John Sleeman, right, started Spring Mill Distillery in Guelph, Ont., in part to give his sons Cooper, left, and Quinn the opportunity to participate in the family’s entrepreneurial legacy.Kenneth Chou
In 2015, John W. Sleeman planned to build a new distillery from the ground up to revive his family’s century-and-a-half-plus legacy in beer and spirits. Then, workers unearthed Prohibition-era holding tanks beneath an abandoned liquor maker on Guelph’s Speed River.
The derelict site 100 kilometres west of Toronto held deep significance for the Sleemans, whose breweries had lined that stretch of river for decades since the 1860s. The hidden tanks evoked memories of the family’s bootlegging operation that, in 1933, cost them their brewing licence for 50 years.
For John, 72, the discovery changed everything. He gave up the original plan to build the new distillery elsewhere and instead got to work restoring the neglected structure. “I wanted to make this building part of our story,” he says.
This is the second Sleeman resurrection that John, great-great-grandson of the original brewery founder, has spearheaded. In 1988, shortly after their brewing ban lifted, he launched Sleeman Brewing and Malting, also in Guelph, growing the company into Canada’s third-largest brewer before selling to Japanese beer maker Sapporo in 2006.
“I started the brewery with the goal of rebuilding the family business and I hoped it would stay in the family,” John says. “For all kinds of reasons, that wasn’t going to happen.”
“It's a really cool thing for me that this company is called John Sleeman & Sons,” John Sleeman says. “I wanted it to be a business that the boys, if they wanted to, could be part of.”Kenneth Chou
While the family retained involvement in the brewery, it was no longer theirs to run. “After a few years, we sat around the table and said, ‘Maybe we should start a business that we’ll have control of again,’” he says of the conversation with his sons Cooper and Quinn.
Staying in the alcoholic beverage industry was logical, given the family’s background. “But there’s only one Sleeman brewery, so we weren’t going to get back into the beer business,” John says. Instead, the family turned to whisky, drawn in part by Canada’s strong reputation for the spirit internationally.
From there, John Sleeman & Sons and its Spring Mill Distillery were born, with John as CEO. The restoration was completed in late 2018, transforming the centuries-old site into something that honours both the family’s complex history and their hopes for the future.
The company today produces 150,000 bottles annually, across whisky varieties from rye to single malt, and employs 21 people.
Janie Goldstein, special advisor for family business at Toronto Metropolitan University, says the comeback solves a common succession challenge. “When you do these kinds of spin-offs, it’s great for the next generation because they feel like they’re part of that entrepreneurial process,” she says.
For Cooper and Quinn, the new company offers a chance to make their ancestral legacy their own. “When they were four or five years old, they would come to the brewery and they’d want to sit in my chair, walk around, watch the bottling line run,” John says. But, he adds, “It was never a case of me saying, ‘When you grow up, you have to work here.’ It was, ‘When you grow up, you have to do something you’re good at that makes you happy.’”
Cooper initially found his path through sales, working for Sleeman Breweries in Northern Ontario after graduating from Queen’s University with a degree in geography. “I left quite a comfortable job at the brewery and decided to make the move to distilling knowing that I was getting in at the ground level,” Cooper says. At 32, he now serves as sales and marketing manager at John Sleeman & Sons.
Quinn, 29, took a different route. He explored teaching and social-service work after studying history at Acadia University and wasn’t sure how he’d fit into the new venture until he discovered coopering, the centuries-old craft of barrel-making.
Whisky ties up capital in ways beer does not. A fresh batch of beer can be brewed in four weeks, whereas straight whisky requires years of barrel aging.Kenneth Chou
“I always thought I would end up working with my hands,” Quinn says. He apprenticed under a master cooper in Prince Edward County, Ont., for two years, then learned barrel maintenance and repair in Scotland and how to build new barrels from scratch in Missouri. He is now John Sleeman & Sons’ in-house cooper.
The economics of distilling present unique challenges compared with brewing because whisky ties up capital in ways beer doesn’t. A fresh batch of beer can be brewed in four weeks, John says. “But if Cooper and his team make great bourbon, I can’t get you any more for four years.”
The company released its first gin and vodka in April, 2019. The first traditional straight whisky, which requires years of barrel aging, didn’t follow until June, 2022, with a rye whisky launching in May, 2023.
COVID-19, economic pressures, unexpected building issues and the competitive industry landscape all added more layers of difficulty. Canadian brands accounted for 88 per cent of beer sales by value from April of 2023 to March of 2024 across the country, according to Statistics Canada, while Canadian spirits made up just 46.1 per cent versus imports.
“Maybe we should start a business that we'll have control of again,” John Sleeman says of the conversation he had with his sons before they founded their distillery.Kenneth Chou
Spring Mill has benefited from “buy Canadian” sentiment triggered by the Canada-U.S. tariff dispute, which saw American spirits pulled from Canadian shelves. But the trade fight also drove an overall decline in spirits sales, with purchases of Canadian product dipping 6.3 per cent from March to April, 2025, according to national trade association Spirits Canada.
Brand recognition has helped the company expand across Canada, to every province except Newfoundland and the territories. “It’s amazing how many people go, ‘I like your beer, so I’ll try your whisky,’” John says.
The Sleeman name on the bottles carries weight in both the marketplace and the family. “It’s a really cool thing for me that this company is called John Sleeman & Sons,” John says. “I wanted it to be a business that the boys, if they wanted to, could be part of. It’s about getting it to the next generation.”
Have a suggestion of a Canadian multigenerational family business for this regular series? E-mail smallbiz@globeandmail.com.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the distillery site as being east of Toronto. It is west. This version has been corrected.