The Regina Bridge Club was formed in 1958 by six friends, Bill Robertson and Chester Teal, who commuted from Radville, Pat Boyle, Tom Burke, Harry Van Eyck and Blake Carson, who were playing regularly in their homes. When they were introduced to duplicate bridge, they decided to form a formal bridge club. It is believed they recruited friends and acquaintances to play bridge at their first site. Initially, they played twice a week, Tuesday and Friday evenings, just renting the Orange Hall on the 1200 block of Albert Street for these two evenings. It is rumoured that they once averaged 14 tables.
Later the bridge club moved to a hall on the 1300 block of Broad Street, in the old Auto Electric Building, next door to Sid’s Sunflower Seeds. Still later, club games were held at the YMCA. In 1964, the club moved to a more permanent location, signing a 30-year least for space in the basement of the River Heights Shopping Centre.
The original playing fees were set at $2.00 per person. In an attempt to increase membership, the club introduced a playing fee of $.50 per person for students. In 1970-71, the club attracted approximately 30 university students, and more were recruited in 1974. Many of these players used Kaplan/Sheinhold and Precision bidding systems. Several of them continued to play at the club for decades.
The first club director was Hans Krause, the club’s main promoter and driving force in its early years. Art D’Entremont, a club member since 1960, took over the directing duties from Hans and taught many members to become directors. Art was also club manager from the early 1970s and then Lee Wilson took over the manager duties.
In 1988, the club faced competition from a second duplicate club which played at All Saints Anglican Church about once a week. Although this club lasted less than two years, it prompted the Regina Duplicate Club to start searching for a new location. The club did renew its lease at the River Heights location for an additional four years but then moved to 349 Albert Street in August 1998. This location had about 4000 square feet at ground level and ample parking nearby.
By 2015, the club realized that it needed a new location. 349 Albert Street was too expensive with rapidly rising common area costs, in need of costly repairs, and larger than necessary. Leslie Morton headed up a search committee and spent over two years searching for somewhere better. They finally found a suitable space at 1440 Broadway Avenue, where Leslie headed a committee which supervised renovations and decorating. In June of 2018, the club began operating in this location, making the move without missing a single game.
The club, with Jim Bingaman as manager beginning in 2016, ran successfully in its new location until the Covid-19 pandemic struck in March of 2020. Government quarantine regulations shut down all non-essential businesses so the club had to suspend its operations until these were lifted. The club executive deemed that it was safe and legal to reopen in August 2021 with sanitizing, distancing, masking, and ensuring that all players were fully vaccinated. About 60% of pre-pandemic players were delighted to return to face-to-face play.
While the club was closed, some players competed on line, many in games sponsored by the Saskatoon Bridge Club which generously shared the fees paid by Regina club members. In early 2021, in conjunction with Unit 573, the club hosted an on-line game called Real Bridge on Monday evenings, which continued until face-to-face play resumed in August. In January 2022, the club began its own on-line game on Sunday afternoon, inviting members of other Saskatchewan clubs to participate and sharing revenues following Saskatoon’s example.
Some Success by our Members
The first Life Masters were founders Bill Robertson and Ches Teal. They were quickly followed by Hazel Smith, Art D’Entremont, and Sherrill Brooks. Other Life Masters quickly joined the ranks and are honoured on our wall of recognition.
In the mid-1990s, Peter Worby, with a novice bridge player, was first overall in the national Helen Shields Rookie/Master event. He continued his winning way when, in 1992, he and Kevin Young won the ACBL North American Pairs Championship Flight B in Pasadena, California. In 2012, Peter and Kevin also won the Mini-Blue Ribbon Pairs in San Francisco.
In 1977, Dan Mathieson and Gary Johannsson won the inaugural District 18 playdowns of the Grand National Pairs (now the North American Pairs) in Great Falls, Montana. From there, they represented the Club, Unit, and District in Norfolk, Virginia. They again represented District 18 in 1978 and 1980.
In 2008 Cal McLeod, Rick Gaucher, James Dalmage, and Scott Rosom won the CNTC Flight B championship.
Our junior program has done well for itself due in part to the hard work of John Quesnel who put on a number of summer bridge camps for youth. He had young people from ages eight through twenty attend.
One such junior was Erin Berry. First introduced to bridge by her mother, she quickly rose through the ACBL ranks, attaining Life Master in August 1997. That fall she took part in the trials to select the junior team members to represent Canada at the International Youth Festival in Holland. She had already sent her name into the ACBL to attend the 1998 junior bridge camp and was planning to play in the Canadian junior trials in August. Unfortunately Erin died in a car accident before she could attend the camp. In Erin’s memory, her father set up the Erin Berry Memorial Fund to help junior players, under 20 years of age, with expenses incurred to attend bridge events.
Erin Anderson was able to take advantage of this fund in 2002 and 2003. In 1998, at the age of 14, Erin attained her Life Master becoming the youngest female with that rank in Canada at that time. In 1998 she became part of the ACBL Junior Corp. She and her teammates represented Canada at the World Junior Team Championships in 1999, 2001, 2004, and 2006. In 2004 she and her teammates won the World Youngsters Team Championship. In 2001 she was named the ACBL Queen of Hearts, the first Canadian to wine that title.
James Dulmage and Scott Rosom are two other junior players to attain national recognition. In 2008 they represented Canada at the World Junior games in Beijing, ended up tied for 5th overall. More recently, Darien Cozart has participated in the junior program. He represented Canada at the World Junior games in Turkey in 2014, Italy in 2016 and China in 2018.
Ken Gee is one of two club members to make bridge his profession. He was introduced to the game in 1981 and became a full-time professional player in 1987. Since that time, he won the Richmond Trophy, awarded to the Canadian player to win the most master points in a year, six consecutive times from 1998 to 2000.
Our second professional was Barry Harper who started playing bridge in 1969 and attended his first duplicate game in 1975. He became a student of the game and two years later became Saskatchewan’s youngest Life Master and the first from this province to be listed on the McKenny List (now the Barry Crane Top 500). In 1990 Barry and Saskatoon’s Don Campbell won the Open Pairs (now the Silodor Cup) at the Spring NABC in Fort Worth, Texas. Barry won the Richmond Trophy in 2005, 2006, and 2009. In 2005, Barry went over 10,000 master points, and with his NABC win, he attained ACBL’s highest rank of Grand Life Master.
On the administration side, Dick Anderson has served bridge in many different capacities for over 35 years. At the club level he directed and taught lessons for decades. He also represented Zone 5 and was a member of the Canadian Bridge Federation board of directors from 1981 until 1991. He served as CBF president from 1982 to 1984. He represented District 18 on the ACBL board of directors from 1992 until 2009 and was elected ACBL president in 1998 for a one-year term. He was president of the South Saskatchewan unit from 1980 to 2008. He was a member of the World Bridge Federation executive council from 2006 to 2008, and was chairman of the ACBL board of governors from 2013 to 2016.
Janice Anderson, Dick’s wife, was the Regina club manager for many years, as well as the CBF executive assistant and only staff member of the CBF until her retirement in 2014.
The Regina Bridge Club has survived and thrived over half a century because of the commitment and work of many of its members. They have served as executive members, directors, teachers, and volunteers to do the countless jobs required to make the club a pleasant place to be, and deserve the thanks of all players for their efforts.
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