COVID closes Burnaby's last-standing 5-pin bowling alley
The lanes went out quietly; the pandemic made sure of that.
If you asked Keith Stevenson why he loves five-pin bowling, he wouldn’t wax poetic about the thunderous rumble of the urethane ball on laminated hardwood nor its satisfying clash with the pins at the end of the lane. Instead, he’d tell you of the cheer that follows a strike or a tough spare. And that’s what he’s missed most.
“It goes back to people. You can’t be in this business and not get emotional not seeing these people,” Stevenson says. “Some of these leagues, I’ve been with them since Lougheed Lanes to Hastings to Old Orchard. I’ve seen their families grow. I’ve seen their deaths. It’s family.”
There was no chance for a last hurrah to celebrate the life of the Old Orchard Five-Pin Bowling Centre, Burnaby five-pin’s last gasp. No triumphant crash of balls and pins at the end of these lanes. No second chance to claim the spare. No closing frame. No final game. Only a few solemn balls thrown between Stevenson and his son – “My son grew up in a bowling centre,” he says – a day or two before, with “mixed emotions,” he surrendered the keys to the property owners.
Like innumerable other businesses throughout Canada, the Old Orchard lanes were snuffed out quietly by the coronavirus pandemic this spring – and with them, the five-pin game that bound a community left Burnaby.
This piece was a finalist in the 2021 Jack Webster Foundation Awards for Best Community Reporting. Read the full story in the Burnaby Now.
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