Calgary brewery, Citizen Brewery, has created a new brew in honour of Calgary Flames assistant general manager Chris Snow, who was diagnosed with ALS in June 2019. The Good Citizen is a juicy IPA 6.5% ABV where the majority of its proceeds will be donated to ALS Research.

More than two years later, Snow is going strong and still extremely active, most importantly, still able to play hockey with his two young kids.

“That’s everything because those days are really active and I can feel like myself and look to others like I’m essentially the same. That capacity to just do things really helps my spirit,” said Snow.

“It’s not the miracle we’re looking for, but it’s a miracle for sure.”

Together with his wife, Kelsie, the two have helped raise more than $500,000 through the Calgary Flames Foundation and its Snowy Strong campaign, along with several other community initiatives.

“It really does make a difference to know you have people pulling for you and caring about you, whether you know who they are or not, which speaks to the sense of community we have here in Calgary as a whole,” Kelsie said. “It’s just very honest for me and this is what helped me process and figure out what I was feeling and this notion that other people are getting something out of it means a lot to me.”

“I knew if I got this it was effectively a death sentence and a rapid one and to have no hope and then get that, it’s really an elation,” he said. “There’s the emotional challenge of what could happen next, which is greater than my physical challenge, but the fact I could do everything I could do before with the exception of eating is incredible.”

“Every day is so precious and that has driven us to make sure the way we act around the kids and the things we do with them are things they feel really good about and do them as if they were the last time we could,” said Snow.

“I can’t worry about that though, I can only control how I treat Kelsie, how I treat the kids and taking these days as slow as they continue and that’s exactly what we do.”

Head brewer at Citizen Brewer, Joe Fields, partnered with the Snow family to create the beer after hearing about their story and spotting a familiar image in a photo.

“I read an article on the Snows and strangely enough in the headline photo of them having dinner, I noticed they had a bunch of Citizen Brewery glasses at the table,” Field said.

“It turns out we had some mutual friends and we were just so inspired by their story.”

“I think that this is just something that gives people hope and humanity, especially hope in their fellow neighbours which is sort of where the name of the beer came from,” said Field. 

So far, 167 flats of 24 cans were created and more than half of them have been sold with the majority of proceeds all going towards ALS Research.