The Journal · The Brantford Club

Rossini Lodge vs The Brantford Club: The Hall and the Table

Rossini Lodge is the Italian-Canadian lodge at 140 Grey Street, Brantford, reached at 519 304 1080 or info@rossinilodge.ca, with a hall its members finished in June 1958. The Brantford Club is the city’s private business and social club at 98 George Street, kept since 1898. One roll is organized around a community; the other around a table.

Brantford keeps more than one kind of club, and it keeps two of them under their own roofs. Rossini Lodge, by its own site, is Lodge No. 18 of the Order Sons of Italy of Canada, organized on November 23, 1953, named for the composer Gioachino Rossini, and housed since 1958 in Rossini Hall on Grey Street, with working hours listed for Wednesday to Sunday afternoons and hall enquiries taken at rentals@rossinilodge.ca. The Brantford Club is a members’ club kept at 98 George Street, incorporated by Letters Patent on July 16, 1898 for a purpose its Charter gives in seven words: “to establish and maintain a social club.” For a family’s own occasion in a hall that belongs to that family’s community, the lodge is the room, and it was raised for exactly that.

Rossini Lodge vs The Brantford Club: What Each Roll Is For

A roll is the list of people a house keeps, and these two rolls are kept for different reasons. Rossini Lodge’s site gives its purposes as service and charity, community involvement, and heritage, the last worded as the promotion and preservation of the Italian language, culture, and traditions in this country. The lodge on Grey Street is a community before it is anything else, and its members built the hall for that community’s own occasions.

The Brantford Club’s roll is kept for a table and a working week. On a day in May 1898 five Brantford men sat down to plan it: Charles Waterous of the Waterous Engine Works, Jeffery Hale of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, Ralph Henry Reville, who published the Courier, Alfred John Wilkes, a barrister, and Herbert Rushton Yates. The Charter that followed gave the purpose in one clause, “to establish and maintain a social club,” and the centennial history records that the framed Charter hung in the dining room. The roll has been growing at 98 George Street since the door opened on December 31, 1898, and the Club’s own four words on who belongs are “Membership is open to all.” The Journal’s entry on what a private members’ club is gives the category in the Club’s own terms.

Can you belong to Rossini Lodge and The Brantford Club at the same time?

Nothing either house publishes prevents it. Rossini Lodge says membership begins with a printed admission form sent by fax or mail to its Recording Secretary, and that the lodge contacts you from there. The Brantford Club says asking is one email to manager@thebrantfordclub.com or a call to 519-752-0931, and a person answers. Belonging in more than one place is an old habit in this city: many of the Club’s own members hold a membership at the Brantford Golf & Country Club beside their town one. Someone whose family was among the fifty sworn in at the Oddfellows’ Hall in 1934, and whose clients lunch downtown, has a reason for each address, because the two rolls ask different things of a week. Why Brantford keeps a private club is its own entry in the Journal. Why it keeps a lodge is answered on Grey Street.

The Lodge on Grey Street

Rossini Lodge tells its own history on its home page, and the dates here are the lodge’s own. The Order Sons of Italy was founded in North America in 1905. Brantford’s Italian community joined the Order in Ontario in 1934 and named its club Pontinia Lodge, inaugurated at the Oddfellows’ Hall that September with fifty men and women sworn in; internment and the Second World War interrupted its activities around 1940. On November 23, 1953 the community organized again, through the Order Sons of Italy of Canada, as Rossini Lodge No. 18. Four years of planning and fundraising followed, the building of the new hall began in 1957, and Rossini Hall at 140 Grey Street was finished in June 1958, with a two-floor addition to the rear in 1965. The site records contributions to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Brantford among the lodge’s charitable work and gives its motto as Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality. That is a roll built around a heritage and a hall. For the weddings and the celebrations of life of that community, the hall on Grey Street is the room, and no page on George Street would argue otherwise.

The Club on George Street

The Brantford Club is a private members’ club, a dining room and private rooms in a house older than the Club itself. The Italianate residence at 98 George Street was built around 1855, before the City of Brantford was incorporated, and was the residence of Dr. John Y. Bown, a physician and Member of Parliament across the Confederation years. The young Club bought it for $4,500.00 and opened the door on a bitter cold New Year’s Eve, warmed, the centennial history says, by fireplaces and refreshments. Today members lunch there, meet after work, and sit down to themed dinners from executive chef Eric Wasylenky’s kitchen, with the Churchill Pork Chops on the cards and Cocktail Fridays in the 98 George Room; the private rooms hold members’ own meetings and dinners, and a Corporate Membership gives a company its own place on the roll. A lodge is built around a heritage it means to keep alive. This house is built around a table the working week fills, and has filled since 1898.

Where Each Is, and How to Reach It

Both addresses are in Brantford, and each house publishes its own way in. The rows below are as each site gives them, and a telephone call to either house settles anything a page leaves open; The Brantford Club keeps no published hours, since a private club keeps its own.

One roll raised a hall on Grey Street in 1958; the other has kept a table on George Street since 1898.

The usual questions

Sources: Rossini Lodge’s own site, its home page history and its contact, membership, book hall, and events pages, for everything said here about the lodge; The Brantford Club’s membership page and About the Club; the Journal’s entry on who founded the Club; and the Club’s centennial history for the Charter, the Letters Patent, the Register, and the Minutes. The Brantford Club, compared gathers every entry of this kind in one place.