Moosehead Breweries

Susannah Oland, who had moved from England to Nova Scotia, opened a brewery with her husband John in 1867. The Halifax Explosion of 1917 destroyed it and killed Conrad Oland; the family bought a brewery in Halifax the next year and in 1928 a larger one in Saint John, New Brunswick, where it still brews. Moosehead Pale Ale, of 1931, gave the company its name in 1947, and Moosehead Lager reached the United States in 1978. It is Canada’s oldest independent brewery and the largest wholly Canadian-owned one, run by the sixth generation of Olands. In December 2025 it stopped bottling and now sells only cans and kegs.