Popular Canmore Bar Being Repackaged with New Name, Brewery on Tap
Rocky Mountain Outlook
Jordan Small
CANMORE – One of Canmore’s most popular bars is being renovated and repackaged with a new name, fresh look and a craft brewery.
The Drake Screaming Retriever Restaurant and Brewery, formerly The Drake Pub, is the new/old kid on the block, after the Canmore business' new partnership with Calgary's Screaming Retriever Brewing Company
Jamie Darroch, one of the owners, said The Drake hasn’t been sold and they “now have the opportunity to do things we’ve wanted to do for a long time” while maintaining the establishment's 35-plus years of history.
This includes the addition of a small batch brewery, taproom, upgraded bars, and washrooms, new flooring and paint, upgraded TVs and sound systems, and a pizza oven in the kitchen, among others.
“It’s going to be a big change for those coming to The Drake, but I think they’re going to find it a much better product,” said Darroch.
Silvio Adamo, one of the owners of The Drake Retriever Restaurant and Brewery, added: “I think we’re just excited to bring The Drake back up to a better standard again and a good fresh look, and it will be clean, it will be functional and I think a change of menu will be good.”
The restaurant and brewery, located on the prominent Main Street and Railway Avenue corner, closed its doors on Oct. 5, 2025, for the makeover. Darroch said the staff was laid off, with a job offer to return, once the establishment reopens, which will be in stages in December 2025 and early 2026.
The entertainment room will be opened in time for Christmas, said Darroch. The room will mostly have the same layout, with the beloved stage and live music remaining; however, the stairwell connecting to the downstairs “club” is being covered for more room and safety reasons. There will be a separate entrance outside to access the club, which the owners said they have “a lot of ideas for.”
Perhaps the biggest changes for locals will be the upgraded menu and new taproom. The billiard tables are being removed, and the taproom will open in early 2026.
“There’s going to be a lot of people disappointed about [the billiard tables], but the reasoning for that is that we see that room becoming more of a function room for beer tasting, parties, so it adds an extra 25 seats if we take them out,” said Darroch. “We get so many people wanting to come here, so there’s a market for it.”
The brewing equipment will be located in the basement under the taproom and out of sight.
The Drake’s pub menu will be overhauled, and the addition of a pizza oven in the kitchen will give greater emphasis on pies. Darroch said the popular items like burgers and their Wednesday wing night will remain.
“Instead of having a large menu, we’re going to shrink our menu by quite a lot,” said Darroch. “Some of the things we used to have in the past before, like barbecue, we’re not going to carry that anymore.”
Additionally, Darroch said the outdoor patio will be getting upgraded in spring 2026, with “all sorts of ideas” being thrown around.
The last time The Drake underwent renovations was in 2013 following the flood in the Bow Valley. The Drake’s hotel is not part of the current renovations.
The New Craft Brewery
With nine different types of the good stuff on tap under the Screaming Retriever brand, the majority of beer being served will come from the brewery.
Thinking about what’s to come, Ryan Kemp, CEO, master brewer and co-founder of Screaming Retriever, said it’s a great opportunity to “set roots in the Rockies.”
“At this stage of the game … we can now have more freedom to go more experimental, cater more to the beer nerd crowd, but also have a place to call home,” said Kemp. “We’ve been 100 per cent distribution up to this point, so it’s a little more difficult to get your brand name out there when you don’t have a place for people to come to.
“So [there are going to be] a lot of tastings, a lot of beer education, that sort of thing. Just bringing people in, telling our story, is really the biggest thing.”
While the brewery was established in 2021, the two groups have been looking to partner on something since 2020, but the friendship has lasted much longer.
Decades ago, on the rough and rowdy rugby pitch, Kemp’s father and VP of sales, Jim, and Adamo and Darroch, were once rivals and teammates. Now they are business partners.
Kemp said that the cohesion of the two brand names works very well because a drake is a mallard duck and they’re named after a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever, bred for duck hunting.
“It’s the world’s smallest retriever breed and they love to scream when they get excited,” said Kemp, adding the brand was named after a “retired” duck tolling retriever, Titus. “It’s kind of a coincidental collision, I guess you could say of brands, but they make a lot of sense to partner in terms of the dog and the duck.”
‘Room for Everyone’
With a new brewery coming to town, that means Canmore’s craft beer scene has gotten a little bigger and a little more competitive.
There are four craft breweries in Canmore, with Screaming Retriever being the fifth. There is also a cidery and a pair of distilleries to boot.
Darroch and Kemp said that there is “room for everybody.”
“Canmore is really growing and tourism is really growing,” said Kemp. “There’s a lot of appetite for a new face and, also, really what it will do is bring more people to the breweries and coordinate tours … if you look in Calgary, where they have the barley belt, a lot of reasons for people wanting to come down to that area is because [breweries are] clustered together.”
Darroch added: “It’s just a matter of offering different experiences.”
The Drake Lives On
The original Drake Pub opened in 1989, and at one time, you could sip a beer and smoke a cigarette while watching all the action from the two squash courts in the basement.
Having been a bartender at The Drake in the ’90s and early 2000s, Darroch and the ownership group bought The Drake in 2002.
A place where locals, visitors and even celebrities have dropped in over the years, such as Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, and Russell Crowe, Darroch added that they want to maintain the history of The Drake as a welcoming place to everyone.
“I think when people think of The Drake, they think friendship … it was always a generational place. You always felt comfortable at that age of 18, 19, 20, all the way up to 75 and 80 years old, and we want to continue that and I think by bringing this brewery partnership, it just adds something new for us and for the town,” Darroch said.