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Thread: How to start a chess club in Canada?

  1. #1
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    Default How to start a chess club in Canada?

    This topic was suggested to be taken up in this English Chat Forum in the following thread of the last Voting Member's meeting. I'm giving it here in case anyone has [further] thoughts, to try to get the ball rolling on the subject of how to start a chess club in Canada:

    http://www.chesscanada.info/forum/sh...Canadian-Chess
    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
    Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.

  2. #2
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    I'll relate my limited observations concerning the fates of 3 clubs I've at least been aware of in the past.

    In the 1980s I was on the Brampton Chess Club's Executive, as club TD [of the club's then strictly non-CFC rated events, as was the majority of the Exec's strong preference]. At one point someone remarked to me that it's always good for a club to pay rent for the club's playing site. Otherwise, they continued, when someone else comes in and offers to pay to use the club's room at the site, guess who gets the room? At that point, he noted, as club prez you'd feel about knee-high. Anyway, to this day I gather that the club lives on, and is nowadays into CFC-rating their events.

    Much later, in the new millennium, well after I'd moved back to Ottawa from Brampton, there was a club (again not CFC-rated-oriented) I'd heard about that got to play in a room at a local Legion Hall for an extremely cheap fee. Then, when the city had a bus strike, club attendance plummeted, and some nights were outright cancelled after a time. Attempts to revive the club after the bus strike failed, as for one thing another group was using the room by then.

    Another club I'd heard of in the new millennium was the revived long dead club named the Ottawa Chess Club (not to be confused with the RA club, Ottawa's main club), due to the efforts of Neil Frarey. The club (again not CFC-rated-oriented) apparently met in a number of places for some years, such as room(s) at Chapter's store(s). No rent paid at any time by the club, I gather. If I'd have had Neil's ear at that point, I could have recommended to him that he find a more permanent site if possible, where a rent could be afforded, based on the club's typical attendance (typically 12+ members? I'm not sure, but at least the club was not starting from scratch in terms of members while initially launching at a site with required rent). Anyway, I suppose people gradually stopped showing up, as the 'club' eventually died out, except that there is a relatively dormant message board still named after it, last I checked.

    Aside from the above anecdotes, I would suggest that the problem of how to start a club in Canada may be kind of related to the problem of getting more newbies to show up at organized chess events (that is, whether or not organizers are more proactive or passive in their advertising/recruiting approach - I fear that the latter approach is still rather more the norm).
    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
    Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio.

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