William Henry Sheppard quenched thirst in Edmontons formative years. The local entrepreneur, Strathcona councillor and later Mayor knew he was onto a good thing with his Strathcona Hotel beer parlour and, with hundreds of thirsty newcomers pouring into the region in the early days of the 20th century, he decided to build a brewery.

Sheppard joined forces with W.E. and Tommy Lines and, in 1905, they opened their Edmonton Brewing & Malting Company, a stones throw from the North Saskatchewan River in Rossdale on Lots 12 & 15 on Currie Street (now 100th Street). Precisely 100 years later, the original building at 9843 100 Street has survived to become the oldest standing brewery in the city -- and one of the oldest in the entire province.

There are two other older breweries in Alberta -- Calgarys Cross Brewery, which was built in 1892 and the Lethbridge Brewery, which commenced operations in 1901. But the Cross Brewery has been extensively altered and the Lethbridge brewing operation is virtually gone. So the original Edmonton Brewing & Malting Company building certainly has a uniquely significant place in Albertas past.

Sheppard and the Lines brothers acquired equipment from the Tom Cairns Brewery, which had operated on the river flats near todays Royal Glenora Club. Records indicate that right after the two-storey wood frame and brick clad brewery was built, the top floor was used as a malt room. A malting plant was on the ground floor, which was designed with a 21-foot high ceiling to allow for the installment of a drum system to sprout barley.

The brewerys proximity to the river made for some interesting times. When the North Saskatchewan flooded in 1911, the Edmonton Bulletin reported brewery workers hoisted vats to keep the flood waters from spoiling the beer.

The very first year, the brewery turned out 2,000 barrels. By 1908, production was up to 20,000 barrels and, getting all that beer up and out of the valley required a mighty lift. There is some speculation that the need to haul the heavy beer to the top of the valley was a driving force behind the 1908 establishment of the Edmonton Incline Railway Company, of which Sheppard was a shareholder.

The combination elevator and railway enabled him to get his wagons loaded with kegs of beer up the formidable grade of McDougall Hill. Wagons laden with kegs were hauled by horses to the Incline Railway, which ran up and down the formidable grade of McDougall Hill just east of where the Chateau Lacombe stands today. The incline railway was a combination elevator and railway which functioned until the opening of the High Level Bridge in 1913.

Because business was so good, brewing operations were moved to larger premises at what is now Molson House just off 104 Avenue and 121 Street. These were the days before widely available refrigeration and so, to help folks keep cold all the beer he had been brewing, Sheppard purchased the Arctic Ice Company.

In 1913 the old brewery building became an icehouse. Big chunks of ice were cut out of the frozen North Saskatchewan River and taken to the Rossdale plant, where they were stored and shipped to customers in a wagon pulled by horses.

Over the years, such ice harvesting created 60 and more seasonal jobs. The blocks weighed between 50 and 100 pounds and the Edmonton Ice Company had enough room to store 8,000 tons of ice. When the river flooded in June 1915 and covered parts of Rossdale in nearly a metre of water, chunks of ice floated away.

Carrying his business acumen into the political arena, Sheppard served on Strathcona's Town Council in 1899, 1901, 1902, 1904, 1908, and 1909. He was elected mayor in 1906 and played a significant role in changing Strathcona's status from that of a town to a city. He later served on the committee that considered the question of amalgamation with Edmonton.

In the late 1920's, Emil Sick, founder of Sick's Brewing Company, purchased the building and returned it to its original use. That lasted until 1930, when Sick consolidated his fledgling empire in Lethbridge, and the building was sold to McGregor Telephone Exchange, Power and Construction Company.

Over the next three decades, the building served as a telephone exchange and headquarters for the Western Tie and Timber Company. In the 1960s, the building became the V & M Paint and Body Shop and then the V.W. Body and Paint Shop.

The building was designed by an architect whose name has apparently been lost in the shifting sands of time. It is a basic industrial building, very common for the time, but rare today because most such examples of architecture were not deemed to be beautiful or worthy of saving in the same manner as a Hotel Macdonald or Lemarchand Mansion.

With the monster houses and extensive redevelopment, there is precious little left of early Rossdale, which was born as one of the citys Edmonton's early residential areas. The only major buildings to survive are the Ross Flats Apartments, Ortona Armoury, Donald Ross School and the Rossdale Brewery.

Recognizing its significant place in history, the province declared the brewery an historic resource on Jan. 28, 1980. The building is now owned by Edmonton architect, developer and former councillor Gene Dub.

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