The Journal · The Brantford Club
What Membership Actually Gives You
The benefits of a private members’ club are concrete: a dining room that knows you, rooms for your meetings and your evenings, reciprocal doors in other cities, and standing in a house that keeps its records. At The Brantford Club, that house has been at 98 George Street since 1898.
Benefit lists are usually written to sell, so they inflate. This one is written from a club that keeps Minutes, so it does the opposite: four things membership actually gives, each one checkable against the Club’s own record, and a plain note about what this Journal will not list.
What are the benefits of joining a private members’ club?
The first benefit is the table. At The Brantford Club the kitchen is Executive Chef Eric Wasylenky’s, and a member’s lunch or supper is served in rooms kept for members and their guests, at a pace set by the conversation rather than the seating chart. The Club ruled as far back as 1911 that a member was never to be interrupted by the telephone; the kitchen holds the same view about hurrying a table.
The second is the house itself: the rooms at 98 George Street, from the dining room to the lounge with its uncovered fireplace, available for a member’s board meeting, client dinner, or celebration, in an Italianate house older than the City of Brantford.
Doors in other cities
The third benefit travels. Private members’ clubs honour one another’s members through reciprocal arrangements, and The Brantford Club maintains its own: a member in good standing here is received as a guest at affiliated clubs elsewhere. The idea is older than the paperwork; the Club’s 1901 Register page already shows guests arriving from Winnipeg, Rossland, Detroit, Montreal, and Toronto, and one from London, England.
Standing in a house that keeps its records
The fourth benefit is the hardest to buy anywhere else: standing. A member of The Brantford Club belongs to the roll that began with a Manufacturer, a Banker, a Publisher, a Barrister, and a Gentleman in 1898, in a house whose Minutes, Charter, and Visitors’ Register have been kept ever since. Institutions accumulate on their members’ behalf; that is what they are for. The accumulating here has been going on since 1898 and shows no sign of stopping.
Fees, categories, and the how-of-joining. Those are the Club’s to give, person to person, and the enquiry answers them privately. One email, and a person replies.
Questions the record answers
Is a private club membership worth it?
Worth follows use. A member who lunches, meets, and hosts at the Club is using a dining room, meeting rooms, and a network of reciprocal clubs on one membership; a member who never comes is buying a quiet conscience. The Club’s answer is its record: the house has been worth keeping since 1898.
What does The Brantford Club offer members?
Dining from Executive Chef Eric Wasylenky’s kitchen, the rooms of the house at 98 George Street for meetings and private occasions, reciprocal access to affiliated clubs in other cities, and membership in an institution that has kept its records since 1898.
What is a reciprocal club arrangement?
An agreement between private clubs to receive one another’s members as guests. A Brantford Club member travelling is welcomed at affiliated clubs elsewhere; visiting members from those clubs are received here, a courtesy the Visitors’ Register has recorded since the Club’s earliest years.
Sources: the Club’s centennial history for the 1911 Resolution, the Register page, and the Charter roll; the Club’s own pages for the chef and the reciprocal arrangements.
The house keeps good records
Some houses keep photographs. This one keeps Minutes, and it would be glad to show you. Ask, and a person answers.
manager@thebrantfordclub.com · 519-752-0931
