The Journal · The Brantford Club
The National Evenings: What a Club Gathered For in 1891
In the winter of 1890 to 1891, the National Club of Toronto held “National Evenings,” where leading Canadians read papers on the country’s purpose, and published them in 1891 as Maple Leaves. Seven years later, The Brantford Club opened at 98 George Street. The two facts belong in the same entry.
What did the men of a Canadian club actually gather for, in the decade The Brantford Club was founded? There is a published answer. Maple Leaves, printed by the National Club of Toronto in 1891, collects the papers read at its National Evenings through the winter before: a club not as a bar with armchairs, but as a room where a young country talked itself over. The Club that opened in Brantford on the last night of 1898 was formed inside that same weather.
What did a Canadian club evening look like in 1891?
A National Evening at the National Club of Toronto was a winter gathering at which an invited Canadian of standing read a paper, the members debated it, and the season’s papers went to the printer. The 1891 volume preserves the programme, and the range of it is the point: national aims, responsible government, the merchant marine, the idea of Canadian nationality itself. The club served as a civic instrument, a room where the country’s questions were given a table, a fire, and an evening apiece.
The Programme of 1890 to 1891
The Hope Printed in the Introduction
The National Club did not publish the papers to admire itself. Its introduction says the volume was ordered as a thank-you to the speakers and “in the hope that they might lead kindred or other organizations to spend some of their winter evenings in similar manner.” That sentence went out to the country in 1891. On December 31, 1898, five Brantford men, a Manufacturer, a Banker, a Publisher, a Barrister, and a Gentleman, opened a club of their own at 98 George Street, chartered “to establish and maintain a social club.” No minute book claims the one caused the other. But the hope and the answer sit seven years apart in the same country, and a reader may draw the line lightly for themselves.
The Same Instinct, Kept
The Brantford Club still runs on the 1891 instinct: a calendar of club evenings, dinners with something to talk about, and rooms where the city’s working people take a question apart over a table. The scale is Brantford’s rather than Toronto’s, which the house considers no loss; a smaller room hears everyone. The subjects have changed with the century. The shape of the evening, a table, a topic, and company worth keeping, has not needed to.
Toronto printed the hope in 1891; Brantford opened its own door on the last night of 1898.
Questions readers ask about the National Evenings
What were the National Evenings?
Winter gatherings of the National Club of Toronto in 1890 and 1891, at which invited Canadians read papers on national questions. The club published the papers in 1891 under the title Maple Leaves.
Who read papers at the National Evenings?
The 1891 volume includes George Grant, Principal of Queen’s University; J. G. Bourinot, Clerk of the House of Commons; Charles H. Tupper, Minister of Marine; and James Young, a former Treasurer of Ontario.
What does an 1891 Toronto club have to do with The Brantford Club?
The published introduction hoped that kindred organizations would spend their winter evenings the same way. The Brantford Club opened at 98 George Street on December 31, 1898, seven years later, and still keeps a calendar of club evenings.
Where can Maple Leaves be read today?
The full 1891 volume is public domain and digitized on the Internet Archive from the Canadiana microfiche collection, identifier cihm_11350.
Related: why people join a club like this · the Brantford those five men knew
The Brantford Club, 98 George Street, Brantford, Ontario N3T 2Y4 · Open in Google Maps
The evenings are still kept
The topics change; the table does not. If a chair at the Club’s evenings sounds like your kind of winter, asking is one email, and a person answers.
manager@thebrantfordclub.com · 519-752-0931 · Membership at the Club
