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“It was a very emotional building and it held so much, not just for the Lydia’s goers, but even past tenants and anyone that grew up in Saskatoon, really — it’s such a staple,” she said.

“I knew I would have to be very sensitive to that and very careful to honour what was past.”

Saskatoon

Without Lydia’s, there may never have been a Prairie Sun Brewery, as the pub was where Williams first fell in love with craft beer.

“I actually had my first craft beer at Lydia’s — it was a Big Rock Grasshopper — out of the same tap that we now have at the bar upstairs,” she recalls. “I was just sipping the beer like, ‘Oh my God, what is this? Why does this taste so good? Why is this so much better than other beers?’

“It just got me hooked — that was it.”

Williams, alongside co-owners Brad Pederson and Cameron Ewen, first opened their brewery on Quebec Avenue in the Kelsey Woodlawn neighbourhood in 2013 before taking over the former Farnam Block location in late October 2019.

Photo by Michelle Berg / Michelle Berg / The StarPhoenix

When they first began searching for a home for the brewery, they had wanted to open along Broadway Avenue, but the high rental prices made it unsustainable. Williams said it felt like fate intervened when, years later, the Farnam Block’s owners began searching for businesses interested in their space and she realized Prairie Sun was at a point where it could compete for a spot in the location she already loved so much.

“It’s kind of like this really cool, crazy, freaky full-circle thing.”

At one point, Farnam Block was to be replaced with a five-unit building and Williams planned to take a single unit to open a growler fill station. But soon the idea of one unit turned to two, then three and she figured why not just take over the entire space and move the brewery completely?