Doering, Charles Gottfried

Carl (Charles) Gottfried Doering (1856-1927) was a British Columbia businessman, brewery owner and rancher. His Vancouver Brewery (established 1888, later renamed Doering and Marstrand) was one of Vancouver's earliest breweries and became one of the city's most successful by the time of its merger with Red Cross Brewery in 1900 to form Vancouver Breweries Ltd.

Charles Doering was born in Leipzig, Germany on January 10, 1856 to parents Johann and Johanna (née Zwicke). At age 19, he emmigrated to the United States, settling first in Colorado, then San Francisco. Around 1881 Doering moved to Victoria BC with his friend and future business partner Benjamin Wrede. In Victoria he worked as a machinist and is believed to have landed a job with John Gower's Phoenix Brewery. Doering and Wrede purchased the King's Head Saloon in Victoria around 1883, the first of a number of hotels and saloons Doering would acquire.

By 1885, Doering was living part-time in Vancouver (then called Granville). With Wrede he acquired the Stag and Pheasant Hotel in Vancouver shortly after the city's great fire of June 1886. In 1888 Doering sold his interest in the King's Head in Victoria and moved permanently to Vancouver. He acquired several additional hotels and saloons, including the Gambrinus Saloon, Atlantic Beer Hall, Germania Hotel and Brunswick Hotel. In September 1888 Doering married Sarah Jane Helgesen, daughter of the former Member of Parliament Hans Helgesen. He became a naturalized citizen in January 1890. The Doerings had a daughter, Beatrice, born August 30, 1889. A second daughter, Kathleen Mary, died shortly after birth in 1893.

In 1888 Doering established the Vancouver Brewery at Scotia Street and 7th Avenue near the creek that would become known as Brewery Creek. In the same year he sold the Stag and Pheasant to focus on his brewing business. A number of other breweries began operating in the Brewery Creek area: Mainland Brewery on Columbia St. and 10th Ave. (1888-1892); San Francisco Brewery (1888) and Red Star Brewery (1889-1891) at Westminster Ave. (now Main St.) and 11th Ave.; Lion Brewery (1897), Stadler Brewery (1898) and Lansdowne Brewery (1906) at Scotia St. and Front St. (now 1st Ave). But these were all short-lived enterprises, while Doering's Vancouver Brewery thrived and expanded.

In 1892 Otto Marstrand, a brewer from Denmark, joined with Doering as a partner, and the brewery was renamed the Doering and Marstrand Brewing Company. Informally it was also known as the Alexandra Brewery after its popular brand, Alexandra Lager (named for Queen Alexandra, wife of King Edward VII). In April 1900, Doering and John Williams, owner of the Red Cross Brewery, merged their operations to bring together the city's two largest breweries into a single company. The new firm was called Vancouver Breweries Ltd., with Doering, Marstrand and Williams as owners (Marstrand's involvement ending in 1906 when he returned to Denmark). A year after the merger, the old Red Cross plant on Seaton St. (now Hastings Ave. west of Burrard St.) was closed and all production moved to Doering's Scotia St. brewery. The former Red Cross head brewer, Henry Traeger, joined the new company. In 1902 it held a public contest to name its new flagship brand. W.C. Green won the $50 prize for the entry Cascade Beer, and this became Vancouver Breweries most popular brand ("Cascade, the Beer Without a Peer" became its advertising slogan).

In late 1910, Doering and Williams moved production from the Scotia St. brewery to a new state-of-the-art plant on Yew St. and 11th Ave. that had been built by Henry Reifel for his new Canadian Brewing and Malting Company (CMB). Shortly afterwards in 1911, Vancouver Breweries, Reifel's CBM, Nanaimo's Union Brewing Company (managed by Reifel from 1896 to 1910), and Cumberland's Pilsener Brewing Company merged to form the British Columbia Breweries Ltd., brewing out of Reifel's plant on Yew St. (Both the Union Brewery in Nanaimo and the Cumberland plant continued operations until around 1916-1917.) BC Breweries was soon sold to a group of British investors in 1912, but the company struggled and went into receivership from 1915-1918. Doering and Williams withdrew their involvement, alleging irregularities in bookkeeping under the British investors, and entered into legal dispute with Reifel, eventually settled out of court. BC Breweries was reorganized in 1918, with Reifel serving as President from 1918 to 1933, and it took over the Vancouver Breweries name.

Doering had become one of Vancouver's wealthiest businessmen and real estate investors. He served as an alderman on Vancouver city council in 1890-91 and the Vancouver Parks Board in 1906. His wife Sarah died in 1906 while the family was travelling in Germany. The official cause of death was heart failure, but it may have resulted from complications arising from her treatment for tuberculosis (believed to have involved injections of phosphorous). In 1906-07, Doering met Mary Reid, a widow with children of her own, while looking for a property on Vancouver Island. He purchased Reid's farm near Duncan (Fairburn Farm). The two became close and married in 1911.

In 1910 Doering's daughter Beatrice married George William Mutter. Doering purchased the Hat Creek Ranch, located near Cache Creek on the old Cariboo Wagon Road, as a wedding gift, but Beatrice preferred the Fairburn property at Duncan. Doering himself increasingly spent time at Hat Creek in the 1910s, expanding the property and its ranching operations. He continued to keep an office in Vancouver and maintained his business interests there, which included the Lotus, Cobalt and Cordova Hotels. Charles Doering passed away in Vancouver on April 15, 1927 from heart attack. Mary's son (Doering's stepson), John Basil Jackson, had been managing Hat Creek since ca. 1918, and Jackson and his wife Dorothy acquired ownership and ran the ranch from 1930 to 1977, when Jackson died and Dorothy sold the property.

April 2025: description created.

• English

Jerrold Dennis Mutter, personal communication (November 2024).
Noélle Phillips, Brewmasters and Brewery Creek (Touchwood Editions, 2024).
Bill Wilson, Beer Barons of B.C. (Lantzville BC: Tamahi Publications, 2011).