Our Clubhouse History

Built by club members in 1891, JBAA’s first clubhouse was on Belleville street, overlooking the inner harbour. It was two stories high and had a floating boat house to go along with it.

We stayed in the inner harbour until 1928 when we moved to the Gorge, and in the late 30s we spent some time in Vic West on Roberts street. Then, for a time, we would meet in either coach and manager Alex MacDonald’s basement or at the Pro Pat’s legion, or, according to club legend Hans de Goede, at the Saanich municipal hall.

But in 1967 we moved to our present location at 205 Simcoe Street, right beside our home field of MacDonald Park. Sonny Vickery was instrumental and a key part in ensuring the move - and build - was a massive success. And we haven’t moved since. Hans mentioned that our old clubhouse was in fact loaded onto a truck and then driven down Douglas Street by Jack Reed, finally let down onto a  waiting foundation at 205 Simcoe, but we weren’t sure which structure that was. We suggest contacting Hans to get the details behind how it all worked out.

We did one massive upgrade in 1986 and 1987 with a ton of input from JBAA icon Tillman Briggs, especially regarding the never-vandalized-or-graffitied-grey stucco (definitely a testament to his character and spirit). It was a bold plan at the time, but it worked out well. We doubled the size and we doubled the capacity. The clubhouse you see today is the 1987 clubhouse. Eric Forsyth, from the Three-Pete era, appended an interesting looking chin-up structure in or around 2005 in the north corner of our lot, and many smaller renovations have been completed in the last thirty-three years, but nothing to the scale we have planned for the future.