150 Anniversary Book – 150 Jubilee
The 150th Anniversary book, “Bay of Quinte Yacht Club, Anchored in Belleville for 150 years”, is a collection of stories written and edited by Susan Smith, BQYC Historian and Past Commodore. These stories provide the historical context of the of the founding of the BQYC, racing feats of the Atalanta and Katie Gray, notable members and their histories, major events and fun gatherings, club activities and social events, sail pasts and commodore’s dinners and the sailing school, and it’s benefit to the young members of the Belleville community and much, much more.
Thank you to those members past and present and the general public who participated by pre-order of 215 copies of our Anniversary Book. Those who did you will now be the proud owner of a piece of BQYC history by our own Susan Smith.
The order is going to the printer now (first week of May) and we anticipate a delivery of the books the first week of June. Once we take delivery, we will be having several Book Signing/Pickup sessions with Susan Smith at the Club. If you are not able to attend those they will be available for pickup at the Long Reach Lounge. For those out of town, arrangements will be made for delivery.
We on the 150 Committee want to thank you for purchasing this major contribution to our 150th Anniversary celebrations. We are very pleased to be delivering on a dream of not only Susan Smith our Club Historian but also of the late Andy Thomson, a member of our committee, the initiator and strong advocate for the Book. He was an early and major contributor to the design of this book. Susan has been Club Historian since 1985 and since then has been doing local research, travelling to add to her research in various locations in North America, collecting artifacts and stories. So much of that research and photos shows up in this book, but there also so much of her research knowledge not there as there is only so much we could squeeze into 160+ pages . We also wish to acknowledge the contribution of several people who authored articles and stories in the Book the late Andy Thomson, Fiona King, Trevor Waller, Dick Bird, Tracy Stienitz, Chris Verra, Brian Credico, Tim Maloney (Viking) and Quinte Sailability.
We want to acknowledge the contributions of Myron Lasko for Book Cover graphics and for the 150 Logo (hanging in the foyer) and some of the photos. We also acknowledge David Burnham for his work on text and photo layout and editing and getting the book ready for printing. Together, Susan, David and Myron have each put in multiple 100’s of hours into this book since we started in 2022. Thank you to former BQYC members Joan Smith and Janice Alexander for stepping in with editing when Susan was in hospital for a few weeks.
We also want to thank all the attendees of the Down Memory Lane (DML) session on that cold day in January who answered our call for information to put in photo captions (70+) for the Book. Thank you to these DML participants the late Hazel Lloyst, Dennis and Sandy Gill, Sue Jordan, Fiona King, Dick Bird, Richard (Dick) Curtis, Trevor Waller, John Trueman, Cindy Fort, Joan Smith and Heather Tapp for her note taking and David Burnham for leading the session. Thank you for the memories.
A final thank you to Dale Holland as leader of the 150 Committee until taking on the Commodore role was a strong supporter of the Book throughout its development.
This Book is a great example of what a volunteer team can accomplish.
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