Each December, a loose fraternity of fellows assemble at the Royal Ottawa Golf and Country Club to celebrate the season and, in that undefinable territory between sobriety and intemperance are apt to confess their regard for one another.

The Royal Ottawa (in summer, not December it might be noted)

The tradition began as a festive Christmas lunch meeting of Ottawa solicitors and barristers at a swank dining hall (the Capital Club in the old Delta Hotel), knives out of sight, but never out of reach, and lie to one another about how successful they all had been that year. This annual luncheon began more than 30 years ago and no-one remembers for certain when – records and picture-taking were verboten, and besides, digital cameras hadn’t been invented yet. Grateful invitees started to call it the Jack McNab Memorial Luncheon in appreciation of the founder but as he was still an active member and principal organizer he objected to the name. 

Over the years the league of lawyers seemed to lose control of their admission standards and others were allowed to join the club. I became friendly with the aforementioned McNab through frequent encounters at the Delta Hotel fitness centre and soon – well, maybe a couple of years later – found myself invited to attend the Christmas Luncheon. Jack allowed that, as I seemed to know something about employment law and labour relations (more than him anyway), and even though I had flunked out of law school after first year, that seemed to qualify me. The fact that the majority of the members were born in 1947, as I was, added considerable weight to my application. A couple of years later the society of reprobates agreed to admit my Delta office roommate. He was eminently more qualified to participate as he was a graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School, and though called to the Bar in Ontario, he never practiced law but became a national icon in Labour Arbitration: Mr. JFW Weatherill. Somber, intellectual, composed, Mr. Weatherill (hardly anyone called him Ted) brought a certain dignity to the proceedings, until he began to recite licentious limericks.

The club degenerated thereafter with the admission of an optometrist and an employee benefits consultant and reached bottom with the acceptance of two Olympians, a Greco-Roman Wrestler who competed for Canada in the 1972 Munich Olympics, and a sprinter on the 1988 Olympics Team. Thereafter the Annual Christmas lunch was renamed the Olympians Lunch but this didn’t suit the founding member either.

Many of the McNab lunch group are also members at the Camelot Golf Club but the annual lunch could hardly be called the Camelot Christmas Crowd while dining at the Royal Ottawa.

The league of gentlemen reached a dozen members, more or less, at one point. No women were permitted and so far that rule has not been compromised, though it must be said, in the Capital Club public dining room, there were the occasional intrusions by some intrepid women dropping by the table to extend their regards for the season. We’ve had no such impingement since relocating to the Royal.

When the old Delta Hotel was thoroughly renovated, circa 2014, and became a pedestrian Hilton Suites, the Capital Club disappeared. Luckily one of the members of the luncheon league is a member in good standing (oxymoronic as that may seem) of the Royal Ottawa Golf and Country Club and the Olympian Lunch moved across the river to Aylmer. By default, the RO host became the chair of the proceedings.

Ushering in the Chair

Our host, the Member for The Royal Ottawa (Golf Club, not Hospital), has become the de facto Chairman of the gathering. He does his best. He produces an agenda – the same agenda as every year previous, he brings the minutes from the previous year’s event – the same minutes year upon year. He calls the meeting to order, frequently. The crowd gets increasingly unruly – rather like the House of Commons with constant claims of Point of Order and Point of Privilege – the loudest of whom is the founder who claims not to want to be the chair but competes mightily for it. The default chair gives up in deadpan disgust.

The Founder, the Chair, and the Olympian

He did his best but this motley crew could not be corralled. Even though a decorated criminal law defence barrister, our Chair lacked the authority of the Bench, or perhaps lacked authority altogether, and was largely ignored.

The Chair’s attempts at formalizing the sessions are largely lost on the assembled members: The proposed agenda – essentially the same agenda each year – is debated and never resolved. The minutes from the previous session are read but the Chair never gets to the end of them and gives up in despair. The annual call for a renaming of the proceedings is tabled to the following year. With unfinished business the Chair is never permitted to resign his seat. Ever concerned for his fellows’ well-being, however, the Chair annually surveys each to report on their blood pressure and resting heart rate. There is doubt about some of the reported numbers.

Despite these cautions, the numbers of the League of Gentlemen have diminished for the inevitable reasons. Two members are now deceased including the redoubtable Mr. Weatherill; but his memory lives on as annually I endeavour to regale the remaining members with a limerick of which Mr. Weatherill might have approved:

                  ‘There once was a maid 

Well, never mind.

There is a rule for this annual solstice celebration – no gifts – but as for most of the rules, these too are ignored. One of the Olympians brings swag from his organization, the other brings a bottle of Baby Duck. I don’t bring a gift but I am well represented. The erstwhile McNab buys ten of my books written the previous year and distributes them to the assembled disciples. I am grateful for this extension of my reputation as an author though, it has to be said, it’s doubtful any of them except Jack actually reads them. But they admire my tenacity.

The author, sporting another member’s Princeton jacket.

After much bantering, and bending of the wrist, the gathering stumbles to a close. Genuine well-wishing ensues. Some of the guests repair to the lounge for an extension; the host disappears, not to be seen again until next year.

Even though most of those folks see each other many times during the year, this Christmas gathering is special. These matchless men, septuagenarians all, are a band of brothers, maybe; a company of gentlemen; there is a feeling of real affection and expression of friendship. We all look forward to next year’s party with a resolve that next year we will get through the agenda and maybe come up with a new name for the gathering. We all secretly fear that one day, The Jack McNab Memorial Lunch will be accurate, and likely the thirty-year+ lunch tradition will come to an end.

These gentlemen are my friends, though we are not really that close. In a life-time you may only be able to count close friends on one hand, the rest of the people you know are distributed in an array of intimacy from close, to distant, to mere acquaintances. Jack is probably in my handful of close friends.

There is an expression, Robert Frost, I think, ‘home is a place that, when you go there, they have to let you in’.

Friends are like that – when you call them, they answer. I am happy to think that members of this company of gentlemen will answer my call. I know I will answer theirs.

Doug Jordan, reporting to you from Kanata

© Douglas Jordan & AFS Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of these blogs and newsletters may be reproduced without the express permission of the author and/or the publisher, except upon payment of a small royalty, 5¢.