In 1931, the town of Dartmouth was snuggled down as close as it could get to the ferry in what was then called “the Old Town”. Austenville was a suburb complete with its own Bell Bus; it covered roughly the hillside above Sullivan’s Pond, from Victoria Road to the lower end of Lake Banook, and had long outlived its old names of Slab Town and (earlier) Nanny Goat Hill.

 

A lively breed of men, both young and old, lived around there, enjoying Lakes Banook and Micmac with their baseball and bowling; their swimming, canoeing, and sailing in the summer and their skating, hockey and ice harvesting in the winter. What could be more natural than their wanting to band together into a club that would give them a place for assorted indoor games when the weather was dirty and a headquarters for fishing and hunting trips. Today, I guess we’d say “they lived fully”. Remember it was in the middle of the Great Depression, and of course Prohibition was in full force.

 

On March 5th, 1931 the first meeting was held at the home of Harvey Williams. By September they had an agenda, bylaws committee, and in November opened a bank account, complete with auditors. The Club meetings followed the same pattern over the next six years. On Oct 25th 1937, the first meeting of our newly incorporated Club was held in the new Austenville Owl's Club clubhouse. Over eighty eight years the club membership has risen to ninety members and remains at that number today.