Sub-series F-329-4-7 - Beer bottles, tap handles and other brewing artefacts

Mitchell J. (Mitch) Taylor was born on September 7, 1944 to Thomas and Florence Taylor, in Fort Frances Ontario. He was the fifth of the couple’s nine children. In 1952, at the age of seven, Taylor and his older brother Bob went to live with Alexander and Winnifred Brown on their farm near Regent, Manitoba to attend school and help on the farm.

Taylor lived with the Browns until the fall of 1962, when he began Bachelor of Science studies at the University of Manitoba. During the summers he held various jobs, including sweeping up nickel dust at the International Nickel Company of Canada mine smelter in Thompson, Manitoba and welding assistant on the TransCanada natural gas pipeline in Saskatchewan. After graduating from university in 1965, Taylor travelled through Europe before securing a job with Imperial Oil as an Industrial Sales Representative based in Kamloops, B.C.

On June 10, 1967, Taylor married Anne Franklin, his former classmate at Dand High School and a recent University of British Columbia graduate. The couple later had two daughters, Lydia and Jillian. The Taylors initially lived in Kamloops, with Anne teaching school locally. In 1969, Taylor became BC sales manager for Imperial Oil and was transferred to the Vancouver head office. He was promoted to a financial analyst role for the province in 1970, and in 1971 he became the Assistant to the Petroleum Products Committee of Imperial Oil, based in the Toronto office.

In 1972, Taylor resigned from Imperial Oil to embark on a new business venture in Vancouver with partner Bill Harvey. Purchasing the former Monsanto Chemical buildings on Granville Island for $18,000.00, the partners established Creekhouse Industries. They also received approval to build a 400-berth marina on the north shore of False Creek, west of the Cambie Street Bridge. While successfully lobbying for the revitalization of Granville Island, Taylor and Harvey fully renovated the Monsanto buildings, opening them as The Creekhouse in the winter of 1972. Their second venture, False Creek Marinas, began operations the following year in 1973 and immediately had a waitlist. After more than a decade of success, the land it occupied was expropriated by the BC government for Expo 86 and the marina was demolished.

By 1981, Harvey and Taylor were looking for a new business venture and they settled upon the establishment of a German-style lager craft brewery on Granville Island. The first microbrewery in Canada, Granville Island Brewing (GIB) was officially opened on June 9, 1984, with a German, Rainer Kallahne, as brewmaster. It had an initial capacity of 5000 hectolitres (125,000 cases) of beer per year. Bill Harvey eventually pulled out of the brewery operations. Taylor continued to operate as President and CEO until 1989, when International Potters Distilling (owner of Calona Wines and Pacific Western Brewery) did a share exchange with GIB. This reduced Taylor’s shares from a majority position in GIB to a much smaller minority position in Potters. Taylor remained involved with GIB, taking on the position of VP Sales and Marketing for Potters for three years before resigning and selling his shares in 1992. Additional information about Granville Island Brewing can be found in Series F-329-4 Granville Island Brewing Company Limited records.

In January 1995, Taylor purchased Bellingham Marine Industries, becoming the company’s President and CEO. Under his ownership, the company expanded to twelve plants in eight countries and became a world leader in marina design, engineering and construction by the time Taylor sold it in 2006. From 2006 to 2016, Taylor sat on the Board of Directors for The Knowledge Network, and from 2009 to May 2017, Taylor was co-owner of Knight Signs in Delta, BC. Through all of this time, he has retained an ownership position in Creekhouse Industries. In 2021, Mitch Taylor wrote and published his autobiography titled Making Way: A Memoir, which details his personal and professional experiences to that time.