To The Land of the Rising Sun ...

Now prohibition in Canada was repealed a year after it was instated but it left the control boards in each province governing the breweries with a heavy hand.

Henry Reifel wasn't pleased with this turn of events so the family decided to close its Canadian businesses for a little while. The elder Reifel travelled by steamship to Japan with his oldest son, George C., to set up a  brewery business there.

George had recently married a young woman three years his junior by the name of Alma Lucy Barnes from Nanaimo. George and Lucy were married in St. Paul's Anglican church in Vancouver on October 23, 1916. (Here's an entry I wrote on that church, complete with photos.)

Henry and George C. brought a lot of brewing equipment with them to Japan and while in the 'Land of the Rising Sun'; they developed the technique of producing malt from rice and created the Anglo-Japanese Brewing Company. Now that the Japanese brewery was successful, the Reifels sold their interest and moved back to Vancouver.

In 1924, Henry acquired the B.C. Distillery of British Columbia and later the Pioneer Distillery at Amherstburg, Ontario. These two companies were then amalgamated into the Brewers and Distillers Corporation.

Henry remained president of the corporation until his retirement in 1933. After his retirement, the family sold off their brewery and distillery interests. It was also in 1933 that Henry's brother Conrad died. Conrad had managed the Island part of the family business.

On May 22, 1936, Henry's wife, Annie Elizabeth, died at the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster.   

Once again, I am getting this information from a Reifel genealogical website. Friday, I will tell you more about this family.

I hope you find the beauty around you.

Henry Reifel

When I first started to talk about prohibition in Vancouver, I mentioned the Reifel family. Today I am going to tell you a bit more about that family.

Heinrich "Henry" Reifel was born in Speyer, Bavaria, Germany in 1869. At the age of 10, he was engaged in the brewery business in Speyer. In 1886, at the age of 17, Henry and two of his brothers - Jack and Conrad Reifel - immigrated to America.

Immediately, Henry found employment at the Weinhardt Brewery in Portland, Oregon. A year later, he moved to the Chicago Brewery in San Francisco. In 1888, Henry and his brother Jack moved to British Columbia and started a small operation in Brewery Creek (Vancouver) located near 16th and Main. Unfortunately, that operation failed and Jack returned to the US while Henry went to Victoria.

Henry worked for the Victoria Breweries for a while before moving to Nanaimo and working for the Lansdowne Brewery. This operation was owned by a British man by the name of Cawthorne. Reifel left the Lansdowne Brewery to go to work for the Nanaimo Brewery. In 1891, the two breweries merged and Henry became brewmaster and manager. His brother Conrad assisted Henry with these duties.

In 1893, Henry met a young woman from Barkerville. Annie Elizabeth Brown was born May 7, 1873 in San Francisco, California. She and Henry fell in love and married.

Henry and Elizabeth had three children. The first was a boy named George Conrad Reifel, born on May 15, 1892 in Nanaimo. At the age of 16, George was sent to brewing school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Once young George completed his schooling, he went to work for a Victoria Brewery.  The second child, also born in Nanaimo, was Henry Frederick "Harry" Reifel. Harry was born December 3, 1895 and he also went into the family business. The third child was a daughter named Florence. I don't have a birth date for her.

In 1908, along with some associates, Henry Reifel built the Canadian Brewing and Malting Company. Later that company merged with Pilsner Brewing of Cumberland, the Nanaimo plant and the old Vancouver Breweries. This new company operated under the name of Vancouver Breweries.

Now the Reifel family owned three breweries, all quite successful. Vancouver Breweries was later sold to the eastern Canadian brewing company, Carling O'Keefe.

Then World War I started. Canadian men were off fighting overseas and the women were left at home. Many of these women were temperance advocates and a major voting constituency in Canada.  By 1917, they had managed to convince the politicians to bring in prohibition legislature.

I am getting this information from a Tripod website with information on the Reifel family. I will tell you more on Wednesday.

I hope you find the beauty around you.