7 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026
The short answer
By claim, the oldest pub in Canada is the Split Crow in Halifax, which cites the licence granted to John Shippey on 17 July 1749, the summer Halifax was founded. The present pub stands elsewhere downtown and revives the name rather than the building. By evidence the answer is the Mansion House in St. Catharines, Ontario, built in the early 1800s by the Welland Canal promoter William Hamilton Merritt and recorded in use as a hotel from 1826.
Canada's oldest-pub question is bounded by its settlement dates, which makes it more tractable than Europe's and no less contested. Halifax was founded in 1749, and the earliest claim on this page is a licence granted in that first summer. Everything else here is nineteenth-century. Two things then interrupt the record. The first is war: American forces burned Newark, now Niagara-on-the-Lake, in 1813, so the Olde Angel Inn's documented history begins with its rebuilding by John Ross in 1815, and the hand-hewn beams and plank floors underfoot date from then. The second is prohibition, which in Canada was a provincial matter rather than a national one, and which closed houses such as the Six Mile at View Royal outside Victoria; it reopened afterwards under beer-only rules. The result is a country where several bars advertise an eighteenth-century founding and the tidiest case belongs to a Victorian one — the Wheat Sheaf in Toronto, trading under the same name since 1849 and now heading for heritage protection.
Several Canadian claims are really claims about a name. The Split Crow takes its sign from the Spread Eagle, the tavern John Shippey was licensed to open at Salter and Water Streets in 1749 and which Haligonians nicknamed the Split Crow; the pub trading today is a modern revival at another address, and no continuous link between the two has been documented. The Queen’s Inn in Kingston dates itself to 1839 and Martin Staley of Wolfe Island. Its own website carried a reopening notice when we last looked, so check before travelling. Garrick’s Head on Bastion Square advertises 1867 without a founding record we could check. None of that is dishonest. It is simply a claim about heritage rather than about trade.
Ontario carries the strongest cases. The Mansion House began as Merritt’s house and store and became a hotel in the 1820s. The Wheat Sheaf has an opening year, a founder, an altered but surviving brick building, and a heritage file. The Olde Angel Inn has a precise rebuilding date and the fabric to match, plus the ghost of a militia captain in the cellar. The provincial list is at the oldest pubs in Ontario; for the colonial taverns south of the border see the oldest bars in the USA; and our grading rules are in the methodology.
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Halifax, Nova Scotia
The pub cites a licence granted by Governor Cornwallis to John Shippey on 17 July 1749 for the Spread Eagle at Salter and Water Streets, the first liquor licence issued in Nova Scotia, and Discover Halifax tells the same story without a document behind it. Locals nicknamed the sign the Split Crow. The pub trading now stands elsewhere in the downtown, on Granville Street, and revives the name rather than the
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario
The inn says it is 'believed to have been founded' as the Harmonious Coach House about 1789, and offers nothing to support the year. What is documented is the rebuilding by John Ross in 1815, after American forces burned Newark in 1813, and the hand-hewn beams and plank floors of that rebuilding are what a drinker sits among. No heritage designation for the property has been traced, although the town's old core is a
St. Catharines, Ontario
The bar brands itself since 1806 and calls itself the oldest continually licensed bar in Canada; its own account says William Hamilton Merritt, promoter of the Welland Canal, built the place in the early 1800s as a home and store and that it became a hotel in 1826, where other accounts give 1828. Neither date has been traced to a record. The city's own heritage layer, published through the Niagara open data portal
Kingston, Ontario
The inn says it was established in 1839 by the Wolfe Island businessman Martin Staley and is one of Canada's oldest continually operating inns. A record for the trade has now been traced, and it names somebody else. The Kingston local-history project STONES, working on the city's Black history, sets out the career of George Mink, who announced in May 1838 that he had taken extensive premises at the head of Brock
Toronto, Ontario
The City of Toronto's designation report for 667 King Street West sets out the paper trail: the 1845 assessment rolls show John and Bernard Short holding four lots at King and Bathurst, Bernard being an innkeeper and baker; the city directories show the lots tenanted by 1848 and the Wheat Sheaf built and let to Daniel Patterson by 1849; the building first appears on Goad's atlas in 1858, gaining a southern addition
View Royal, British Columbia
Bill Parsons bought land from the Hudson's Bay Company and built the Parsons Bridge Hotel, later Six Mile House, in the mid-1850s (1855 per the pub; 1856 per Pub Magazine). It closed during Prohibition and was remodelled afterwards, so 'continuous' is overstated.
Victoria, British Columbia
The pub advertises itself as Victoria's oldest, trading since 1867, and no founding record or building date has been traced; the house occupies the ground floor of the Bedford Regency on Government Street, with its entrance on Bastion Square. British Columbia's register of liquor-licensed establishments carries a Liquor Primary licence, number 115527, for the premises at 1140 Government Street under the
The photographs above are other people's work, used under open licences. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits. A pub with no licensed photograph shows an illustrated façade instead.
