The Journal · The Brantford Club
The Kerby House: The Hotel Where the Club Was Voted Into Being
The Kerby House was Brantford’s great hotel of the nineteenth century, a Colborne Street landmark that once extended nearly the full length of its block. In 1898 it hosted the organizing meeting of The Brantford Club, where E. M. Shadbolt was elected first President, and in 1917 it served the civic luncheon after the Bell Memorial’s unveiling.
Every city of the era had one hotel that held its occasions, and F. Douglas Reville’s 1920 county history names Brantford’s without hesitating: “It is the Kerby House which has had the most notable history.” This entry gives the old hotel its due, because one of the occasions it held was the founding vote of the Club whose Journal you are reading.
What was the Kerby House in Brantford?
The Kerby House was the hotel on Colborne Street that Brantford reached for whenever the day mattered: Reville’s pages show it extending “nearly the full length” of its block, its hall licensed for gatherings, a sheriff among its residents, and a merchant keeping store and residence under its roof. It was founded by James Kerby, whose brother Joseph T. Kerby also appears in the record, and it stood opposite the landmarks of the city’s first generation. When Brantford needed a room bigger than a parlour and grander than a meeting hall, the Kerby House was the address.
A day in 1898: the ballot at the Kerby House
The Kerby House earned its line in the Club’s own records in 1898, when the organizing meeting of The Brantford Club met there and the ballot chose the first officers: E. M. Shadbolt, recently appointed manager of the Bank of Montreal, as first President, with George H. Wilkes as first Honorary Secretary. The five charter men had signed the roll in May; the Kerby House is where the Club acquired its government. The full founding story, Charter, house, and opening night, has its own entry. The Club got its permanent home at 98 George Street that same year, and the hotel went back to holding everyone else’s occasions.
Vice-royalty at the table
The Kerby House kept its standing well into the next century. When the Duke of Devonshire came to Brantford on October 24, 1917 to unveil the Bell Memorial, the civic luncheon that followed was served at the Kerby House, and Reville records an earlier vice-regal visit lunching there too. A hotel that fed Governors General and elected club presidents belongs in any honest account of how this city entertained itself, which is precisely why the Journal keeps one.
The Club was born in a hotel and has spent its whole life at home.
Questions the record answers
Where was the Kerby House?
On Colborne Street in downtown Brantford, where Reville’s 1920 history describes it extending nearly the full length of its block, opposite the buildings of the city’s first generation.
What happened to Brantford’s connection with the Kerby House?
The record this Journal keeps is the Club’s: the organizing meeting of 1898, where the first officers were elected, and the civic luncheon after the Bell Memorial unveiling in 1917. The hotel’s own later story belongs to the city’s historians.
Why does The Brantford Club write about a hotel?
Because the Club was voted into being there in 1898, before it bought the house at 98 George Street. Institutions should name the rooms they came from; this Journal does it on principle.
Sources: F. D. Reville, History of the County of Brant (1920), for the Kerby House’s standing, its block, its people, and the 1917 luncheon; the Club’s centennial history for the organizing meeting and the first election.
What the ballot at the Kerby House set in motion is told in the founding of The Brantford Club.
