It's February 2025. 

Tonight, as we do every month on the first Wednesday of each month, our Chapters of Tough Guy Book Club will get together in the pub, to discuss the latest book, as part of our 13 year long mission to get more guys reading, and putting rowdy, interesting conversation and friendship back into the pub and one of them was the 5000th time we have done that.

Tonight, we are holding our 5000th in-person book club.

5000 nights spent in the company of great stories, big discussions and good friends.
Five thousand times, our club has pulled up a chair, ordered a drink, and dived headfirst into discussing stories that challenge, inspire, and sometimes infuriate.

Over the last 13 years, we’ve read a lot of books, sometimes good, sometimes bad. And argued about all of them. (You can check them out here)
But this club is more than the books; it’s the people who’ve made Tough Guy Book Club what it is. The men who show up, month after month, rain or shine. The ones who welcome newcomers without hesitation. The ones who listen as much as they speak. And the backbone of our club, the two hundred volunteers who run things doing everything from fundraising to advertising, from designing our t-shirts to running our camps.
How did we get from being two friends sitting at a pub in Collingwood to 140 locations in 8 countries? Those 200 men and everyone else who has helped along the way. Thank you.

In the time it has taken to get to 5000 meetings, this club has achieved a lot of other things as well. We’ve held 8 camps; where Goons get together for a few days to swap stories and have a good time, many monthly challenges; in which Goons accept a challenge that add a page to their story, Bourdain dinners; a fancy night out with friends and family, barbecues, trivia nights, a few natural disasters, and countless friendships forged.

We don’t know which chapter was the one to achieve the 5000th milestone because they are all at the same time, and frankly, we don’t care. Everyone who has attended a meeting has contributed to what makes this club great and we all share in the achievement.
Some of our goons have been with us from the start. Some are in their 5th year. Some guys started attending this month. Sadly, some have passed away, such as our old friend Dane. But all have helped to get men to read more, talk more, and make more friends.

It has taken us 13 years to get to 5000 in-person Chapter meets, but now that we are sitting around the 140 Chapter mark, we will be hosting around 1550 this year. So the next 5000 will come sooner than you think.

Thanks for being part of our mission to get more guys reading, building a dense lattice work of community around men, and putting rowdy, interesting conversations back in the pub.

5000 down, who’s ready for 5000 more.

I’d like to send out a special thanks to Tom Scott, our board, the captains, and Desmond Doyle for reminding me to write this.

-Shay

The photo of the Collingwood Original Chapter is from September 2018. There were lots more cigarettes on the table back then.
The photo of the table is the first Chapter photo I can find today. We used only to take photos of the table.