I’m reluctant to write this review but…
I’m reluctant to write this review but feel it needs to be written to explain what in my opinion, this Club is about.
My male partner joined Royal Canadian Yacht Club in 2004. He as voting member, and I as female, non voting member, even though I also had to pay a membership fee.
In November 2019, after being together 42 years, he suddenly died.
After his death, I applied for, was approved for and billed for what is called a leave of absence membership status, which is 10% of full member fees and was also billed for a reduced boat storage fee since the boat I had on the hard at the club would not be launched.
It was soon after that, that I feel, the Club embarked on a discrimination campaign.
First in August 2020, when the Club sent an email advising me that my 28' Boat I had there, “was ineligible to be at the Club and to make arrangements to move it” . No explanation, nor any deference to a Club regulation passed in February of that year, just 6 months before, that agreed that boats that do not launch could remain unlaunched for a period of up to 5 years at reduced fees charged each year for their storage.
I couldn’t believe it ! In the middle of my grieving only 9 months in and in the middle of a Covid pandemic and lockdown, the Club ordered that I remove the boat. I managed a delay, but was put under immense pressure to remove it.
In January 2021, I had to disclose to them that I had a medical condition. They renewed approval for the leave of absence membership fee category, however, instead of billing 10% of the membership fee, as before, now charged the full amount and instead of the reduced boat storage fee, also billed the full amount as if the boat was at a dock, but it wasn’t and couldn’t because there were no docks available. And because of my medical condition I could not be vaccinated and so couldn’t even get to the club.
In the same year, staff decided to clean up the boat yard and moved boats from where we’d stored them and in doing so, lost my ribbed dinghy and my sailing dinghy. When asked about them the Club just denied all responsibility and claimed they couldn’t locate them. My tough.
Now we were into a dispute and I wanted to keep my account current to what I actually owed so in July 2021 paid what the Club’s Accounting office told me the real amount was. Despite that, the Club used the gross overcharged amounts placed on my account and which they refused to correct, to post and suspend my membership
But that didn’t stop them, the Club continued to bill the full membership fees for all of the next year of 2022 and now added late penalty fees to substantially increase the balance on my account.
Many times I tried to resolve the issues, to no avail. The larger boat was sold for next to nothing to a Club staff member, to resolve that issue, but nothing changed.
And by early 2023 The Club simply ghosted me.
After some consideration, I felt the Club’s conduct left me no option but to report the discrimination I believe I had been forced to endure, to the Human Rights Tribunal, that being constructive expulsion of a senior, widowed, disabled woman. I am the second member to take this step in the past few years, for essentially the same complaint of discrimination against the elderly.
I may not succeed but I have to try.
It appears that the Club’s rebuttal to my complaint is that I wasn’t discriminated against as I wasn’t treated with any exception.
So remember how RCYC discriminates their elderly disabled female members and if that’s what you approve of, ignore this post, but if you don’t approve, I hope you’ll have the courage to tell them so.
And don’t forget, they claim to treat all members this way, so the question is, do you want to be treated this way ?
I sure don’t.
Thank you for reading this post.