Brandon brewery built with around 11,000 bricks reclaimed from demolished landmark
Section 6 Brewing mixes reclaimed barn wood, bricks with new and experimental
A new brewery in the heart of Manitoba's Wheat City is celebrating a new chapter while paying homage to history — one brick at a time.
Brandon's Section 6 Brewing at 1126 Princess Ave. opened to the public on Dec. 3. The new brewery was carefully crafted using reclaimed barn wood and bricks from the recently demolished International Harvester Building, said co-owner and brewmaster Benjamin Loewen.
"It was important to us to make the most of what was available to us," Loewen said. "We love the idea that there is a lot of new pieces to here, but there's a lot of tradition and old parts to here ... I think there's a mingling of the old and new."
When the International Harvester Building was demolished in 2021, Section 6 reached out to see if they could reclaim the bricks. They were able to secure a few truckloads of bricks and kept them in storage until work began on the new brewery building.
Around 11,000 bricks in total were cleaned, chipped down and used to build Section 6.
Brewery staff keep some loose bricks at the bar, Loewen said, so patrons can hold a piece of Brandon's history in their hands.
The idea for Section 6 was brewing in Loewen's mind for more than five years. The goal was to ensure it honoured the rural roots of Brandon.
As they dug into name options, Loewen found Section 6 in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the rights of citizens to enter, remain in, and leave Canada.
"You can leave Canada and always be welcomed back and this idea that it's kind of a home base that you can return to with all these cool beers from around the world," Loewen said.
"We thought ... We'd love it to be about gathering people together and community and cool beer."
Taproom manager Kate Hill said the name of the brewery comes with a mix of many special meanings, including the Charter reference.
Both owners Sidney Stevenson and Loewen come from a farming background, Hill said, and so they're familiar with working on sections of land. She added that Brandon as a city was also founded on six sections of land.
"One of the mission statements that we have is we like to mix traditional with new and experimental. And so this building is pretty much homage to that and that it is a reclaimed building," said Hill. "We've taken something old, we've used old things to help us do the building up."
Blending past and preset
Local history buff David McConkey said the International Harvester Building holds a special place in many Brandonites' hearts.
"It was in a very prominent location where people often went by and it just became, I think, part of the background landscape of Brandon," McConkey said.
The building was originally erected by the International Harvester Company in 1911 as a warehouse for equipment.
During its century-long presence at the corner of 18th Street and Pacific Avenue, it was used for many different things including cold storage, a goose and duck processing plant in the '70s and, most recently, the Kullbergs Furniture Store warehouse.
The five-story building stood tall on the skyline until 2021 when it was torn down to widen the Daly Bridge.
"Often, you know, part of the history has to be torn away to make way for progress ... I think people have sort of mixed feelings about losing something that was so much ... part of the landscape and now isn't there," McConkey said.
"But that, you know, progress sort of has to go on and I think there's sort of ... a reluctance or nostalgia connected to that."
McConkey said he was delighted to hear that bricks from the International Harvester Building were being used again at Section 6. Reclaiming the bricks for the brewery melds history, nostalgia and progress.
"I think something like using the bricks from an old building or using something else from an old building is a good way of concretely ... connecting with the past."
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