The inspiration for the blue book came from a December 14, 2024 meeting at The Crooked Cue in Mississauga between Gord Carter, Phil Carter , David Kincaid, and myself , Larry Innanen. Driving home after our meeting I realized that we had spent three hours non stop talking about our careers at Labatt. I felt at the time that we could have spent 30 hours talking about the fun that we had and the funny stories that we remembered as we looked back at our careers together. I felt that these were all stories that would be lost if not captured in writing and I felt that with the help of many other Labatt contributors we could piece together a light hearted memory of some of the best times we all had at Labatt as Labatt was evolving from a management holding company to a brewer laser focused on becoming the Best Brewer in the Americas.

In the blue book, we’re referring to the 23 year period from 1982 until 2004 as the “Golden Era” of Labatt. It was also the time period that David Kincaid and I had been at Labatt. I started at John Labatt Limited (JLL) in London in March of 1982. David started at Labatt Brewing Company (LBC) in Toronto in 1984. In June of 1992 I moved from London to Toronto to join LBC. For the next 12 years David and I worked together at Labatt House in Toronto. I was the Chief Legal Officer and David was the Director of Marketing at LBC. During this Golden Era , JLL first rapidly expanded and later dramatically contracted its business interests like Walter Ostenek’s accordion until JLL was purchased in a friendly takeover by Interbrew in 1995. From 1995 until 2004 Interbrew rapidly expanded yet again until it merged with AmBev in Brazil in 2004 to become the Largest Brewer in the

World. This Golden Era was the stage upon which we each played our roles during our careers at Labatt. The blue book was created as a medium for people to reconnect and share stories and fun experiences during this Era. It was a crazy place. It was a heady place. It was a competitive place and an ambitious place. Like many companies at that time it had periods of good leadership and it had periods of questionable leadership.

The company made many good decisions and a number of bad decisions during this time. Regardless of the outcomes, the intentions were all the same. The spirit of the players who provided their best efforts in the good times and the bad to advance the ultimate success of Labatt while enjoying their time at Labatt.

We hope you will enjoy the stories as the come to life. We suspect that they may remind you of many other stories in your personal experience working at Labatt. We encourage you to reach out and say hi to people from your past, or connect with us and share a thought, and idea, contribute to a story or offer a friendly shout out to someone you’d like to acknowledge.

Dave and Larry

I've got some great pictures to share from the past, how to I get them to you to share with The Blue Book?