Anachronistic Fools Start Club

by Art Liestman

In the fall of 1998, Art Liestman, Don Hoskins, and John Bese began a conversation about forming a woodturning club in greater Vancouver. It was clear to them that the population of greater Vancouver was large enough to support a club focusing on woodturning. In addition to regular meetings, they felt that the new club should be aggressive in bringing in demonstrators from outside of the area and that it should be a chapter of the AmericanAssociation of Woodturners. Quickly, others were brought in to the discussion, including Sandy Dougal, Dave Armitage, Bruce Campbell, Ted Fromson, Steve Hansen, Marco Berera, Phil Laliberte and Dave Martin.

An initial meeting to formally discuss forming the new entity was called for March 9, 1999. Don Hoskins found a meeting place for these planning sessions in Port Moody. At the first meeting, Art Liestman, Don Hoskins, John Bese, Dave Armitage, Sandy Dougal, Ted Fromson, and Dave Martin agreed to begin the work needed to form the new entity. Don and Sandy were dispatched to find a meeting location for the new club while Art was selected to draft a constitution and bylaws, drawing on the Provincial guidelines and on the AAW’s chapter requirements.

Don and Sandy arranged for the new club to meet at Centennial Senior Secondary in Coquitlam in exchange for some maintenance to the lathes in the school’s wood shop. After they tuned up the lathes, one of the shop teachers expressed surprise that more than 4 people would be likely to attend club meetings and withdrew the offer to use the School's facilities. He also was insistent that nobody turned wood anymore since CNC machines did it all these days. It was clear that the shop teacher thought we were anachronistic fools.

Don started the search anew. Some local community centres looked promising and wanted groups like ours to use their facilities, but they would only commit to space on a quarterly basis and we needed an annual home. Dave Armitage suggested the Legion Hall in Coquitlam. Don secured the hall for our regular monthly meetings. Unfortunately, we could not book the hall on Saturdays for the full-day demos that we planned to hold.

Several other meetings were held in the next few months and in May, the assembled group adopted the constitution and bylaws and elected the first officers - Art Liestman (President), John Bese (Vice President), Don Hoskins (Treasurer), Dave Martin (Secretary), and Ted Fromson (Member at Large). The meeting attendees paid their dues to provide the Treasurer with some start up money.

Art interacted with the AAW office and Board member Clay Foster who was in charge of new chapters. At the AAW Symposium in June 1999, the GVWG was formally admitted as the 130th chapter of the AAW and the third Canadian chapter. KMS Tools (in particular, Bob Gadd) was helpful in providing assistance such as working with Technatool to provide a good deal on a Nova 3000 lathe for the club and donating some accessories to go with it. The lathe and its stand (made by Bruce Campbell) were stored at Art Liestman's shop and brought in for every meeting.

The guild’s first regular meeting was held in September 1999. Fifty-four people attended the first meeting and by the end of the night the Greater Vancouver Woodturners Guild had forty paid members. The club grew quickly during that first year.

In April 2000, we were privileged to have Bonnie Klein as our first outside demonstrator. Bonnie did a full day demo on a Saturday and taught a hands-on class on Sunday at a meeting hall in Belcarra.

Our second year began in September of 2000 and the guild continued to grow, straining the facilities at the Legion Hall. For our next outside demonstrators, we would need a different facility, preferably one that would accommodate a full-sized lathe. After some negotiations, we arranged to install 220 power into a room at the Evergreen Cultural Centre in Coqutilam so that we could bring in a big Oneway lathe for those demonstrations. Clay Foster was our second outside demonstrator in February 2001, followed quickly by Stuart Batty, Mark Salusbury, Jack de Vos, and Russ Fairfield in the next few months.

During the summer of 2001, we arranged to move to Sapperton Pensioners Hall for our regular monthly meetings. Our first actual event at the new hall was a demo by Don Derry on Saturday, September 15th. That was a memorable event for all attendees as 9/11 was very fresh in our minds and bringing Don across the border seemed to be a big deal. Our first regular meeting at the Sapperton Pensioners Hall was held a couple of weeks later.