History

Club Feat _ Over the last 100 Years, the Albany Club, the last political club in Canada, has rolled with the political punches and survived. And while it’s clear that this former all-male enclave of cigars and brandy has changed, the secret to its longevity lies in its Conservative roots.

By Joe Martin
A management consultant, Joe Martin is also chairman of Canada’s National History Society and of the Heritage Committee of the Albany Club.

In August 1998, The Albany Club of Toronto celebrated its 100th anniversary at 91 King Street East. The significance of the club’s longevity lies not so much in its location as in the fact that it’s the last of a dying breed, a political club. Though common in Canada in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (indeed, Liberal and Union National Clubs were still going in Quebec up to the 1960’s) a political club with its own well-appointed premises is a rarity today in Canada.

Clubs, gentlemen’s clubs as they were called until recently, were a peculiarly English institution. Originating in the seventeenth century, their original purpose was for gaming and gossip. From that they evolved to politics, and from there, to business. From London, they spread to the old British Empire (including the United States), then to the new British Empire (including India, Australia, and Canada), and eventually to the European continent and South America. All clubs have essentially the same purpose, to provide a meeting place for like-minded people.

The Founding of the Club in 1882

In 1882, there was a federal election in Canada, one particularly important for Sir John A. Macdonald and his Liberal Conservatives: they had to establish that their reelection in 1878 was not an accident and that they had truly placed the 1873 Pacific scandal over the CPR behind them. The battles for the important southwestern part of Ontario was centered in Toronto, and a natural campaign base- such as a residential political club-would have been ideal.

By late October, a matter of months after Sir John A. led the Tories to triumphant re-election, his supporters had established the Albany Club at its first location, 75 Bay Street. A site inauspiciously referred to at the time as “Mrs. Dunlop’s tenement,” over the years it has acquired a much greater cachet (today it is the location of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce head office complex).

The founding president was the Honorable Alexander Morris, M.P.P., who had worked for Macdonald in Kingston. One of the first to call for the creation of Canada, Morris had served as an honest broker between Macdonald and George Brown when negotiations threatened to break up in 1864. He was later a member of the original Confederation cabinet.

In naming the club, the members turned to the Royal Family for inspiration. They found it in the fourth son and eighth child of Queen Victoria, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. Not only had the duke’s marriage earlier that year attracted a great deal of attention in the colonial press, his sister, Princess Louise, was the wife of Canada’s governor general, the Marquis of Lorne. Two years earlier, in 1880, the duke had visited his sister in Canada and met Sir John A and other prominent Conservatives. His selection as the royal personage whose name the club would bear seemed most fitting in those days of deep reverence for all things British and royal.

The early years (1882-1891)

These were highly political times and the Albany’s bylaws and rules put it very plainly: “No person shall become a Member of the Club unless a Conservative.” The defining word was italicized, leaving no rooms for doubt.

The early years were successful years for the club. And these were good years for the federal Conservatives, with Sir John A. leading his party to two more electoral victories, in 1887 and in 1891. The prime minister had been a member since 1883, along with such luminaries as W.R. Meredith, the Ontario Conservative leader, and Sir Alexander Campbell, minister of justice and a future lieutenant governor of Ontario.

At the beginning of 1889, two future prime ministers (the Honourable John Thompson, then minister of justice, and the Hounourable Charles Tupper, then Canadian high commissioner to the United Kingdom) and the future first conservative premier of Ontario, James Pliny Whitney, joined the club. At the same time, Sir John A. and Meredith agreed to become honorary president and vice-president, respectively. Later that year, the Albany moved to new and grander premises at 34 Colborne Street. Yet the fortunes of the club naturally followed those of the Conservative party. They would take a downturn two years later that would continue for some time.

The difficult years, 1891-1897

The year 1891 began well. On January 13th, the club held a dinner in honor of Sir John A.’s birthday as a pretext for the launch of his next campaign. This election was to be Sir John A’s last hurrah, a victory won on the slogan of “The Old Flag, The Old Policy, The Old Leader.” But it was not a victory to be savored for long. “The Old Leader” died in June, just a few months after the election.

The years that followed would prove difficult both for the Conservative Party and for its natural home in Toronto, The Albany Club. Sir John A. was succeeded as prime minister by Senator John Abbott, the first prime minister from the Senate and a recent mayor of Montreal. Thompson, Bowell, and Tupper (who were club members) followed Abbott (who was not) in quick succession.

But these would be the final glory days for the federal Conservative Party. In 1896, Laurier’s Liberals soundly defeated the Conservatives. It was an election that forever changed the political face of Canada, as the liberals became the new governing party.

For the first time in the club’s 14-year history, Conservatives were out of power in Ottawa and were yet to hold power in Ontario. It showed in club membership: in 1897, only 16 new members joined, down from 28 the previous year.

Into the Twentieth Century

As the historian Arnold Toynbee has noted, every great challenge elicits a great response. That is exactly what happened with the Albany Club, as both external and internal forces played their part.

When James Pliny Whitney took over the provincial party in 1896, there had never been a Conservative government in Ontario. In 1905, he broke the Liberal’s 33-year stranglehold on Ontario and led his party to four successive majority governments, establishing the most successful electoral dynasty of twentieth-century Canada ­ more successful than those of the Liberal parties of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, or even the Liberal Party of Canada.

These changing fortunes and an aggressive membership drive attracted over 200 new members and nearly doubled the Albany’s membership. This provided the necessary financial resources for one more move from Colborne Street to fine new premises at 91 King St. East, which is still the club’s home.

As the nineteenth century rolled into the twentieth, the club shifted from being a federally dominated club to one more provincially orientated, a natural evolution given the fate of the Conservative Party. This change was barely discernible to out-siders, however. A Toronto Star columnist noted in a 1921 edition of the paper: “Nobody but an archaeologist accustomed to ferreting out old important things in secret places ever could discover the Albany Club…..A common citizen moping past to catch a King streetcar may not dream that just inside a window are Sir Henry Drayton and Sir Edward Kemp [both cabinet ministers in the Borden government], who do not go to the Albany to get rid of time.”

As the century progressed, other factors took their toll, not just on the Albany, but on all private clubs, including the Liberal Ontario Club located on Wellington Street. For one thing, new provincial legislation had been passed that permitted hotels and restaurants to serve liquor with meals. This eliminated an important competitive advantage private clubs had enjoyed. On top of that, some argued that the Albany Club suffered locational disadvantage, its address, east of Yonge Street, put it too far from the heart of the Toronto’s commercial action west of Yonge.

But the real reason for its decline in membership was that at this halfway mark of the twentieth century, the Albany Club, like the Ontario Club, had lost its raison d’être. Both had increasingly become clubs without a political purpose, simply places where members gathered to eat and drink, but without the old commitment to the political parties of their choice. Though still nominal tied to the party politics (after all, former prime minister Arthur Meighen dined at the Albany everyday, at the same table, with the same three friends), the old political purpose-the old political fire- seemed to be missing.

But two members stepped into the breach. David J Walker, K.C., (who would become M.P. for Rosedale in 1957 and later Diefenbaker’s right-hand man) and publisher Roy H. Thomson (who would become press baron Lord Thomson of Fleet) proposed a simple solution. The club must revive its original purpose of being a political club. Over the next five years, both served as club president (from 1949-52 and 1952-54 respectively) and accomplished this goal. It helped, of course, that the provincial Conservatives were now firmly in power in Ontario while at the federal level, the party was showing new life under former Ontario premier George Drew.

One Hundred Years at 91 King St. East

The 100-year celebration was an appropriate way to mark the continuous presence in downtown Toronto of an active political club, likely the last of its kind in Canada, and one of the few remaining ones in the world. The Conservative Party in general and the Albany Club in particular, have had more than their share of ups and downs in the last century. However, as it looks forward to the future, the club’s leadership is sure that the “dear old Albany” will, for many years to come, be a meeting place for like-minded individuals.