Canada’s Other Winter Sport
Although in most Canadian’s minds, they would say that hockey is Canada’s sport, hopefully a few of them have paid attention to the formidable performances of our national teams during the 2017 World competitions in China and Edmonton. Ontario’s Rachel Homan and Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue Canadian teams have been perfect throughout play, stringing together a perfect streak of wins. Gushue has put on an absolute curling clinic going the full ten ends only three times in the twelve games played so far. Hopefully, he will make it a lucky 13 with one more win over Sweden’s Niklas Edin’s rink tonight.
***Update from last night’s win over Sweden, the men’s and women’s teams went perfect at the World’s this year. Gushue’s rink could arguably be the best team ever considering they only had to play 4 complete games out of 13. For the first time ever, one country has all the reigning champions of World’s and Olympics.***
I started curling during my posting to CFB Summerside from 1989-91. I took up the sport to keep active and for the social aspects. It is very gentlemanly when you’re having a bad game to be able to shake hands early and go for a beer.
My first rink with Paul Dobbs curled out of the CFB club, the Hack & Hog. We entered the Tankard Bonspiel for the Island up in the O’Leary club. Due to the small size of the province, it was relatively easy to get a Tankard pin compared to the rest of Canada.
I was able to participate in a couple of military bonspiels in Ottawa and CFB Cornwallis, NS. Bonspiels were a regular staple of military bases back then.
Fairly soon after I left the military in 1991, we moved to Saskatoon and from 1992-93, I was fairly serious about curling. Our team from the CNR club off Fairlight Drive worked hard and did well. I was able to curl in all of Saskatoon’s five clubs.
When we moved to Vancouver in 1995, I was lucky to have a rink five minutes from our New Westminster home, the Royal City Club. I was quite busy with work and the kids, so curling started to take a back seat.
Once we moved over to Vancouver Island, it was again difficult to regularly get down to the club in Courtenay, BC.
Growing up in Kelwood, I was more of a hockey player instead of a curler. I did play a few games through the school at the old town rink using Mom’s old Rink Rat for a broom. As a sweeper, you had to slap those old fabric brooms pretty hard to be effective.
We were cooling our heels in Winnipeg waiting for the furniture to show up from Summerside and there were tickets for the event still. Graham was only a few months old and he got a bit of TV coverage when I was walking him around. Unfortunately, Kevin Martin’s rink lost to Scotland. It was back before the Free Guard zone and the teams back then just played a peel game, so if you went down a couple of points, there was no way back.
I wasn’t able to curl very often after rejoining the military back in 2007 but I was able to curl occasionally in Portage while I was there for pilot training.
It will be easier to spend regular time with a team now that my military days are done. Sailing with the Navy made it difficult to commit to a team so I was only able to play as a spare at the base club.
I dragged Tina to the World Men’s competition and unfortunately Canada’s John Morris rink ended up in third with Sweden’s Niklas Edin winning the tournament.
Sweden has a tough team and Brad Gushue will have to be sharp to make it past him tonight. The team from the Rock has held up magnificently this past week and curling fans will enjoy watching the Battle of the Rocks tonight.
Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.