On a recent Saturday night, more than 40 singles from White Rock, Langley and other parts of the Fraser Valley packed onto a bus and headed to the Vancouver harbour to enjoy a night of dancing on a cruise ship.

The night, filled with good food, music and plenty of dancing, is just one of the popular activities the Valley Active Singles group does throughout the year.

Into its fourth year, organizer Kathryn Vea said there are now 90 singles (age 45 and up) who are members of the club, getting out to wing night or bowling. There are at least 20 activities per month to choose from.

“When I got divorced I ate a lot of dinners with Tony Parsons, and that’s not a good thing,” she said.

“As my motto has always been, ‘you can’t meet a lot of people between the fridge and the TV set.’”

With experience as an event organizer, Vea decided to put together Valley Active Singles, making sure the focus was on fun, not on love connections. In the four years she’s had the club going, she’s seen other singles groups fail while hers is thriving.

The majority of the members – about a third of whom call the Peninsula home – are divorced, and around 25 per cent are widows, she said.

One South Surrey woman who found the club online said she was simply looking for people to do things with. A member for the past eight months, she said this week VAS was a perfect fit. Since joining, the Semiahmoo Secondary alumni has gone for dinners, to a baseball game and even to watch fireworks.

"It gives you a variety of things. They sort of try to get people out and get them rolling," the woman said, asking that her name not be printed.

"I've found people to go to the symphony with... good friends. It has done for me what I was looking for."

One trend Vea has seen lately among the membership is a growing number of young widows.

“Men and women in their 50s are dying of cancer and other things,” said Vea. “We also have a lot of people who are getting divorced after 30 to 40 years of marriage.”

Both the loss of a loved one and the end of a marriage require time for grieving.

“Everyone knows when he or she is ready. Whenever that is, our group welcomes them,” she said.

What she likes about the calendar of events, is there are a lot of dinners.

“If it’s been raining all day and you just don’t feel like going home to cook for one, you can come out to dinner with us. It’s casual, fun and a heck of a lot better than sitting in front of the TV.”

While a few couples have met at the club, Valley Active Singles isn’t meant to be a matchmaking service.

“We are there to have fun together. We go bowling a lot. If you haven’t bowled in 20 years, then you can be in our league,” she jokes.

"The whole idea is you can never have too many friends in life. It doesn't matter where people live – we go all over... wherever we need to go to have fun."

But as with every singles club, group or event, the ratio of women to men is always higher.

“Our ratio of men to women has remained pretty much the same for four years with 60 per cent women and 40 per cent men. When a divorce happens, it makes two single people, and yet we always have more women.

“Show me the men!” she joked.

For whatever reason, men don’t tend to join groups of any kind except for their own sports clubs.

One man had been divorced eight years before he came out and joined the club.

“Once he did, he said, ‘What was I doing for the past eight years?’” Vea said.

But on the other hand, recently single women are sometimes happy to just be around other women to form new friendships, she said.

Every second Wednesday, Vea holds an introductory evening in Cloverdale, an informal get together with singles wanting to know more about the club and what events take place.

“Usually I get around 10 people showing up and I give them my blurb and then we all find out where people are from and what activities they may be interested in,” she said.

Some have taken up golf on Tuesday evenings, others walk together or go to the horse races.

Several new members are from Maple Ridge, now that the new Golden Ears Bridge connects them to the Valley. Members come from Surrey and Abbotsford, too.

An outing Vea expects will draw a big turnout takes place Oct. 17 at Fraser Downs in Cloverdale.

To find out more about the club, call Vea at 604-514-9778 or check out the website valleyactivesingles.com

–Monique Tamminga, with files from Tracy Holmes