Bowling alley closure ‘heartbreaking’ for members
It’s the end of an era at the Sherwood Centre — the bowling alley is closing its doors after 59 years, breaking the hearts of hundreds of its longtime patrons.
Ray Poitras, 71, has spent over 50 years bowling at Sherwood.
“This place, I’ll never forget it,” he said Thursday on a break from the last ever seniors league game. “It’s my second home.”
He’s loved the atmosphere, the sounds of the pins falling, the camaraderie and seeing everyone happy and enjoying themselves, he says.
“Some nights, when I’m not bowling, I’m in here socializing.”
The closing, he says, is very sad.
Poitras, 71, began bowling at 15 after getting a job in a New Brunswick alley near his home.
He joined a Sherwood league after moving to Hamilton in 1967, starting on a team with four women.
“One of them ended up being my wife. But she wasn’t a very good bowler,” he laughs. Regardless, he and his wife Margaret are celebrating their 50th anniversary next year, he’s happy to say.
But he is heartbroken that the Sherwood — a five-pin bowling alley on Fennell Avenue East near Upper Ottawa — will no longer exist. He found another place to bowl, but is worried other seniors won’t be so lucky.
“If they don’t get out and socialize, it’ll affect them mentally,” he says. “When they’re here, they’re all smiles.”
Bowling keeps seniors healthy, he says. “I don’t feel like I’m 71. I feel like I’m 40.”
Hamilton 5 Pin Bowlers’ Association treasurer Norm Macdonald estimates the closing affects 1,200 to 1,500 league players.
It will touch thousands more because of Sherwood’s long and beloved history.
“Everybody whose been a decent bowler has bowled in this place,” he says. “I’ve seen several perfect games played here.
“It’s really going to hurt bowlers in Hamilton. We have a lot of highly competitive bowlers.”
The Sherwood, with 48 lanes, has hosted many five-pin national and provincial championships because it is so big, he adds.
Unlike 10-pin, five-pin was invented in Canada and is played almost exclusively in this country.
The Sherwood has also provided a venue for “tons and tons of kids’ birthday parties” adds Macdonald.
Bowler Carol Lewis looks at the lanes adapted for a wheelchair league and says “This place, when it closes, it’ll be heartbreaking for so many.”
“DARTS brings all these people (with special needs) up,” adds Betty Banduro, adding Sherwood even has an autism league. “There’s no place else for them to go.”
The closing leaves so many patrons at a loss — many of whom developed close friendships there, she says, adding many are hoping for a miracle
that the new owners will reopen it. Longtime Sherwood supervisor Lila Stanfield says all age groups including preschoolers are affected, but the closing is hardest on the seniors.
“There’s no where they can all go and bowl together,” she says. “They’re so devastated, it brings tears to my eyes.”
There is also a lot of nostalgia in the place.
“People come in and say I met my husband here, I met my girlfriend here,” says Stanfield. “Five-pin bowling was also years ago a family thing ... and young people came in here on a date. You have no idea the phone calls I have coming in.”
The closing also means the large Ontario 5 Pin Bowlers’ Association tournament held at Sherwood every Easter weekend
now must find another locale. The Sherwood will close to the public on Wednesday. Following a youth bowling school this week, the doors close permanently on Sunday.
Ward Coun. Tom Jackson hopes to meet with a group who just bought the Sherwood and the plaza it is in, to ask them to keep it open, “with modernization carried out for the sake of the community.”
City planning and building departments officials say they don’t have any applications before them yet on plans for the property.
The Sherwood was built in two stages, the first half in 1959 and the second in 1960, says Anne Depew, co-manager with her husband Ronald from 1993 to 2001.
Depew has fond memories of meeting “a lot of nice people” through Sherwood, both locally and nationally.
Retired Spectator employee Kathi Aitken started bowling at the Sherwood at age seven as a bantam.
“I spent much of my youth at Sherwood and, oh, it was fun,” she says. “We had the time of our lives there.”
Hundreds of kids bowled there, she adds. “That was our fun.”
Aitken, as an adult, bowled with many area and provincial top women bowlers out of Sherwood and remembers the many champions it produced.
“There is a lot of bowling legacy there.”