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Pilot, architect and patron of the arts

RECENTLY, I was invited to attend the Men's Social Club at the West Vancouver Seniors' Activity Centre. That's right, all men. Okay, Katie Kearney, the program coordinator, is a woman. Otherwise, the club, including volunteers, is exclusively male.

RECENTLY, I was invited to attend the Men's Social Club at the West Vancouver Seniors' Activity Centre.

That's right, all men. Okay, Katie Kearney, the program coordinator, is a woman.

Otherwise, the club, including volunteers, is exclusively male.

Every Tuesday, 15 or 20 men get together for lunch and conversation. They come from all walks of life and share a wide range of experience.

"I'm astonished at what I've learned just from listening to these guys," says volunteer Peter Yelow.

The opportunity to exercise their minds, to share ideas and just to be men together in a group creates a special camaraderie. "I've watched friendships being formed here," says Yelow.

John Dayton is one member of that club.

Like many a young fellow does, Dayton set out to see the world. From his home in Vancouver, he hitchhiked as far as Winnipeg. A tour of the School of Architecture clinched his future. Midway through his architectural studies, the Second World War came along and Dayton joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as a flying officer.

While stationed in Bournemouth, England, Dayton met his future wife, Mavis Clark.

"I was at a tea dance with a chum. I looked out over the dance floor and saw this glorious creature. I knew this was the woman I was going to marry. It was instantaneous."

Cupid's arrow may have lodged in Dayton's heart but wedlock remained distant when Dayton was posted to Cairo where he ferried planes to India.

With the war over, Dayton took up his life again. The newly minted architect joined the firm of Thompson, Berwick and Pratt and the newly married couple moved to a cottage at 15th and Lawson in West Vancouver.

In the early fifties, West Vancouver was affordable but offered little in the way of culture. Dayton's interest in the arts had begun early in his life. "I learned about classical music at my mother's knee," he recalls, "and I've always loved it."

George Zukerman's Overture Concerts Association brought culture to communities like West Vancouver. "It started around kitchen tables," recalls Dayton. A membership drive netted 100 subscribers, which rose eventually to 1500. The gymnasium at West Vancouver secondary became the organization's concert hall.

The success of Overture Concerts encouraged Dayton's participation in the arts. He served for 20 years with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra board including a term as president.

He also worked with the Vancouver Opera Association and with the Community Arts Council, where he got involved in the allocation of funds to arts organizations.

Meanwhile, the Dayton family, which now included four children, had relocated to Sentinel Hill and enjoyed summers on the Sunshine Coast. Dayton had taken up painting, moving from oils to watercolours. "The kids would be in the water all day and I'd be on the beach with my paints and easel."

A new interest surfaced with a legacy from his grandmother. She spent years tracing the Dayton history after the family papers had been destroyed by fire in 1882. Eventually, she was able to trace the family movements, proving that an ancestor left England for America, settling in North Carolina in 1639.

During the Revolutionary War, a branch of the family migrated to New Brunswick as United Empire Loyalists.

In the course of her research, Dayton's grandmother traced the family back to 1200 A.D. As steward of the family history, Dayton made his own contribution to the story, collecting and identifying photographs, tracing the movement of relatives across North America and organizing the results into a hefty binder, a project which took three years to complete.

As Dayton reached his eighties, physical challenges began to limit this life of activity and involvement.

Participation in the Seniors'

Centre's Keeping Connected programs kept the door open.

The chair exercise program helps him keep fit physically. The Men's Club keeps his mind active and engaged.

"These days, I'm surrounded by women," says Dayton with a smile. "The Men's Club is an opportunity to be with a great bunch of fellows and to give our wives some time for themselves, too."

For more information about the Men's Social Club, call Joni Vajda, Outreach Coordinator, at 604.925.7211.