Beaches Chess Club 100 years ago

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Hugh Brodie View Post
    Very interesting article! I seem to remember playing in a Toronto club on Adelaide St. sometime in the late 60's or early 70's. Does anyone have any details? I also remember the YMCA on College St. and the club upstairs on Vaughn Rd. I think I had a Toronto blitz rating of around 2200 at some time. Beaches related - I stayed with at a friend's aunt's place on Hammersmith during the 1968 Canadian Open.
    The Toronto Chess Club (Friday Nights on Yonge) joined the YMCA Club on College, then the new club moved to Adelaide circa 1976 and up to Vaughan and St Clair circa 1979.

    My early 1970s fellow chess team member Ron (both of us in the Malvern photo in the article) lived on Hammersmith, north of Queen.

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    • #17
      Remembering a chess champion who died in WW1

      Pte. Frank Percival Beynon enlisted with the Queen's Own Rifles on June 9, 1917 and died on Sept. 2, 1918, perhaps in the Second Battle of Arras. Percy listed his occupation as a chess professional. His death was announced in the American Chess Bulletin and at the Annual General Meeting of the Toronto Chess Club.

      Percy was born in rural Manitoba in 1888. His father George William, a lawyer, had died in 1902. His grandfather Reverend George Beynon from Ireland was a father of Canadian Methodism. Second cousin Francis Marion Beynon was an anti-war suffragist in Winnipeg. She wrote that there would be no wars if every man who would vote for conscription would be sent to the front and that there should also be a conscription of wealth; she had to flee the country.

      Percy's mother Marie Edith and children moved to the west-end of Toronto. She was an authoress and I found online her 1897 book of short stories: Saints, Sinners and Queer People. Percy worked as a clerk at the Mail and Empire newspaper, then in wholesale millinery (hats).

      His father's older brother, John Wesley Beynon, also a Barrister, worked in Brampton (north of Toronto) but also had a summer home in the Balmy Beach area of East Toronto. John Wesley had played in Dominion Chess Championships; In Orillia in 1897, and in 1898 was second in the second section at the Athenaeum Club in Toronto. In March of 1908 John was elected Curator of the Toronto Chess Club, perhaps responsible for setting up the pieces as the space was also used as a Checkers club. His son Donald played as did nephews Percy and John H., and his older half-brother George W.

      1908 saw Toronto's first ever Junior Championship and Percy won the Hunter Cup 7-0, ahead of future Canadian Champion John Stuart Morrison. In October '08 Percy was elected Toronto Chess Club's Curator. And in 1912 Percy at age 23 won the Toronto Championship. He moved to New York to be part of the chess scene with American Champion Frank J. Marshall. Percy's loss to future World Champion Jose Capablanca was published in newspapers and chess endgame books. An excellent account of his New York years and military record by Olimpiu G. Urcan was published online in 2010 at ChessCafe.com.

      In 1920 Morrison was ill and unable to defend his Dominion Champion title. Sidney Eugene Gale won the Dominion Victory Chess Tourney with a tie-break playoff over Capt. John B. Harvey; third was R.A.F. Sergeant William Wilson Robson. Robson, top board of the Chevrons Chess Club, had played for the Canadian Convalescent Chess Club in London, defeating the London Champion. Had Percy Beynon lived, he would have likely won the Dominion Champion.

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      • #18
        Hi Erik,

        Very glad to see the information for the Beaches Chess Club. Thanks for bring us the 100-year-ago history in the town of the beaches. I would like add the website(http://tbeths.com) in the bookmark and get involvement for the future event.

        William

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