The British Ex-Servicemen's Club (1143 Kingsway) closed on the Victoria Day long weekend. Which is fitting for a place with a name like that. Not sure how many members were left by that time. Membership closed in the late-1990s, with surviving members dividing the proceeds of its 2021 sale (they owned the building) before moving on to new adventures.
When I joined the club in 1994 (I failed to renew my membership in 2001 and never heard back on my re-application), every second member was in the trades. Everything about the bar was built by the people who drank there, including the Union Jack light box above the door, which, if I'm not mistaken, was made by a die-cutter who applied coloured tape to a piece of opaque acrylic that was subsequently framed and wired into the wall by an electrician.
The recent run of hot, dry weather has taken its toll on the British Ex's Union Jack. You can see its edges curling, a delimitation that brings to mind Wilde's Picture of Dorian Grey, if the UK itself wasn't so far ahead of it.
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