CANMORE – Before tourists flocked to town and back when Canmore was barely visible from the highway, a small but mighty brew pub took its place on Main Street.
With three brand new brews on tap and a non-smoking section upstairs, the Grizzly Paw Brewing Company welcomed thirsty patrons through its doors on April 29, 1996, setting up shop as the first craft brewery in the still sleepy mountain town.
“[Canmore] was a quiet Alberta ski town waiting to explode,” said Niall Fraser, founder of the Grizzly Paw.
“McDonald’s and Tim Horton’s and all that was called Gasoline Alley, and that was what most people thought Canmore was because even when you got on the alley, you couldn’t see anything because Canmore hadn’t built out that much by then,” he said.
In a time when the once dusty mining town was just a pitstop for travellers making a beeline to Banff, Fraser was bringing something new to the valley, well before the craft beer movement had settled in the Rockies, let alone the province.
“We were the only one around here for 15 years plus,” said Fraser, noting there were only about three other brew pubs in Alberta at the time, including Big Rock Brewery, Wild Rose Brewery and Alley Cat Brewing.
“We opened April 29 with Grumpy Bear Honey Wheat, Rutting Elk Red and Bighorn Nut Brown, and then we added (Beavertail) Raspberry about three weeks after opening, so we went through with four beers our first summer,” Fraser said, noting Grumpy Bear is still the most popular brew 30 years later.
The idea had solidified a few years earlier when Fraser stepped into a pub near the Opera House in Sydney, Australia and sat down for a cold one.
“Inside there, the guy had built a brewery, so it was the first time that I had sort of put this concept into my mind, and I went, ‘wow, this would be really great in Canada,’” he recalled.
After his parents bought a retirement place in Canmore, it only took one visit to the Bow Valley for the dream to stick.
“Of course, then how do you not fall in love with this place? Pretty much from that day … I always wanted to own something in Canmore,” said Fraser, who has a background in hotel management.
But in ‘96, you were more likely to see a bottle of Labatt Blue, Molson or Carling O’Keefe in the hand of your average beer drinker and craft beer, made by independent breweries, was by far the new kid on the block.
“It was just not a concept here in Canada because the liquor laws were all draconian, they were made in the 1800s or something and nobody was in a rush to fix them. The big boys didn’t want it fixed because they had control of the market,” said Fraser, noting it was tough to open up a brew pub back in the day with Alberta Gaming, Liquor, and Cannabis (AGLC) enforcing a minimum production requirement.
“For a country that grows the most barley in the world and has the most amount of money invested in malting houses all over the world, it’s crazy that we didn’t have more breweries,” he added.
Pushing through the ebb and flow of each season in a tourist town, seven days a week, Fraser was either behind the bar, slinging a mop or working on a brew in the back.
“I did everything. I cleaned the joint, I brewed, I was in the kitchen, I was serving, I was bartending, I was repainting, I was fix-it man,” he said.
“I got to know a lot of the people, and that’s part of why our business grew was that everybody was called by name, so to speak, like Cheers. Norm would come in the door, and everybody would go, ‘Norm!’” he described. “It’s a little bit different now because there’s just the volume of people and the transient nature of everybody here.”
It was at the same time that Hollywood often had its eye on the mountain town, and it wasn’t uncommon for celebrities to walk through the pub’s doors and take a seat at the bar.
“Anthony Hopkins [would] come in on a weekly basis while he was out filming … The Edge,” Fraser recalled.
The tides began to turn around 2006 when more microbreweries opened their doors and the craft beer scene slowly began catching on, Fraser said.
“The more people travel, you start to understand, because if you go to Europe every town you go into has its own brewery, so you try the local beer,” he said.
Eventually branching out to create a line of sodas, it wasn’t long after the Grizzly Paw outgrew their Main Street joint and expanded to a new facility in 2013, one with three times the brewing power.
“Just by increasing our batch size to that level, our beers just became that much better, like overnight. It was one of the smartest things we ever did,” said Fraser, noting it’s much harder to brew on a small scale.
Growing alongside the town, Fraser looks back fondly on 30 years of operation, noting it’s the people that stand out the most.
“It’s getting to know locals and those locals then becoming friends and then from friendship now you have lifelong friends,” said Fraser. “It’s quite amazing.”
A toast to 30 years
Raising a glass ’90s style, the brewery is celebrating the 30th anniversary milestone with a throwback to its birthday year.
“I was doing research on the time and I learned that the very first volume of Big Shiny Tunes came out in 1996 as well,” said Spencer Duquette, brand and marketing manager at the Grizzly Paw, describing the inspiration for the brewery’s ’90s-themed 12 pack.
“It ended up being like one of the best-selling CDs in Canadian history.”
An ode to ’90s marketing contests, Duquette says the pub is also hoping to collect stories in the form of a voicemail from locals, customers, former staff and anyone who has a memory with the Grizzly Paw over the years.
“The winner we’re going to give a $2,500 prize to and that’s going to include a cheque for $1,500 and a branded prize pack,” he said, noting the submission deadline is May 4.
Closing out the festivities, the pub is celebrating 30 years with a “Big Shiny Birthday Bash” on Father’s Day, June 21, featuring performances from local musicians in the brewery’s parking lot and beer garden.
The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada. This position covers Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda First Nation and Kananaskis Country.
By Leah Pelletier, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on May 06, 2026 at 12:37
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