Tara Daly
Cowichan Lake Recreation
Youbou Lanes’ 60th birthday bash will be fittingly celebrated with free bowling, and a throwback to the 50s – old fashioned milk shakes.
The lanes will be open free of charge from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, July 16.
From 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. the lanes will be open to families, for $1 per game, and from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. to adults, for $2 a game, along with a beverage.
Youbou Lanes, located at 8550 Hemlock Street in the Youbou Community Hall, opened July 14, 1951, and was paid for by British Columbia Forest Products, who were the owners of the sawmill at the time.
It was initially only five-pin bowling, with 10 pin added later on.
The actual lanes themselves were bought back east and assembled by Brunswick Bowling professionals on site. The art deco style remains today, much as it did the day it opened, with the only significant change being the updating of the score tables.
The bowlers still have to keep their own score, unlike the new facilities with automatic scorekeeping.
The key interesting component to Youbou Lanes is its use of human pin-setters, leaving it the only sanctioned hand-set 10-pin bowling centre in Canada.