11/03/2025
Excellent read.
Man, I still despise that I can't freely share our news links, but here is the wording from a recent article about the changes that have taken place of a beloved favourite downtown Orillia, Brewery Bay, which pulls at my heartstrings. I have more than a handful of important women in my life who worked there, made it feel like home, and were always a welcome, familiar feeling when you walked into the building.
Here is the article written by Mark Bisset through OrilliaMatters
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A heartfelt ode to Brewery Bay, an Orillia treasure.
While Brewery Bay is just moving down the street, 'there is an ending here too, important enough to pause and reflect upon,' says columnist Mark Bisset.
We decided to go one last time to Brewery Bay with two of our best friends to mark the end of something. Not the restaurant.
Brewery Bay is making a leap into the future by joining the Couchiching Brewery just down the street a little closer to Lake Couchiching. The old Brewery Bay building is going to be reinvented once again into Seto, a multi-functional restaurant, café and international grocery store. Under the capable guidance of Jenna French, who brought us Rustica, it all makes great sense and promises to enliven the downtown. I’ll be seeing you at all these new places.
But there is an ending here too, important enough to pause and reflect upon.
My friends and I started going to Brewery Bay as soon as it was opened by Steve Clarke more than 30 years ago. It was a natural progression from the hours we spent in the Shangri-La Garden Restaurant. The Shang was a sparsely-lit Chinese restaurant nestled under a once-magnificent neon sign and it smelled of old cooking oil and sweet and sour chicken balls. The carpets were as worn as the menu, but it was comfortable and friendly and the food was inexpensive and good.
We didn’t like losing the Shang, but we could see the logic of the new place and it was clear right from the start that Clarke had a sense of place. The name tapped the Stephen Leacock brand, which was in ascendance at that time after years of begrudging familiarity. The Leacock museum was buzzing on the shores of Old Brewery Bay and Orillia’s downtown had embraced a heritage concept that was breathing new life into the core. Mariposa Market had already established itself as a downtown anchor.
Brewery Bay became our go-to place after a hard day – or a hard night -- at The Packet & Times. We celebrated births and birthdays, welcomes and goodbyes, clinked glasses over wins and commiserated over losses. We grumbled and laughed and gossiped. One day we went in to order beers and we were escorted to our usual table to find a plaque on the wall that read “Press Box”. At some point we found the Packet Pizza on the menu, featuring lots of meat.
These were the sort of little things Steve Clarke, his wife Chris and his crew did for people. Dishes named for characters. Personal mugs and wine glasses. Local art hanging on the walls. Small nods to local quirks. It was all clever marketing, but also a kind of recognition of the things that bind a community. Staff stayed on for years – I presume because they were treated like human beings, not expenses. You got to know them and their personalities added to the fabric of the place.
In the face of much resistance that is now forgotten, Brewery Bay fought to develop the first outdoor patio, instantly enlivening Mississaga Street with the sound of people enjoying themselves and leading the way for other businesses to do the same.
A few times a year, the restaurant would close to the public and Steve and Chris would host a fundraiser for a local charity. They’d give over Brewery Bay for the night, hand over a microphone and conjure a community, with proceeds from the dinners going to all sorts of good causes.
Like Jin Seto’s Shangri-La before it, like Carter’s, like Hill’s, Brewery Bay managed to transcend its form, becoming more than the sum of the worn fixtures and scarred seats of its final incarnation. Do we have a word for the spirit of such places?
I don’t actually know whether the Clarkes made much money on the restaurant, but to me, it was a roaring success.
I’m very grateful for the way it made me feel.
