ARTHUR – By June 30 the Arthur Seniors Club will have to vacate the “Senior Citizen Hall” on Isabella Street, where members have gathered since the 1970s.
The Township of Wellington North and its council has decided to evict the seniors six months after the current decade-long lease expires at the end of the month.
Some of the 51 seniors who meet weekly, if not daily, at the township-owned building, say there’s nowhere else affordable to go.
A local Alcoholics Anonymous group that meets at the hall is also searching for an alternative meeting place, and local exercise classes for seniors will come to a stop, the Advertiser has learned.
Around 20 club members urged council to sign a new lease earlier this year, but to no avail.
Township staff met with the club in July, proposing the club take over management of the building with a land lease and transfer of the building for $1.
The club currently generates around $3,500 per year from hall rentals, according to club treasurer Eleanor Monahan, and pays $3,672 each year to the township to rent the building. The township covers utility bills.
As part of the township’s proposal, the seniors’ club would take over responsibility for building maintenance, servicing equipment and appliances, liquor licensing, as well as insurance and utility bills, but the club would no longer pay rent.
Municipal loans and grants were offered for major repairs and to cover excessive insurance and utility expenses.
The township also offered to provide legal support to the club to help it register as a non-profit organization, a designation that would open more doors for government grants and tax rebates.
That was all turned down by the club in September, according to a Nov. 30 letter from Mayor Andy Lennox.
In the letter addressed to club president Bill Dennis, Lennox wrote that the seniors’ group went a step further, requesting that any new lease agreement remove wording that prevents tax dollars from being used for building repairs and renovations.
“Council continues to be unanimous in our decision … municipal tax dollars will not be used towards any major repairs or renovations,” Lennox wrote, noting the decision has stood for the past decade.
Lennox also said the township would be forced to spend upwards of $200,000 on “accessibility upgrades alone” to align with standards required for municipally-owned buildings.
Although the pre-confederation building is structurally safe, according to a 2022 engineering report, the mayor wrote “significant” improvements would be needed to extend its life, which council believes is nearing an end.
“They say it’s in rough condition,” club president Bill Dennis said by phone. “Well, that’s their own damn fault.”
Dennis, a retiree who calls Arthur home, has made many friends at the hall, through games of euchre, bridge, cribbage and shuffleboard.
“I just love it, but now what am I going to do? I go there four or five days a week,” he said.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do, I really don’t.”
Built in 1863, the hall was once used for training in times of war before becoming the “centre of many functions and events in the community,” according to an article authored by the late John Walsh in the since-closed Arthur Enterprise News Express.
The hall was sold to the municipality for $1 after the Great War, and hosted everything from political rallies to council meetings.
According to Walsh’s retelling, it was local seniors who saved the building from a state of disrepair in the ’70s.
With grants in-hand, volunteers laboured to restore the hall to “its former grandeur.”
If the hall could talk, Walsh wrote, “it would likely thank Arthur’s energetic seniors for saving its life and giving it a new look.”
Though the township will lock the doors next summer, council has directed staff to offer meeting space to the seniors at the Arthur Community Centre.
But club members told the Advertiser they’re concerned about navigating stairs to the second floor, about a possible elevator failure during a fire, and they can’t afford the $21/hour rental rate the township would charge.
“We’re going to continue our activities until the end of April, and then get everything together and have an auction sale,” Monahan said of the club’s future.
Member Agnes Green said council’s decision is “extremely disappointing” and “very upsetting.”
“There’s just no way we can get through to anybody,” Green remarked.
“We’ve all worked 40 or 50 years, and think maybe we deserve some of this stuff.”
Green also emphasized the club can’t afford to go elsewhere.
“That’s one of the reasons that people go … because it’s not costly,” she explained.
Member Patti Emery told a reporter several widowed seniors rely on daily activities at the hall for socialization.
“When you’re at home by yourself it’s never good — just leads to depression,” Emery said.
Now 75 years old, Emery has been attending for the past decade. She stays active and engaged by cleaning, decorating and shovelling snow at the hall.
“I got to meet a lot of people I would have never met in the first place,” she said.
Emery noted more than 150 exercise classes are held at the club each year – reason enough to keep the doors open.
“There are so many people who are able to be walking around and functioning because of going to the VON (Victorian Order of Nurses) exercise,” she said.
Kelly Gee, a VON Canada exercise and falls prevention supervisor who orchestrates three staff- and volunteer-led exercise classes each week at the hall, said she’s “extremely disappointed” in council.
Being a non-profit organization, VON also doesn’t have funding to pay rental rates elsewhere, Gee explained.
The seniors’ club provides the hall to VON for free, and in return VON provides classes funded by provincial tax dollars.
Between 15 and 20 seniors in their 70s and 80s attend classes focused on improving movements for daily living and on reducing falls.
It’s a real possibility the classes will cease without somewhere else to go, Gee said, adding council’s “poor decision” will lead to increased isolation and negative health outcomes for local seniors.
“It’s pretty sad that they would close this on them.”
Also affected by council’s decision is a local Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) chapter meeting each week at the hall.
“I could not stay sober without going to meetings, because people share their experience, strength and hope,” a 12-year sober AA member told a reporter (the Advertiser has granted the person’s request not to be named).
The hall is a “perfect location,” the person said, explaining it provides some chance at maintaining anonymity.
“[The township has] no idea what anonymity means to somebody that’s trying to stay sober,” the person said.
The AA journey is profoundly personal; not something to be advertised, the person explained.
Experiences, beliefs and feelings can be freely shared without judgment among the 25 to 40 people who attend a meeting each week.
“As of right now, we’re basically up in the air,” the person added.
The group is reaching out to local churches to inquire about options, but liability insurance requirements are cost-prohibitive (the group was already covered by the seniors’ club).
“I don’t want to just walk away from not having a meeting in Arthur … Arthur needs an AA meeting,” the person said.
There’s currently no plan for the building after a 50-year era of seniors’ activities comes to an end next summer.
According to the mayor’s letter, the county and some local groups have all declined the township’s offer to take over the building.
“Council has not decided what the future holds for this building and location,” Lennox wrote, adding conversations in the coming months about the building will be “open and transparent.”
“We’re disappointed that it has come to this,” the mayor told the Advertiser by phone.
A decade ago, when the original lease was signed, responsibilities for the club and township were spelled out, Lennox reiterated.
It was made known that council’s focus would be spending to benefit the community as a whole.
Since then, the mayor said it’s like the township has been subsidizing what he called a “private club.”
“I have the greatest respect for our seniors, and I want to see our seniors looked after appropriately, but I think if they want to have their own clubhouse, they need to step up and invest in it,” Lennox said.
The mayor said there’s still time for the club to reconsider its position.
“We’ve given them six months notice, but we’ve made no plans beyond that,” he said.
