The Journal · The Brantford Club

The Granite Club vs The Brantford Club: The Cost Question

The Granite Club is a family, athletic, and social club at 2350 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, founded in 1875 as a curling club by its own history. The Brantford Club is a private business and social club in a house at 98 George Street, Brantford, since 1898. Neither club prints a membership figure on this page; each answers the question when asked, by telephone or email.

The search usually starts on a screen in Toronto: a membership page open, a figure found or half-found, and a person sitting back from the desk. If the Granite Club was the club you wanted, its own site gives the particulars plainly: 2350 Bayview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M2L 1E4, main club number 416-449-8713, with membership enquiries, information packages, and tours arranged through its membership team. It publishes no hours on those pages, and each visitor must be the invited guest of a member, by its own guest information. What follows is for the reader who typed the two names with a “vs” between them.

The Granite Club is a sports and family club that began in 1875, when, by its own account, a half-dozen men established an uptown curling facility at Chapel Street and St. Mary’s Street with a covered two-sheet rink; it now keeps its fourth home on Bayview Avenue overlooking the Don Valley. The Brantford Club is a private members’ club organized around a table and a working week, kept in an Italianate house of about 1855 at 98 George Street, over the road from the Court House in Brantford, since the door opened on December 31, 1898. One is a campus of pools, rinks, and courts; the other is a house with dining rooms and a kitchen under executive chef Eric Wasylenky. Of the roll, the Club’s own membership page says, “Membership is open to all.”

How much does The Granite Club cost compared with The Brantford Club?

No figure for either club appears on this page, by a rule of the house: no dollar amount for any club’s membership prints on this site, ours or a neighbour’s. The Granite Club’s membership page directs the cost conversation to its membership team and lists no membership categories on its public page. The membership page on George Street publishes an individual membership and a Corporate Membership and no fee beside either. Club pricing in Ontario is commonly built in three parts: a one-time entrance fee on joining, recurring dues billed through the year, and at some clubs a dining minimum, an amount spent at the table across a period. The Journal’s explainer on private club membership cost in Ontario walks through each part. The only figure that binds is the one a club quotes to the person asking, and at both clubs a person does the quoting.

Bayview Avenue, for the Family That Swims and Curls

If your household wants a place to swim on a Tuesday and curl on a Thursday, the Granite Club is the right club, and this page says so plainly. Its athletics page lists an aquatics complex with two 25-metre, six-lane pools under a retractable roof, an eight-sheet curling facility that dates the sport at the club to 1875, sixteen tennis courts with twelve enclosed for winter, squash and badminton courts, skating rinks, two gyms, and an indoor golf practice facility, all as its site puts it. Its dining page names the Elements Lounge and Grill, the Hearth Mediterranean Kitchen, and The 1875 Sports Pub and Terrace over the ravine. A family with children in swim lessons and a grandparent in the curling league gets a whole week out of one address. The house on George Street keeps no pool, no rink, and no court, and would not pretend to.

George Street, for the Week That Ends at a Table

The Brantford Club answers a different question, one asked by a person whose week is measured in lunches and dinners more than in laps. Since 1898 the Club has kept one house at 98 George Street, the Bown property per the Club’s centennial history, and the whole of the membership happens inside it. The dining room is where the framed Charter of July 16, 1898 hung. Executive chef Eric Wasylenky keeps the kitchen, with the Churchill Pork Chops on the cards, named for the guest who signed the Visitors’ Register on January 3, 1901, and Cocktail Fridays run in the 98 George Room. Meetings and dinners take the private rooms, each with a menu settled for the occasion. A member uses the house as a second address for the working week, and the reciprocal program receives them at more than 150 private clubs across Canada and around the world; the Journal’s page on reciprocal club membership explains how the letter of introduction works. What a private members’ club is comes down to standing: the staff know your table, your guests, and your habits.

The Granite Club vs The Brantford Club, in One Table

Every row is taken from each club’s own site. The fee row reads the same for both, and the note beneath says why.

The Arithmetic of a Campus and the Arithmetic of a House

The Journal’s cost explainer makes the point for golf, and it holds for any club built on ground: a course or a sports campus is expensive to keep, and the entrance fee and dues at such clubs commonly run well beyond what a city club asks. The Granite Club’s athletics page is a list of what its dues maintain: the retractable roof over the pools, the clay courts enclosed for winter, the Toptracer stations in the indoor golf facility. The membership page at 98 George Street is a shorter list, because the house is the whole of it. A person who sat back from a Toronto screen was, most often, looking at the price of a campus. The price of a house is a different conversation, and the Journal’s page on the city club and the country club draws the same line closer to home, between the course on Ava Road and the house on George Street.

What gets asked first

Sources: the Granite Club’s own home, membership, athletics, dining, contact, and guest information pages; the Club’s membership page and centennial history (privately printed, ca. 1998); the Journal’s register of private clubs in Ontario. Thirty such entries are kept on one page of comparisons.