
fellow on the outside, who drove a mule
team I used for carting deliveries to our
customers.”
His hard work and perseverance paid
o as sales and production at the Leth-
bridge plant boomed during the first 10
years, growing from 3,000 barrels of beer
a year to 100,000 barrels by 1912. The
first beer Sick brewed was a lager called
Alberta’s Pride, marketed as a “concen-
trated liquid food” to help maintain
strong digestive organs and encourage
appetite. Probably the most famous prod-
uct produced by the Lethbridge Brewing
Company was Lethbridge Pilsner, also
known as Old Style Pilsner, developed
in 1926, which is still brewed by Molson
Coors today.
Sick’s son Emil joined him in 1923
and together they expanded the compa-
ny—then known as Lethbridge Brew-
eries Limited—picking up breweries in
Regina, Prince Albert and Edmonton
as well as some U.S. operations. Over
their 50-year involvement in the brewing
industry, the Sick family operated nine
breweries and two hop farms, with five
plants in Western Canada and four in the
northwest U.S.
During Prohibition, Sick switched
production to produce a low-alcohol (1.2
per cent) “near beer.” The plant even
produced a soft drink line, which was
eventually sold to 7Up.
Sick retired in 1930 and Emil contin-
ued to operate the main business until it
was sold to Molson in 1989. The brewery
was closed and demolished in 1991, 90
years after it was built.
The legacy of the Sick family lives on
in Lethbridge. In 1943, Fritz Sick donated
$100,000 to the city of Lethbridge to
build a community centre and pool, and
the Fritz Sick Memorial Swimming Pool
continues to operate today. As well, in
1949, with the help of Dr. W.H. Fairfield
of the Dominion Experimental Farm,
the brewery established a flower and tree
garden on the grounds of Brewery Hill.
Fritz Sick died in Vancouver in 1945 at
the age of 85.
The
legacy
of Sick
Brewery
