Canadian Yachting April 2020 - 8

The original Burlington Yacht Club was
located on a little sand spit (which now is
the site of Spencer Smith Park). A powerful early spring easterly took out the beach
and sent the members scrambling to haul
boats to higher ground. A new location
was found, boats were moored out front,
but the clubhouse remained in the old location. What to do? Put it on a barge and
use outboard motors to power it down the
bay, of course! A new clubhouse was completed in the late 1940s, with the old one
used for boat lockers. As what happens
with many wooden structures, the new
clubhouse burnt to the ground in the late
1950s, dispersing the members to surrounding clubs.
In 1974, 18 members of the old club
realized that they needed to start a new
club as boating should be the prime reason for a club's existence. According to
several accounts, "Burlington was the obvious choice for the new Club's location

since it had not had a yacht club since the
Burlington Yacht Club ceased to exist
many years before. We purposely decided
that the name should be BS&BC, not
BB&SC, because we wanted people to notice us, and if BS rather than BC was considered amusing (it amused us), then that
would be great." As happens with many
boating clubs, their present location does
not reside where they originally started,
nor have they retained the same name.
As the new BS&BC didn't have a home
yet, their first sailpast happened out on the
lake, that same year, late in the season just
east of the Skyway Bridge. Within weeks
of the new club's existence, members from
the area started joining, including boaters
that moored their vessels at LaSalle Park
Pier (so named for the French explorer
Rene Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle
who landed there in1669.) And so it was,
that this is where they put down their footprint. Many thought the club wouldn't

Boats all nicely tucked into their mooring slips at BS&BC.

Can adian Ya cht i ng

Above Right: 2019 Club race winnersHugh Johnston, Peter Quinton (96 years
old), Peter Quinton.
Above Left: Committee boat heading
out for a weeknight race.

make it and labeled them a "paper club"
making them ineligible to compete in the
CYRA (Canadian Yacht Racing Association) races on Lake Ontario. They worked
hard to improve their racing skills and it
didn't take the CYRA long for them to realize that BS&BC was a bonafide club that
would fly their colours around the lake.
From the very beginning, the city of
Burlington has been a true partner in all
their dealings and initiatives. Starting with
permission to build their new clubhouse
and dinghy storage and the use of LaSalle
Park. The membership pitched in to fix up
and repair the decaying pier, which became the first reciprocal mooring area for
transients. From day one, there has never
been a lack of volunteers to provide manpower and expertise to complete any task
that a boating club needs to be successful.
To add to the fun and excitement of
the new club, one of the founding
members asked his high school class to
help design a club burgee. The stylized
logo, bringing into play the lake, bay and
Skyway Bridge, put into play in 1975, still
serves the club well.
Next on the agenda was a member
initiative to plan and build a marina to
be surrounded by breakwater islands.
Although the town was on board, the
Harbour Commission felt that moorings
APRIL 2020

Canadian Yachting April 2020

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