The club scene in Canada is definitely not the same as in Europe - mainly due to distance and population density.

During the Fischer boom, Montreal had a great club setup - YMCA's and boys' clubs formed chess clubs, and companies were liberal with money - supporting strong clubs at companies such as Sun Life, CN, CP, and CBC. It was no problem getting 15 or 20 teams out for the annual event. The matches were traditionally held on the club premises - but eventually all matches were held in the CBC cafeteria (meals available 24 hours a day). Unfortunately - security restrictions put an end to that and the team events (and the clubs - along with company funding) gradually disappeared.

The Montreal club scene (I define a chess "club" as one with an elected executive, and an organized schedule) is negligible now, with probably two entities meeting the above definitions:

Ahuntsic (I assume it has an elected executive) meets once a week and has regular events - although only two or three annually that are FQE rated.

The Montreal Chess Club has an "elected executive" - but I have been to the annual meetings, and usually only 3 or 4 people show up. It has 158 "members": http://www.fqechecs.qc.ca/cms/organi...cs-de-montreal provides a link to the membership list. A $2 annual "membership fee" must be paid by all those who enter events held there (not necessarily organized by the Club - but use their facilities - i.e. the 3rd and 4th floors of Chess and Math in Montreal) - and with 50-60 players in each of the 5-round FQE-rated events held there, the number of "members" can be quite large.

The largest Quebec team event throughout the 70's 80's and 90's was always the Intercollegiate held every Easter weekend which often attracted over 200 players. That was due to a dedicated organizer (Denis Cote) who spent many hours contacting colleges and arranging a site.

There are other gatherings of chess players in Montreal in libraries, schools/colleges/universities, parks, coffee shops (the largest being at Cafe Pi) - most of whom are not interested in tournament chess (or not even interested in a quiet, slow game of chess).

Quebec City and Gatineau both have several active clubs, and manage to organize small team events - but limited to their respective cities.