WINNIPEG, Manitoba - A bar that was once considered to be among the toughest in western Canada for fights will soon serve coffee and juice instead of beer and booze.

The new owner of the New Occidental Hotel says he plans to work with an aboriginal group to offer entertainment and employment services in the building and that his bar will be alcohol-free.

"There'll still be bars in the area for those who want a drink down here," Richard Walls said.

When the city briefly closed the bar in 2002 due to health-code violations, former bouncer Buzz Baizley wrote a letter to the Winnipeg Free Press capturing the character and brutality of the Ox.

"The Occidental was the last of the old-time, bucket-of-blood bars," he wrote. "Miners, truckers, railway men and drifters would all gravitate towards it when they hit town wanting a wild night. The Ox always provided wild times.

"I am sure that no patch of real estate in the West beheld more muggings, knifings, bar brawls and murders than that location at Logan and Main."

Taming the Ox: Infamous Canadian bar to soon serve coffee, not beer , continued