Delhi Belgian Club

1948 – 2017

Clubs

  • There are three archery clubs that shot at the Delhi Belgian Club. We now shoot at the Hungarian Hall. The style of archery is called Pop 'n' Jay and is a popular sport in Belgium that we want others to know about. There are at least three tournaments per year that all three clubs participate in: tri-county, national, and international. We shoot against teams from across Ontario and the United States.

  • The card game of Bid Euchre was played downstairs at regular meetings on Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m. The cost was $3 for 8 games.  Great fun!

  • The club once had bowling lanes and leagues downstairs but they were removed in the 1980s or early 1990s.

  • Both Belgian and English Darts were played downstairs in the game room for many years[1].

    Belgian Darts

    Excerpt from Page 124 of The Belgians In Ontario: A History

    The Belgian dartboard is different from the English board. Instead of the board marked with a circle divided into radian sections, the type most familiar to Canadians, the Belgian dartboard consists of a series of concentric coloured circles, five in number, and a bull's eye in the middle. Each circle is assigned a number of points in value. Hitting the bull's eye is worth 50 points. The other circles, count from 25 (next to the bull's eye), 20, 15, 10 down to a low value of 5 for hitting the outermost circle. The bull's eye is about 2 centimetres in diameter. The board is smaller than the English dart board, only about 23 centimetres in diameter.

    According to the rules of the Belgian game, each player has four darts and plays in turn, in singles. Standing 2 metres from the target, each player throws four darts and the points won are added. After 10 such rounds, the player with the highest score wins the game. In large centres such as Delhi, and Tillsonburg, regular teams compete against each other in formal competition, with the results sent to the Gazette van Detroit.

  • Feather bowling or Featherbowling, also known as Trabollen in Belgium, is a game played with wooden balls shaped in a similar way to cheese wheels. The game has its origins in western Flanders, Belgium.

    There was a feather bowling lane along the south basement of the hall (along Pine Street).

  • Pigeon racing is the sport of releasing specially trained homing pigeons, which then return to their homes over a carefully measured distance. The time it takes the animal to cover the specified distance is measured and the bird's rate of travel is calculated and compared with all of the other pigeons in the race to determine which animal returned at the highest speed. The sport achieved a great deal of popularity in Belgium in the mid-19th century. The pigeon fanciers of Belgium were so taken with the hobby that they began to develop pigeons specially cultivated for fast flight and long endurance called Voyageurs. From Belgium the modern version of the sport and the Voyageurs which the Flemish fanciers developed spread to most parts of the world.

  • Wissen. Flickr photo by huangjiahui

    The card game of wiezen that was played at the club is the Belgian variation named Colour Whist in English.

    Meetings were Monday evenings.