Westmount Lawn Bowling Club

History

James Brown

James Brown was born in 1847 in Dumfrieshire in southern Scotland. From an early age he was intensely interested in the pastime of lawn bowling, various versions of which had been popular throughout Britain for hundreds of years. e began to stress the need for a Scottish national authority to codify the rules and to regulate the game. Brown’s persistent lobbying efforts led to the formation of the Scottish Lawn Bowling Association, which started operating in 1874 with a membership of 122 local clubs, and James Brown as its first Secretary. Brown was not only the prime mover in organizing the Association, but he also wrote a ”Manual on Bowling,” which codified the rules and etiquette of the Scottish game.

Formation of the Club

In August 1901, three of these Scots - James Brown, James Baillie, and James Rodgers held a meeting at the Municipal Offices to consider the formation of a lawn bowling club. It was an idea that they had been kicking around for some time, and Mr Baillie reported on exploratory discussions about leasing a suitable piece of level ground at the northwest corner of Sherbrooke Street and Kensington Avenue. Mr Brown had investigated the procurement of sand, turf and equipment needed for the preparation and development of a bowling green.

At a public meeting on 6 September, a provisional committee was appointed to get the project off the ground, and the first formal meeting of the Club took place on 28 May, 1902. A Board of Directors was elected and it was empowered to arrange for a Clubhouse to be built at a cost not exceeding $500.

Following a flurry of preparation, the opening of the Westmount Lawn Bowling Club, originally set for mid June, had to be postponed ”on account of the serious illness of His Majesty King Edward VII”. Fortunately, the Royal patient made a rapid recovery, and the opening ceremony took place on Saturday 28 June, 1902, thus came into being the very first Scottish-style lawn bowling club in the Province of Quebec.

Sadly, founding President James Brown enjoyed only two seasons of bowling on his beloved Kensington Green. He passed away on 10 December, 1904 at the early age of 57 years.

The Ladies - God Bless ’Em

From its origins and for many years to come, Westmount Lawn Bowling Club stubbornly remained a strictly male-dominated institution. Oh yes, from the very outset the ladies were allowed to come along on Saturdays to serve afternoon tea (and doubtless cakes and crumpets) to their weary menfolk on the Club verandah.

At the Annual Meeting of 1908, Secretary Willie Brown came up with a daring suggestion. He remarked on ”an appreciable growth of interest on the part of the ladies”, and suggested for consideration that ladies be permitted to take part in the game ”as it is certainly better adapted for them than many of the sports they have taken up”.

A noisy debate ensued, and the subject remained under ”active discussion”. Another 14 years were to pass before - at the Annual General Meeting of 1922 - a Motion was carried that ”this Club approves the formation of a Ladies’ Bowling Club, and it lends its assistance thereto”. However, no action followed, and four years later the resolution was rescinded. In 1928

the resolution was adopted once again. Yet it was not until 4 June, 1935 that an open meeting was called, inviting the wives of Members to form a Ladies’ Branch, and so, after 33 years of careful consideration, the ladies were officially accorded the privilege and pleasure of participating in lawn bowling. Even so, the two Clubs remained quite separate entities, each with its own President and executive. Furthermore, when extensions were made to provide limited accommodation for meeting the ladies’ needs, there was no connecting door between the men’s and women’s sides of the Clubhouse.

In 1940, the Executive conceded that mixed games could be played on Saturday afternoons, but specified that male members could play separately should they wish to do so.

The club disappears

One morning in August 1996, Westmount Lawn Bowling Club actually did disappear from the face of the earth. A bulldozer moved in and reduced the wooden clubhouse to matchwood in a matter of minutes. The splintered fragments were borne away as garbage. Then a massive excavator tore up the>-precious greens and dug a gaping hole 30 feet deep. Turf that had been nurtured with tender loving care for some 90 years was shoveled into trucks and carted away for landfill.

A suitable site for a much-needed electricity sub-station. was searched for until somebody came up with a brilliant idea: why not raze the rickety old Clubhouse, excavate the greens and build an underground substation?

And why not then erect a replica of the original Club House, and restore the greens to their former smooth glory? The bizarre idea caught on surprisingly quickly. The City Council, led by an enthusiastic Mayor Peter Trent, swiftly moved into action. Plans were prepared, promises of federal and provincial grants were obtained, and in the ensuing’ two years a near-miracle occurred.

By 1998, anybody passing by the Bowling Club for the first time since 1996 wouldn’t have seen any change - except that the roof no longer sagged, and the cedar tiles seem to have been freshly painted. The long low pavilion still stood astride impeccably tended lawns, as it seemed to have done for nearly a century. But while the brand new Clubhouse may have looked antique from the outside, inside it had become a modern facility, with fully equipped kitchen, tiled floor and locker rooms. A handsome brick fireplace, in keeping with its predecessor, was hugged by wooden benches at one end of a large gathering area, in turn flanked on both sides by old-fashioned windows.

Awards

Through the years the Club has built up a collection of trophies, the awards of which are keenly contested each season. Five of them bear the names of past Presidents:

The Willie Brown Trophy The Dora Wimmer Trophy The Marg Ross Trophy The Maude Leadbetter Trophy The Fred Dawson Trophy

The most coveted and prestigious of these is the Willie Brown Trophy - prestigious because it honours the name of one who exercised more influence over the life and times of the Westmount Lawn Bowling Club than any other single person.

Our Blind and Visually Impaired Bowlers

In the early 90’s, the Westmount Lawn Bowling Club started a program for blind and visually impaired lawn bowlers. This group was started by Joan MacKay of Beaconsfield and John Carlin of Verdun. It took the name of Quebec Blind Lawn Bowling Association (QBLBA), with Irene Lambert as its first president. In 1995, the national blind lawn bowling competition came to Quebec with fifty bowlers. As a medal winner, a member of the Westmount Lawn Bowling Club, Ron Pelletier and his director Shirley Ahern went on to his first international competition in England. He has since taken a 4th place in the Paralympic games of Atlanta in 1996, a silver medal in South Africa in 1998, a 3rd place in Israel in 2000, a 6th place in the World Blind Bowls held in Scotland in August of 2001 as well as a bronze medal in the World Blind Bowls held in Malaysia in 2004.

Lawn bowling for the visually impaired began in Scotland over thirty years ago. In July of 1998, the Westmount Lawn Bowling Club was one of the venues when a group of Scottish bowlers came to compete against the QBLBA.

For the Westmount Lawn Bowling Club, this is an ongoing project. With the assistance of two of our members, Helena and Sidney Langdon, we continue to offer our facilities to blind and visually impaired bowlers every Monday night throughout the summer

If you have an interest in lawn bowling and would like more information about the Westmount Lawn Bowling Club Call:

Tobi Klein at: 514-931-0320