Quinn usually harvests enough bulrushes to fill two bags, leaving plenty for the frogs, birds, and other wildlife in the marsh. The family only harvests bulrushes at the cottage once they begin to die, around Labour Day, since they’re only useful once the stalks have dried out. Plus, it’s kinder for the environment to wait until the end of the growing season.
Harvesting, spearheaded by Quinn, usually takes a couple hours. “We don’t let it get in the way of cocktail hour,” says Cooper. Caesars on Saturday are a family ritual. Photo by Liam Mogan
The Sleeman cottage, aside from being a good place to harvest bulrushes, has been an important family epicentre since John Sleeman and his wife, Julie, decided to buy it together in 1991, shortly after they began dating. “The cottage is actually two log homes that were built in the 1800s in the Eastern Townships of Quebec,” says John. “The gentleman who built this house carefully took them down, transported them here separately, and built one house out of the two homes.”
At the time, John was just a few years into re-launching his family’s business into a Guelph, Ont.-based operation that would eventually become the third-largest brewery in Canada. The family business dates back to the 1800s, but it faced a notable setback during the Prohibition era in 1933. “We got caught smuggling to Al Capone and lost our license,” says John.
John is standing in the cottage’s living room, close enough to the fireplace to feel the warmth of the single log currently burning in it. There’s a pair of shotguns mounted above the fireplace, which John can’t say for certain were used in the act of beer-smuggling, but the age of the guns matches up with the timeline of Prohibition. “After we lost the business, we had a big auction to sell everything,” says John. “The guns were part of it, and all kinds of other things got sold away.” Decades later, in the early 1990s, when the guns’ new owner died, his widow decided they should go back to the Sleeman family. “They said: ‘Now that you’ve got the brewery going again, you should have these,’” says John.
John’s sons, Cooper, the eldest, and Quinn, the youngest, born in 1993 and 1996 respectively, remember the guns being on display above the fireplace. “We were always really proud of what we did as a family,” says Cooper. “We thought it was cool before we even really understood what the family did because other people thought it was cool.” The boys have fond memories of growing up at the family cottage. “We’d always be playing in the dirt,” says Quinn. “We’d go down to the water, right at the base of the swamp, and Cooper and I would go catch frogs.”
The cabin
The original cabin was clearly well-built. The family hasn’t had to do much maintenance on the chinking. But even a well-built cabin is still a cabin. “Most of the issues have been with squirrels and raccoons making homes in the roof,” says Cooper.
Inside the cabin
Just to the left of the main living space is a pool table. Playing while the hockey game is on is a main feature of Saturday nights. “We’re big Leafs fans,” says Cooper. John and Julie found the old, striped column while in Europe; it once served as train decor.
The young Cooper always needed a project. He built forts around the property: a treehouse on the lawn next to their cottage, then another structure close to the swamp. “We used to sit in the fort and act like kings of the swamp,” says Cooper. He made good use of some old floorboards and scrap wood to build with, while John took trips to the hardware store for hinges and nails.
Building together continued to be an important family ethos as the brothers got older. Both Quinn and Cooper knew from an early age that they wanted to join the family business. Once they turned 19 in 2012 and 2015, the two spent their summers off from university working the bottling line at the company’s Guelph, Ont., plant. They started out cleaning returned bottles, which Cooper says was pretty dirty work. From there, they held various other positions in the organization. “My dad was always very clear that nothing was going to be handed to us,” says Cooper. “We needed to prove our value to the company by working hard like anyone else.”
By that point, the brewery had been sold to Sapporo, which happened in 2006, though John stayed on as chairman of the board—a position he still holds today. Cooper migrated into merchandising and sales positions while Quinn worked in the warehouse, operating a forklift and cleaning lines, as well as working shifts in the brewery’s retail store.
Then, in the late 2010s, John, long a fan of whisky and brown spirits, shared his desire with Cooper and Quinn to start a distillery. Quinn and Cooper didn’t hesitate to join their father in this new venture. “He never pressured us,” says Cooper. “But it was an opportunity for Quinn and I to build something from the beginning.”
But that new business had to be built from the ground up. “I was essentially a labourer for the first year,” says Cooper. Then, with a few years in sales at Sleeman Breweries under his belt, he eventually became the sales and marketing manager. It was named Spring Mill, after an early Sleeman family distillery that opened in 1836, but the spirits they produce are marketed under the name John Sleeman & Sons. Quinn, meanwhile, was intrigued by coopering—the act of building barrels to age and store whisky. Over the course of several years, he learned the trade in Prince Edward County, the U.S., and Scotland and became the in-house cooper. He builds anywhere from 15 to 25 barrels per year along with maintaining barrels that were purchased elsewhere, typically once-used bourbon barrels or new American oak barrels.
It was in Scotland, while he was studying the cooperage trade, that Quinn learned about the integral role that bulrushes play in maintaining a barrel. “You want the most interaction between the wood and the whisky,” he says. “There’s no adhesives in a barrel. It’s just two perfect joints meeting each other as a seal. That’s the advantage of using bulrushes, they don’t change or influence the flavour of the whisky.”
To construct a barrel, long and narrow wooden boards, called staves, are arranged together inside two metal hoops. The wood is then warmed over an open fire to help bend the staves into shape. “You build a fire in the centre, then the radiant heat makes the wood more pliable,” says Quinn. Lastly, the formed barrel is reheated, again over the fire. “It’s like putting a piece of bread in a toaster,” says Quinn. “The radiant heat brings sugars [in the wood] to the surface. That’s where you get the colour and flavour for whisky.”
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John has been known to partake in bulrush harvesting too. At first, he figured the paddleboard was a useful vessel. But he soon learned otherwise. “I tried to push [the paddleboard] into all these bulrushes, and I was really struggling to go in any further,” says John, recalling one of his first bulrush harvests. “So I started just cutting on each side. And instead of repositioning, I thought I’d just reach a little further, and reach a little further, and then I just went straight into the bloody lake.” Having learned his lesson, he now opts for hip waders too.
Inside the cabin
John and Julie happened upon the Sleeman beer bottle lamp in a thrift store. It’s “challenging to display in your house, but perfect for the cottage,” says Cooper. It’s not the only item that tells a story—John has long-admired the British royal family and has taken many trips to the U.K. where he purchased the crown pillow. The painting was made by Julie. It’s a reproduction
of a photo of Quinn paddling on a whale-watching trip she took with the boys.
The cabin
John is an ardent flag collector. “If we’re entertaining guests, he’ll hang a meaningful flag for them when they arrive,” says Cooper. The collection includes an
original Newfoundland flag and a Conch Republic flag—John used to travel to the Florida Keys as a kid.
Inside the cabin
Save for the height of summer, there’s usually a fire going in the stone fireplace. It’s another tradition the Sleemans have carried over from the cottage to their business: a fire is almost always burning at the distillery’s cocktail bar in Guelph, Ont.
Not long after the bulrush harvest, the Sleeman family will find themselves gathering at the cottage for what they call “Wood Day.” “We are harvesting logs and things that have fallen over on the property all year long,” says Cooper. “In the fall, we do a splitting day where we’re all there, stacking wood and chatting.”
During the last Wood Day, one fallen tree caught the Sleemans’ interest. “There was a massive log that we put aside because Quinn wanted to take the wood and turn it into a barrel,” says Cooper. Typically, Quinn constructs his barrels from Canadian white oak, “which is rare from a Canadian whisky standpoint,” he says. “The majority are made from American oak trees.”
This Wood Day log, from an ash tree, will be part of an experimental barrel made of four different types of wood, inspired by a barrel that one of Quinn’s coopering mentors made years ago. “Right now, the only thing I’m missing is hickory,” says Quinn. “I have black cherry in the garage. I have a large supply of white oak, and now I have a log that I can cut up for some ash.” The combination of wood adds complexity to the flavours of the spirit aged inside, but Quinn isn’t entirely sure how the whisky he plans to age in it will turn out.
When Quinn and Cooper were younger, the family came up to their cottage every weekend, including in the winter for skiing. But as the boys grew older, made friends, joined sports teams, and headed to university, they visited the cottage less often. Now that the brothers are married (Quinn even proposed to his wife, Rebecca, on the dock), the cottage has once again become an important gathering place for the family.
A big highlight is the annual Turkey Bowl—a family football game, followed by a beer pong tournament in the garage. “Even Mom and Dad come and play with us,” says Quinn. With their wives, friends, and extended family members (John has two daughters from a previous marriage, one of which had three sons), there are upwards of 20 people joining for Thanksgiving.
On any given cottage weekend, the Sleemans are always talking, sometimes about their personal lives, but more often than not, about the family business. “Some of our best work is done here because we’re able to get out of the confined space and the pressure [of the distillery] and be in a more relaxed setting,” says Cooper. “You will not have dinner with the Sleemans and have a whole conversation go on without us talking about business. It’s our life.”
Most days, the family might not leave the dinner table until midnight because the conversation is so lively. “It’s a real opportunity for us to get together and have input from everyone,” says Cooper. And it’s always a knowledgable crew. Julie used to run the accounting department at Sleeman Breweries, while Rebecca, and Cooper’s wife, Victoria, both work in marketing.
The dinner table conversations may go even longer as of late, as the Sleemans have an ambitious goal for 2025: to get their spirits distributed nationwide.
At the moment, growing Spring Mill Distillery means long hours at work. John, Cooper, and Quinn will do meet-and-greets at local LCBOs. “We’re trying to introduce people to our brands. If we can get national distribution and things start to get rolling, maybe Quinn and I will actually get more time to be at the cottage,” says Cooper. “But luckily, there will always be logs that need to be chopped, dinner conversations to be had, and bulrushes to cut.”
This article was originally published in the Mar/Apr 2025 issue of Cottage Life.