Toronto YMCA Mismanagement

After our petition was rejected by Metro-Central General Manager Lesley Davidson (see The Problem), there was nowhere to turn but Toronto YMCA President Richard Bailey.

Mr. Bailey refused to discuss the matter at all, insisting that YMCA rules barred him from dealing with it. According to him, it had to be dealt with by a Disciplinary Committee. Despite my request, however, he was never able to produce written rules indicating such a procedure.

Mr. Bailey formed the committee and appointed Vice President Linda Cottes to deal with the matter. But as Ms. Cottes and I were finalizing a date for me to meet the committee, she announced that Ed Dewar would not be permitted to attend because he was no longer a Y member. Since the exclusion of Mr. Dewar, the organizer of the 1997 petition, would have significantly impaired my ability to present our case to the committee, I wrote a letter to the Y’s Board of Directors and to the Metro-Central Advisory Committee to object. (Mr. Bailey assured me he would distribute copies of the letter to each of the members of both committees on May 30.)

Robert E. Lord, the Chair of the Board, responded by urging that I meet with the Disciplinary Committee as proposed by Mr. Bailey.

So I did, on June 21, accompanied by fellow members Sean O’Brien and Peter Higginson. We stuck to a single point: Mr. Dewar’s unjustifiable exclusion from the meeting. Committee members promptly agreed that Mr. Dewar should be permitted to attend.

We adjourned with the understanding that Ms. Cottes and I would arrange a new meeting date suitable to all as soon as possible. Although Ms. Cottes appears to have done her best to prevent a second meeting from ever happening (details), a new meeting was finally scheduled for July 12.

I was accompanied by Ed Dewar and by Sean O’Brien. We made a thorough presentation spelling out the serious problems of dishonesty and defiant disregard for members’ interests in the management of Metro-Central. (Report on Meeting.)

The first response came on July 31, when lawyer Julian Porter sent me a letter via email threatening a libel suit on behalf of the YMCA. (Mr. Porter’s Letter.)

Several YMCA members were incredulous that such a threat could be made. It seemed the small circle of people who wield power within the YMCA were prepared to overturn all of the organization’s core values in putting their personal loyalties to each other uppermost. (Members’ Public Responses.)

Shortly afterwards, Mr. Bailey initiated a meeting with me which was held on August 3. At our meeting, Mr. Bailey presented the committee’s report, which supports management without explaining why. Mr. Bailey refused to discuss the substance of the report, repeatedly stressing that the committee was independent of management. Immediately after the meeting, Mr. Bailey sent an email containing the committee report to the list of petitioners. (Mr. Bailey’s public email, and Uriel’s Response.)

In the meeting, Mr. Bailey acknowledged “involvement” in the decision to hire a lawyer to threaten me with a libel suit, but repeatedly refused to say whether he was under the impression that I had ever made a false statement about the YMCA or its staff. He persisted in this refusal when I repeated the question in an open letter to him after the meeting.

In fact, my statements have been amply well-founded, and no one has ever questioned their veracity. This suggests that the YMCA president personally approved the misuse of YMCA funds for a malicious legal action that he knew was unfounded.

See also: Toronto’s National Post Misses the Boat

Denouement