If you visit Victoria’s Anavets unit, located in an 85-seat bar next to Hermann’s Jazz Club, you will see a slightly risqué photograph of Ron Champion on the wall.
Ron’s the bartender at the 95-year-old veteran’s club, which on Monday closes its doors for good. This is the Victoria branch of the Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans in Canada. Victoria and Vernon are home to the oldest Anavets units in British Columbia. Both were established Dec. 16, 1918.
On Saturday, the Victoria unit celebrated Ron’s 65th birthday, a real whoop-it-up affair with an all-girl blues band and everything.
On the club’s back wall is a photo collage someone made for Ron’s birthday. There are snapshots of him over the years. One captures him at a Halloween party wearing a potato sack costume. The word “Dicktater” is felt-penned on the front, accompanied by a crude anatomical drawing.
“There he is. Dicktater,” said Don Lynch, who is a cab driver, an Anavets member and Ron’s longtime friend.
“We had some fun,” said Ron.
There’s also a photo of Ron drinking beer out of a giant glass in the shape of a boot. And there’s one, decades old, of him with his first-born and his wife, Shirley, who works at a Walmart in Langford.
An Anavets unit is similar to a Royal Canadian Legion, only their charter comes from the U.K. (Queen Victoria approved a charter to found an Anavets unit in Montreal in 1840). In its heyday, the Victoria unit boasted more than 1,200 members. Now there are just 160. The membership isn’t really enough to cover costs, such as rent, hydro and water.
Hence, the closure.
Ron has slicked-back greying hair with a mustache to match. He wore a black leather vest, patched at the back with electrical tape. On the front are Anavets pins commemorating his years of service. He’s tended bar at the club for 35 years, which makes him one of this city’s longest-serving barkeepers, surpassed only by Gerry Laing from Big Bad John’s.
Ron and Don are sad that the veteran’s club is closing after 95 years. There’s an outside chance the charter could be continued, but it won’t happen at the View Street location.
“We were trying to stay alive to be 100,” Don said.
“Not gonna happen,” Ron said.
Pinned to a door sill is a hand-lettered sign advertising chili for a bargain $3.25. The walls are decorated with: a “Drinker’s fault-finder guide” poster; a 1977 Marlboro Team of Champions poster with a photo of darts champion Leighton Reese; dart boards; keno machines; sports trophies; and a black-and-white photograph of a 1937 baseball team. Over the bar — which offers beer (bottled and draft) and hard liquor such as Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s — is a wooden propeller from a Spitfire. A clock has been installed in the midpoint of the prop.
Nancy Arntzen, 64, still keeps the books for the Anavets unit, although she’s now retired to Gabriola Island. She made the photo collage for Ron, whom she describes as a “very much a life-of-the-party guy.” She, too, is saddened by the closure.
“It’s a terrible shame,” she said.
Arntzen says it’s the result of the downturn in the economy, as well as tougher drinking-and-driving laws. And, to be fair, veterans’ social clubs — with their meat draws and darts tournaments — are considered less than hip by the younger folk.
Arntzen’s children are Avanvets members but “it’s not their cup of tea.” Her daughter would rather hang out at the Copper Owl where the cool rock bands play.
The Anavaets club, with its middle-aged-and-older membership, put on dances and hosted darts, baseball and golf tournaments. Members also did good works. A recent 50-hour dart-a-thon raised $20,000 for the Lions Club.
I asked Ron for a few anecdotes about the veteran’s club. He was reluctant, saying: “I’ve seen a lot of things, yes. But I’d rather not go into some of that, thanks.” Ron did say he’s been forced to phone the police only three times in 35 years.
“That’s pretty damned decent,” he said.
When I mentioned Ron’s raconteurial reticence to Arntzen, she said it might be because the choicest yarns “have to do with drinking and stuff.” It is, after all, a bar. Still there was great camaraderie. That’s what made it so special.
“I thought it was a great place,” Arntzen said.
“You could come in by yourself. It was like Cheers. Everyone knows your name.”