Sep
7
By Vince Herlaar
This is the first of a two part series chronicling the history of the James Bay Athletic Association from its beginnings in the 1880s.
The James Bay Athletic Association will be holding an open house Saturday September 7th from noon to five. Be sure to come down and chat with some JBAA members.
The James Bay Athletic Association was formed in 1886 by a small group of Victorians who loved to play sports.
In the early 1880s there was a four team local baseball league that played at Beacon Hill Park. Dan O'Sullivan, who was born in Victoria and educated at St. Louis College, lived in the original Bay area and organized this James Bay baseball club.
In 1889, James Bay versus the Maple Leafs was the featured game at the opening of the new fenced in Caledonia Park at Simcoe and Government Streets.
It was that ball team that lead to the formation of the James Bay Athletic Association which was formally chartered that same year.
For one hundred and twenty seven years JBAA members have been engaged in rowing, basketball, baseball, soccer, track and field, boxing, tennis, lacrosse, hockey, and especially rugby.
By 1891, JBAA had built a two storey club house and floating boathouse overlooking Victoria's inner harbour.
Rowing became the first sport in which JBAA members excelled. Among their early victories was a stunning solid silver four oars trophy won during the Queen's diamond jubilee celebrations in 1897.
Four JBAA athletes made headlines in 1912. Bill Day was the Island's top mile racer. Al Davies was the Pacific Northwest amateur boxing champion. Sprinter Hal Beasly and Canada top middle distance runner Tom Gallon competed for Canada at the Stockholm Olympics.
But it was rowing that produced most of JBAA's wins prior to WWI. In 1895 JBAA's big four, with Dan O'Sullivan at stroke, won the first of six straight North Pacific Rowing Association Championships.
That all changed when World War I broke out.
Many of JBAA's best joined the thousands who answered the call from their country. Sports were reduced to low levels. Many outstanding athletes, including JBAA's Tom Gallon, made the supreme sacrifice. In all, 86 Bays enlisted in the armed forces including Dr. T.A. Briggs, whose son Tillman went on to become one of JBAA's most influential members.
After the war, JBAA rowers picked right up where they left off winning the North Pacific title again in 1927. In 1935, Bays rowers included John Rockingham who later led the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry in Normandy and who in 1950 led Canadian Forces in Korea.
In 1936, the JBAA eights were race winners at Vancouver's Golden Jubilee.
World War II saw rowing fade again, though reviving periodically in recent times, it has never again returned to the halcyon days of early years.
Rugby reached the shores of Vancouver Island in 1877 when members of England's Royal Navy fleet played a team of local athletes at Beacon Hill. Some of those players would go on to become JBAA members. Now, more than 127 years later, the Bays still take the field in the traditional navy blue.
By 1892, JBAA was regularly playing sides from visiting British ships. Initially, JBAA played home games at Beacon Hill Park. Then Vancouver Island rugby interests declined away until the James Bay Athletic Association reformed a team in 1908 and played out of Oak Bay Park.
JBAA rugby at Macdonald Park started in 1934 where it continues to this day. The JBAA clubhouse, after a number of different relocations, moved to its present location beside MacDonald Park at 205 Simcoe Street in 1967.
Women have played a significant athletic role at JBAA. Initially it was in tennis, basketball, badminton, and rowing. In the late 1970s interest in rugby came to the fore, and the women's rugby team under JoJo Wyld's leadership represented JBAA well in much of the past decade.
The zenith of women's sports, however, at JBAA was reached in 1983-84 when a Barry Robbins coached JBAA soccer side won the BC Championships and narrowly missed the national crown.
But it is rugby that has truly defined JBAA over the past 127 years. And it's rugby that we will discuss next month.