The Journal · The Brantford Club

Piper Arms vs The Brantford Club: A Public Pub and a Private One

Piper Arms is a public pub at 299 Wayne Gretzky Parkway, Unit 7, Brantford, open seven days by its own listing. The Brantford Club is a private club, its door at 98 George Street, kept since 1898, with a pub of its own inside the house and a bar whose stock the Minutes of 1909 record brand by brand.

Piper Arms keeps its Brantford listing short, so it goes first: 299 Wayne Gretzky Parkway, Unit 7, Brantford, Ontario N3R 8A5, telephone 519-304-0983, open at eleven Monday through Thursday until midnight, until one on Friday, Saturday from nine in the morning until one, and Sunday from nine until midnight, with tables booked through its site. Anyone who searched the name for a pint tonight can stop here. The people who typed both names with a “vs” between them want something else: how a public pub on the Parkway and a private house on George Street differ, and whose stool is whose.

Brantford has its public houses, and it has one private house on George Street with a pub inside it. The bar at Piper Arms is the first kind: a tap list published for the Brantford room, a pub kitchen behind it, and a stool for anyone who comes in off the Parkway. The bar at 98 George Street is the second kind. Its stock was entered in the Minutes of 1909 at ten cents a drink, and the house around it has belonged to the roll of members and their guests since 1898. A Saturday with the game on, a pint in hand, and whoever turns up is a public pub’s night, and Piper Arms keeps Saturday hours for exactly that, nine in the morning until one, as it publishes them. The house on George Street keeps a different Saturday.

Does The Brantford Club have a pub?

Yes. The Brantford Club keeps a pub inside the house at 98 George Street, and its published policies say what kind of room it is: casual, with ripped jeans and hats not permitted, beside a dining room that asks for smart casual. The bar and the cellar sit next to the dining room and keep wines, spirits, and craft beers chosen to go with what executive chef Eric Wasylenky is cooking, and Cocktail Fridays are held in the 98 George Room. The Club’s centennial history, as the Journal’s entry on the bar ledger of 1909 reads it, preserves the Minutes that priced a drink at ten cents and the Secretary’s reply to one enquiry: “You enquire about Rum? That was not a drink we would serve.” The stools around that bar have belonged to the same roll ever since.

Piper Arms, on the Parkway

Piper Arms is a public pub at 299 Wayne Gretzky Parkway, Unit 7, Brantford, one of thirteen Ontario rooms on its own locations page. By its own site it serves brunch, lunch, and dinner, a long list of cocktails and beer, pub favourites and British fare, wings by the pound, and a children’s menu. The Brantford room has a drinks card of its own, and the taps on it run from domestic lagers through Guinness, Stella Artois, Creemore Springs, and Mill St. Organic to a local craft line the card leaves to the server. The site publishes no dress code and no calendar of live music or trivia, so this entry claims none for it.

The Bar at 98 George Street

The bar at The Brantford Club sits beside the dining room of a house the Club has kept since 1898. The 1909 list in the centennial history is short: John Jamesons XXX for Irish, Black & White and Haig & Haig for Scotch, Gooderham & Worts for Canadian, Guinness for stout, and Bixell for lager because Brantford brewed its own. The same history describes the members of those years as having “enjoyed a pleasant acquaintance with the bottle,” and it closes on the instruction that new members must “patronize the bar which supports the Club.” That sentence is the whole economics of a members’ pub: the room is kept by the people who drink in it. Guinness, on the Club’s 1909 list, is on the Piper Arms tap card today.

Piper Arms vs The Brantford Club, Row by Row

Piper Arms vs The Brantford Club is a public pub on the Parkway against a private club on George Street with a pub inside it.

Whose Stool It Is

The difference between the two bars is the roll. A stool at Piper Arms is anyone’s between opening and closing, which is the point of a public house. A stool at 98 George Street belongs to a member, and to the guest a member brings. The Journal’s entry on the third place puts pubs and clubs in the same family of rooms, and most such rooms vanished with a lease while this one held the deed. The roll shows up in small rules. On May 28, 1911 the Committee ruled that no member was to be interrupted by the telephone, the boy taking the caller’s number on a tab, and the rule is still on the books as the policy on silenced phones. A public bar cannot make that rule for a stranger. A members’ bar makes it for the whole room, because the whole room agreed to it.

A Pint on the Parkway, a Pint on George Street

The Saturday that belongs to Piper Arms is the one conceded above: the game, a pint, and a kitchen open from nine in the morning. The evening that belongs to the Club is Cocktail Fridays in the 98 George Room, or a weeknight drink beside the dining room before Eric Wasylenky’s kitchen sends out the Churchill Pork Chops. Neither room does the other’s work. A regular at Piper Arms who has started to want a bar where the stool is theirs on a Tuesday, where the same faces hold the same corner, and where the stock was worth entering in the Minutes as far back as 1909, is describing 98 George Street. The book’s word for that arrangement is patronage: the members patronize the bar, and the bar keeps the house.

Questions with two answers

Sources: the Piper Arms locations page, drinks card, and menu pages on piperarms.com; the Club’s house policies, membership page, and menu page; the Club’s centennial history, as the Journal reads it, for the 1909 Minutes and the rum line. Both codes are decoded in the Journal’s entry on the dress code. A reader weighing a different room will find it in the register of rooms and rolls compared.