Chapter 7

CAYLEY AND NASH’S ONTARIO BREWERY, 1848–1857

It is not as though all of the breweries that were founded in Toronto in the first half of the nineteenth century were the product of middle-class Englishmen who had come to the New World to improve their fortunes. In at least one case, a brewery founded in Toronto was very much the plaything of an upper-class family. The Ontario Brewery was actually the second brewery of that name in the city. The first brewery briefly occupied a spot near the bottom of Parliament Street. Repetition of brewery names was comparatively normal. There was also an Ontario Brewery in Hamilton, just down the lake.

The Cayley family were well-to-do even before having entered into international mercantile concerns in the eighteenth century. They held a baronetcy in Brompton, Yorkshire. John Cayley had been a member of the Russia Company until going into an independent partnership in trade in 1754. English society at St. Petersburg was a tightknit group. Cayley married the daughter of one of Peter the Great’s English shipbuilders and became Consul General of Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great. His son, also named John, took over the business, as trading directly was frowned on in diplomatic circles.

The generation of Cayleys that would end up coming to Canada included the grandsons of the Consul General and were extremely well off. William Cayley, the eldest boy, was educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford. His younger brothers, Francis Melville Cayley and John Cayley, were similarly educated, even if they had not the scholarly ability of William. William would become a lawyer in London in 1835, prior to moving to Upper Canada at some point before 1838.

The main difference between the early days of York and the rapidly expanding Toronto of the late 1830s was that there was a society to buy into. Early settlers were busy with the establishment of a society, however small. The Cayleys were able to purchase some status. Francis Cayley bought 188 acres and renamed the farmhouse on the property Drumsnab. It is the oldest home in Toronto still used as a residence and occupies very nearly the site of the legendary Castle Frank.

Francis had a significant acreage to manage. William had married the daughter of D’Arcy Boulton, ensuring himself a place in the power structure of Upper Canada. John, although he also eventually married into the Boulton family, was not immediately suited to the law or governance. Having comparatively little to do, he decided to become a brewer. His partner, John R. Nash, hailed from Port Credit in Mississauga and may have had some experience brewing with a relative in nearby Whitby.

Cayley and Nash’s brewery was not completed until 1848 and is largely forgotten to history due to the short span of its existence. Sitting at the bottom of York Street at the intersection of Front, it was located out over the water on six caissons adjacent to Tinning’s Wharf and the Jacques and Hay Furniture Factory. The design was comparatively involved and was one of the lesser works of early Toronto architect John George Howard. At the time, it certainly would have been one of the largest breweries in the province, having been purpose built at a stroke. In many ways, the location was ideal, providing easy access to shipping routes to other parts of Ontario.

The brewery burnt in July 1856 and, with it, any hope of legacy for the future. The year 1856 had a particularly hot summer, with more than the regular number of breweries burning down across the city of Toronto. In about half of the cases, the example we see in Ontario is of brewers rebuilding when faced with calamity. By 1856, Toronto had become very different. The Globe records the reactions of the owners: “Messrs. Cayley and Nash were insured in the brewery, which was their own property, between two and three thousand pounds. The vaults, containing the stock of beer and some grain were left uninjured, and a couple of tons of hops were saved by removal. We are told that the charge of breaking open beer barrels brought against the firemen might more properly have been laid against volunteers.”

The incident is illustrative of a number of details about Toronto in the mid-1850s, not the least of which is that there have always been citizens who would rather steal your beer than save your brewery.

More importantly, Toronto was at great risk of fire. The coroner’s inquest into the fire, which killed five and injured many more, notes that it was the result of poor planning on the part of the city. The water infrastructure was insufficient, and the growth of the city vastly outpaced it. John Nash testified, “I obtained the water for the brewery from the waterworks. It is cut off two days in the week. I firmly believe that if there had been a supply of water from the waterworks, the factory would have been saved. My brewery was destroyed.” The inquest found that the fault was indeed with the water company and decided on a verdict of criminal negligence. John Cayley was far more concerned with bringing suit against those found responsible than with the loss of his livelihood.

In terms of the Ontario Brewery, the fire made very little difference. In point of fact, it may have been the best possible outcome. John Cayley’s brother William would have told him that change was coming and that the land where the brewery was located would be purchased by the city in order to construct the Esplanade the next year. William Cayley was at that time not only inspector general of Ontario but also a member of the board of railway commissioners and government director on the Grand Trunk Railway’s board.

William Cayley was accused by his contemporaries of being unable to rein in government spending in the terms of these large projects. It is not, I think, unreasonable to assume that the money paid by the railways for the Ontario Brewery land was above the market rate. The insurance money paid out for the fire may well have been a small bonus to a business that was destined to close within the next year in any event. The land would become the Grand Trunk Railway’s depot in Toronto and, eventually, Union Station. John R. Nash would go on to work in the Ministry of Finance. By the next year, John Cayley would find employment on the boards of railways in Ontario, positions almost certainly ascertained through nepotism.

With the vast majority of Toronto’s early brewers, there is the sense conveyed that they enjoyed the work of brewing. For Cayley and Nash, every indication is that they viewed it simply as a manufactured product—as a means to an end for wealth generation. It’s little wonder that no information about the quality of the product seems to have survived.