You can access a scrollable Google Map of the clubs of Vancouver by clicking HERE.
Canada’s third-largest city, and its major city on the west coast, Vancouver is a unique fusion of the Angliophile and the north American, with its own strong club culture. With the area already inhabited over 8,000 years ago, Europeans began mapping the region from the 1790s (including Captain George Vancouver, after whom the city was named nearly a century later), with large numbers of settlers arriving in the aftermath of the California Gold Rush. By 1870, the township of Granville had been established (named after the British Colonial Secretary, Lord Granville), and in 1886, it was incorporated as a city Vancouver. The first trains from the Canadian Pacific Railway arrived within a year. And from the very outset, clubs were a vital dimension of this rapidly-growing city.
Not covered in this post is nearby Vancouver Island, which has a club culture of its own, including a yacht club, several historic golf clubs, and the venerable Union Club of British Columbia, which predates the clubs of Vancouver, having been established in 1879.
Vancouver’s oldest club is the appropriately named Vancouver Club, founded in 1891, just five years after the city’s consolidation. Originally meeting in the Hotel Vancouver, it was incorporated in 1894 - the year it also opened its first clubhouse - and it has been in its present purpose-built clubhouse since 1914, designed by Sharp & Thompson. In 1986, the Club absorbed the University Club of Vancouver, which dated to 1911, but had since closed down. Having been originally founded as a gentlemen’s club, the Club admitted women as full members from 1993. In 2000, the Club also absorbed the Georgian Club, a ladies’ club that had been founded in 1910. The Club reportedly has some 1,000 members.
Next door on West Hastings Street is the skyscraper now housing Vancouver’s second-oldest city club, the Terminal City Club, aimed at the city’s business community. With roots dating to 1892, when it was thw Metropolitan Club, it was founded under its current name in 1899. It has occupied the same site since 1912. In 1996, it demolished its old clubhouse, building in its place a 30-storey tower, which opened two years later. The Club now runs a public-facing hotel and office block taking up most of the same skyscrapers, with the lower floors set aside for the Club, including extensive athletics facilities. An English pub is at the rear of the building. Like the Vancouver Club, it was originally a gentlemen’s club, but began electing women as members in 1991. The Club has some 2,100 members.
The early city clubs of downtown Vancouver had been founded as gentlemen’s clubs; so in 1907, the women of the city’s most affluent southern suburb of Granville founded the University Women’s Club of Vancouver, just off Shaughnessy Park. As the Club’s name implies, it shared the founding ideals of what was then the University Club for Ladies (and is now the University Women’s Club) in London, and the international network of Lyceum Clubs, in bringing together emancipated women around the theme of higher education. It currently has some 450 members.
Vancouver’s remaining major clubs are all themed around sporting endeavours of one kind or another. Hard to miss, across its clubhouse and two marinas along the coastline, is the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, founded in 1903. This fits into a lively wider north American culture of yacht clubs, north and south of the border. The Club currently numbers some 5,000 members, including 505 sailing yachts and 1077 power yachts berthed across both its moorings.
Across the harbour in North Vancouver is the Burrard Yacht Club, founded in 1932. This had evolved from the old Vancouver Rowing Club, a late 19th century creation which was itself the merger of the Burrard Inlet Rowing Club and the Vancouver Inlet Boating Club. It moved to its present location in 1977.
The city’s remaining sports-themed clubs are decidedly more land-bound. The oldest is the Vancouver Lawn Tennis & Badminton Club, a venerable athletics club founded in 1897. Located three blocks west of the University Women’s Club, overlooking Granville Park, it evolved out of a croquet and tennis club that met in the grounds of the Hotel Vancouver, and moved to its present site in the 1920s.
The oldest of the city’s country clubs is the Vancouver Golf Club, originally founded in 1910 as The British Columbia Golf Club Ltd, initially with a modest 9-hole course. Two years later, it became the Vancouver Golf and Country Club, assuming its current name in 1941. It is now set within 176 acres of woodland.
Almost as old is the Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club, founded in 1911, and now overlooking the Strait of Georgia and Vancouver Island. It was originally created as the Shaughnessy Heights Golf Club, the brainchild of Richard Marpole, the Canadian Pacific Railway’s General Superintendant for the Pacific Region. In its earliest days, it boasted the only 18-hole course in Vancouver. In 1923, US President Warren G. Harding played a round on the course, but complained of exhaustion. He died in San Francisco a week later.
Also overlooking the coast, to the east, is the Point Grey Golf & Country Club, founded in 1922 as a more modest 9-hole course, by a group of Scottish golfing enthusiasts. It has since expanded into its present facility.
To the north of North Vancouver is the Capilano Golf & Country Club, established in 1937, with the clubhouse completed two years later, and officially opened by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on a Royal visit. Its site spans 160 acres, and includes two lakes. The Club has some 1,400 members.
Southwest of the Capilano Golf & Country Club is the Hollyburn Country Club, occupying 49 acres with a mountainside view of downtown Vancouver. Founded in 1957, it has some 7,900 members.
Far to the east of North Vancouver is the Seymour Golf & Country Club, founded in 1953. The Club prides itself on its community involvement in North Vancouver, including a range of charitable endeavours and environmental stewardship initiatives.
The most recent of the major sporting clubs is the Arbutus Club, founded over 60 years ago, in 1964. It was the brainchild of Mrs. E.V. ‘Billie’ Mitchell, and is very much a family-oriented athletics club.
Further reading
Paul L. Bissley, The History of the Vancouver Club (Vancouver: Vancouver Club, 1971).
Reginald H. Roy, The Vancouver Club: First Century, 1889-1989 (Vancouver: Vancouver Club, 1989).
David Ricardo Williams, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: A History of Vancouver’s Terminal City Club (Vancouver: Terminal City Club, 1992).
(Unless otherwise stated, all photographs of clubs are credited to their respective club’s websites.)
You can view the full and varied backlog of Clubland Substack articles, by clicking on the index below.
Index
Articles are centred around several distinct strands, so the below contains links to the main pieces, sorted by theme.