The Journal · The Brantford Club

Whistle Bear vs The Brantford Club: Where the Company Golf Day Ends

Whistle Bear Golf Club, at 1316 Dickie Settlement Road in Cambridge, is a golf course with a clubhouse that hosts tournaments as full-course bookings, by its own account. The Brantford Club, at 98 George Street since 1898, is a private members’ club with dining rooms and a boardroom, set for the client dinner that follows a day on the grass.

Whistle Bear Golf Club is at 1316 Dickie Settlement Road, Cambridge, Ontario N3H 4R8. Its own site lists (519) 650-BEAR (2327), office hours of 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Thursday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday to Sunday, a Request Information form for tournaments, and a separate enquiry form for meetings and events. Whoever typed the other name first wants the golf club, that is where to go. If you came with a company golf day to place and a dinner to settle afterward, the two addresses divide the day between them.

A company golf day has two halves, and most planners book them as one. The first half is spent on the grass: the shotgun start, the cart, the par five that settles the office bragging rights. The second half is spent at a table, where the deal gets talked through and the partner who does not golf finally joins the day. Whistle Bear Golf Club is built for the first half. The Brantford Club has kept a table for the second half at the corner of George and Nelson Streets since 1898, and its corporate page lists Cambridge among the places its hosts drive in from.

What Whistle Bear Publishes About the Golf Day

Whistle Bear Golf Club describes itself on its own pages as a private golf club in Cambridge affiliated with Pearle Hospitality, with a 40,000-square-foot clubhouse and holes named for the land’s earlier owners. Its tournament page says external tournaments are hosted as full-course bookings with food and beverage packages, and that dates are limited; the enquiry form asks for a player count and a tournament year. Its meetings and events page lists four rooms with capacities by its own listing, the Forestview Room at 350, the Grandview Room at 170, the Rose Room at 150, and the Woodland Room at 80, with A/V support and parking. Vair’s Restaurant & Bar in the clubhouse is open 11 a.m. until dusk, as it publishes them. Whistle Bear is also a wedding venue, with a Garden Chapel under a retractable roof, and for a wedding it is the answer; the Club makes no case for one. For the tournament of 144 players and the reception under the same roof, Whistle Bear is the answer as well.

Does The Brantford Club have a golf course?

No. The Brantford Club is a private members’ club in an Italianate house at 98 George Street, downtown, in the Court House’s shadow, and there is no fairway on the property. Its members play their own annual golf tournament as an event on the Club’s calendar, held on a course elsewhere, and the city’s course tradition is kept by Brantford Golf & Country Club on the Grand. The Journal has already compared the two kinds of club in Brantford Golf & Country Club vs The Brantford Club, and that piece carries the argument, so this one leaves it there. What the house holds is the table the golf day ends at: a dining room, the 98 George Room with its own door, a boardroom, and the Bateson Lounge, one kitchen under executive chef Eric Wasylenky, per the corporate page.

The Dinner at 98 George Street

The Brantford Club formed in May 1898, was incorporated by Letters Patent on July 16, 1898, per its centennial history, and opened its door on December 31 of that year in the former residence of Dr. John Y. Bown, a house of about 1855. The Charter that hung in the dining room set the purpose in seven words, “to establish and maintain a social club,” and the rooms have been kept to it since. A company that books the dining room for the evening after its golf day gets a room held for that party, with the kitchen cooking to a menu planned around the occasion and dietary requirements confirmed in writing beforehand, so the vegetarian in the last foursome is expected at seat nine. The terms go on paper before you commit: the deposit, the cancellation window, and what the final number includes. Working the room once the plates are down is covered in how to work a room.

Whistle Bear vs The Brantford Club

The comparison sorts by the half of the day. The left column is from Whistle Bear’s own site, the right from the corporate and policies pages on George Street, and a head count for any room at the house is left to your event coordinator.

The Day and the Dinner, Booked Apart

One building is one phone call, which is the case for booking both halves there. The case for two is what each half needs. The grass needs a course that will give a company the whole property for a day, which is what Whistle Bear’s tournament page says it does. The dinner needs a door that closes on eight people and a kitchen that has known the menu for a week, which is what The Brantford Club keeps on George Street, in a room with no cart traffic outside the window.

Dress for the Fairway and the Dining Room

A golf day changes clothes at the trunk of the car. Whistle Bear keeps a guidelines page on its own site for the course. The club policies page at 98 George Street sets the dining room at smart casual, with collarless t-shirts, shorts, ripped jeans, and hats not permitted. The collared golf shirt passes and the shorts do not, so the trunk needs trousers for anyone coming straight from the eighteenth. The phrases are decoded in the dress code, decoded.

Settled in a paragraph each

Sources: Whistle Bear Golf Club’s own home, tournament, meetings and events, dining, and about pages; The Brantford Club’s corporate events and club policies pages; and the Club’s centennial history (privately printed, ca. 1998) for the Charter and the Letters Patent. For the hotel, the hall, or the club you meant instead, the register of comparisons has an entry.