Beautiful North Bay, known for the great outdoors, the gateway to the North, it’s fine military heritage, and beer. Beer? That’s right. At Cranky Old Men Drinking Beer we have reviewed over 1,000 different beers to date from all over the world, and some top notch ratings are for beers brewed in the near North Ontario town of North Bay. Two full-fledged breweries and a brew pub make for lots of local options when it comes to wetting your whistle in the Gateway to the North.
The new New Ontario Brewing Co. was originally located on Cassels when they opened in 2015.
But the old New Ontario Brewery was opened in 1907 and is part of North Bay’s earlier history. The brewery was located on the corner of Stanley and Regina Streets. It was only in business for 8 years until a fire destroyed the building.
As they grew they needed more room so they moved to their present location, just up the street from the Dysfunctional Mall (more on that later). With their move they created a great spot for events and gatherings, like the beer tasting event that Cranky Old Men hosted there a few years ago.
Once again New Ontario is new again, with a new name, Wildwoods Brewing. The name change is designed to make their product more accessible outside of Ontario.
We have reviewed many of their beers to date and they are well respected within the brewing industry. A guest reviewer on our website, “Dr. Tom”, ranked their “Big & Juicy” IPA highly, saying the description on the can of “big, bold and beautiful” reminded him “of an early love at college”. A few more of their high-ranking brews on our website include their Hades Stout (an Imperial Stout not for the faint of heart) and their Hopfen Muncher Vienna Lager, a classic Festbeer.
Gateway City Brewery opened in 2019 and from day one totally embraced North Bay’s heritage not only with their name but with their beer names as well. Back in the day if you drove into North Bay on the Trans Canada Highway from the South two of the first things you would see as you entered town would be the Bible Store and the strip club (Fannys) side by side. Tom Green did a feature on his show about that, calling it the Dysfunctional Mall, which just happens to be the name of one of Gateway’s beers. Their 11.17 is a reference to the crossing of the two highways. There’s Mackey House, St.Regis Hotel, and Stepping Stones to name a few of the many Gateway City beers we have reviewed to date. Their beer names are a local history lesson.
They have grown as well but their new facilities on Gormanville Road kept the great selection of pinball machines they have had from the start, which brings me back to our COM teen years, way way back in the day. We were no pinball wizards back then, but we scored quite a few replays in our day, and a couple of tilts as well.
At the first Cranky Old Men Drinking Beer AGM a Gateway brew got top marks out of 30 beers sampled. Their Alligator Woodchuck Triticale Amber was the highest-ranking beer of the event. Over the Falls Pilsner and Cairn Marker Mexican Amber provide more local history, and both rank highly with the Cranky Old Men.
Cecil’s is a well-known brew pub in downtown North Bay and the story of their namesake, Cecil Shamus Fitzgerald the bear wrestling brewer, is an interesting one. Legend has it he was a railroad hand and a bare fisted boxer who travelled the world. And his bear wrestling record was 47 wins and two losses. Urban legend or all true?
The story is too fun to fact check so we didn’t. Cecil’s brews a number of beers on site and the ones I have sampled are top notch brew pub fare. Their Temagami Amber rated highly on our website.
We have poured and scored beers from many parts of the world and the local North Bay brewing scene is first class in our books, and on our website.
I never really thought of North Bay as “North” myself. But when it comes to beer, it looks like North Bay is just North enough to be perfect.
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