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Loved ones pay tribute to man who died after alleged 17-beer visit to bar
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WOODSTOCK – The siblings of the man who died following a fall outside a Woodstock bar where provincial investigators allege he was served 17 beers are remembering him as a gentle soul who loved his children.
They also believe the circumstances around the death of Mike Goss at age 59 were more complex than what’s been suggested in the attention-grabbing allegations from officials with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario.
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The AGCO issued a statement in April noting it was seeking to suspend for 60 days the liquor licence of My Friends Place, a small bar at 19 Burtch St. in Woodstock, after a probe that alleges a patron was served 17 beers over four hours on Sunday Oct. 6, 2024. After leaving the bar, the man fell backwards and struck his head, later dying in hospital, the statement noted.
Mike Goss wasn’t named in the statement. But after being contacted by The Free Press, his older siblings – Sharon Ormston and Stan Goss – agreed to speak about the brother, father and expectant grandfather whose death they’re still mourning.
“To me, the true love of Michael’s — (his) number one love — was his three kids,” Stan Goss said of his younger brother, who was a powerlifter in his youth and a motorcycle enthusiast.
Sharon, seated with her brother at the kitchen table of her Woodstock home, quickly echoed Stan’s sentiment: “He loved his children.”
The conversation harkened back to past years in their hometown, London, where Stan fondly remembered spending time with his brother. Stan said he acted as a father figure to Mike in their younger years after their father’s early death at age 44, recollecting the pair’s inseparable bond.
“Michael and I had something from the start, when Michael was two (and) I was 14,” Stan said.
Stan remembered a time when he had saved up money to buy a high-handled bicycle with a banana seat and Mike would ride on the back.
Where Stan went, Mike went.
Years later, when that bicycle transitioned to a car, Mike was still a passenger, often along for the ride while his older brother drove.
Stan remembered: “I lost a lot of high school friends because, where I went, Michael went. Then when I got a car . . . we’d go down to the beach with buddies, and they’d say, ‘Are we taking him?’ Where I went, he went. For years, it was like that.”
When the brothers got older, Stan said they would go on road trips together, including a 2019 trek when he helped Mike move out west.
Mike had retired from manufacturing plant Leggett and Platt in London, where Sharon noted he was well-respected by his colleagues, before moving in 2019 to Spruce Grove, a city about 10 kilometres west of Edmonton. He moved there to work for a fibreoptic cable installation company owned by his other sister and her husband. Mike also spent time with his mother, who lived in Alberta.
After spending about four years out west, Sharon said Mike returned from Alberta because “he missed his children.”
“Then, just after he got home, he found out his daughter was expecting,” Sharon said. “(He was) over the moon.”
When Mike returned to Ontario in 2023, Sharon said he moved into her Woodstock home, where she was still healing after the untimely death of her husband Drew in 2022. Sharon said she was “grateful” for the time she spent with Mike as an adult.
“He just was good natured,” she said. “We’d have campfires and we’d talk and just remember things and talk about what we wanted in the future, and then I would cry.”
In what she called a testament to his work ethic, Sharon said Mike found employment at the Home Hardware in Woodstock just days after returning from Alberta. She also remembered Mike enjoying the time he spent with her young grandchildren “who just adored him” while he lived with her.
Mike had lived with Sharon for about a year when she was notified by Woodstock police some time after 11 p.m. on Oct. 6, 2024, that he was in Woodstock Hospital.
Sharon arrived at the hospital and, soon after, was joined by Stan, who drove from London. They were told by hospital staff that Mike was already “brain dead,” but despite Mike’s condition, he was taken by ambulance to University Hospital in London for some final tests.
“We were there until the end,” Sharon said. “And that was the underlying thing, that we were told that ‘Michael, yes had been drinking at the bar, and yes had fallen but that he had an accumulated thing.”
Stan and Sharon said they were told Mike’s death may have been the result of a brain aneurysm.
Sharon noted she and Stan were “supported in those thoughts by the doctors because there was no visible signs of head trauma from a fall. We based our healing on the fact that what happened to Michael was going to happen to Michael.”
Stan added: “It just happened to be at that bar.”
Mike died on Oct. 7, 2024, at University Hospital.
The AGCO alleges a patron was served 17 beers in a four-hour period on Oct. 6, 2024, at My Friends Place and they continued being served after appearing visibly intoxicated, the agency’s statement said. After leaving the bar, the man fell backwards outside the bar and struck his head, and he was transported to hospital and later died.
The agency issued a notice of proposal to suspend the bar’s licence to serve alcohol for 60 days after the probe into the alleged 17-beer incident.
The bar is owned by 80-year-old Mary Beattie. She had previously told The Free Press she wouldn’t appeal the agency’s decision, citing the legal costs. But AGCO officials say the bar has challenged the matter to the Licence Appeal Tribunal, an adjudicative body independent of the provincial agency.
When Beattie spoke with The Free Press, she disputed several allegations, including that a patron drank 17 beers – arguing he was buying drinks for others, too.
Stan and Sharon both acknowledged their brother would binge from time to time, but they believe his 17-beer tab would’ve included drinks for other patrons at the bar.
“I believe he paid for 17, but I don’t think he drank 17,” Sharon said as she detailed the pain of losing her younger brother.
“I had him (residing) for about a year with me, so that made this whole trauma very difficult,” Sharon said, noting Mike died just three weeks before the granddaughter he’d been excited to meet was born.
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