[1] Three years later, Carling was purchased by Toronto business tycoon E. P. Taylor, who merged it into his Canadian Breweries Limited (CBL), which grew to be the world's largest brewing company.

Under Taylor, Black Label was promoted as CBL's flagship brand and went on to become the first beer to be brewed on a mass international scale,[1] becoming particularly popular in Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

In response to a shift in popular taste away from ale, Carling added a three-storey lager plant to their main London, Ontario, brewery in 1877.

They first tried just brewing Carling's Red Cap Ale, but sales were too slow to maintain the brewery, and didn't climb until the introduction of Black Label lager.

The strategy worked, and the next several decades led to rapid growth and expansion for the brewery and the Carling Black Label brand.

In 1979, after several years of intense pressure from Miller and Anheuser-Busch, Carling was bought out by the Heileman Brewing Co. of La Crosse, Wisconsin.

This was partly due to the fact that, at 5.5%, it had more alcohol than the other brands of beer that generally had 5.0%, as noted in the popular advertising catch phrase "only hard working students deserve an extra 0.5 percent".

The slogan was changed to "Black Labour, White Guilt", which led to an unsuccessful trademark infringement lawsuit from SABMiller.