These traditions and memories seemed very vivid during the next thirty years. The club was holding regular monthly meetings by the turn of the century,‘ and putting more time and detail into its events. A few St. Andrew’s Day dinners, like the one held in 1905, included a before- dinner soiree of speeches, songs, and piping, followed by an after-dinner dance.’ Later Burns Concerts, beginning in the mid-19105, became charity drives and enormous Island-wide sources of entertainment. By 1915, the concerts were being held on two consecutive nights (usually the 25th and 26th of January), the guests transported by train to Charlot- tetown from spots all over the Island.6 The year before, in 1914, the proceeds from the concerts had enabled the club to give to a total of fifty-seven poor people food, clothing, shoes, and coal. Donations were also made from those returns to the Tuberculosis Dispensary, St. Vincent Orphanage, Mt. Herbert Orphanage, and the Patriotic Fund.7 The society was strong in those first years following the outbreak of war. And the war gave them greater incentive — a greater cause.

It also strongly affected that generation of Caledonian Club members for a number of years. During the later years of the war, the men slowed club activity—with the exception of small St. Andrew’s Day get-togethers—and concentrated most of their energies in areas of assistance to the war effort. And, in the years immediately following the hostilities, during the 19205, they turned their attention to programs of relief for the returned soldiers and public debates on the horrors and senselessness of war.“

By the close of the 19205, the Caledonian Club resumed its normal gamut of activities. It was hailed by the people of the province as a group devoted to its Scottish heritage and its fellow Islanders. In 1932, when Benjamin Bremner was writing his Island Scrap Book, he acclaimed the club as “a very popular society in Charlottetown at the present time,” one “deservedly commended by citizens for its charity and benevolence to the poor and distressed of all creeds in the community.”9

The Caledonian Club isn’t as numerically strong or as socially active today as it was in the early 1930s. At present, it holds only two events a year -— the Highland Games in August and the St. Andrew’s Day dinner in November. The public lectures, so popular in the 19205, have disappeared along with the Literary and Debating Societies. The Burns Concerts, still held every January, have been taken over by another group. The land once owned by the club is now a commercial and residential area.

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