Rocks, Ice and Everything is Sometimes Nice

At the bonspiel the brick is a dead handle, thrown with back ring weight so it is a biter. Translation: At a curling competition comprised of a number of different events usually played over a weekend, the curling stone is sometimes released with little or no rotation of the handle, thrown with sufficient momentum to reach the backline so it just touches the outer edge of the 12 foot circle and is a potential point.

Curling has its own language. Considering approximately 80 percent of the world’s curlers – 1.2 million people – are Canadian, we’re rather literate in the language and have our own specific patois. It is a sport with a leveling lingo. While you can find curling rinks in large cities, the majority of the 1200 Canadian curling clubs are found in small communities. And for the ticket price of about $450, the cost of a new pair of Mission Adult Pure Lite hockey skates, you can pay the membership dues for most curling clubs across the nation. In Burned by the Rock, Toronto Sun columnist Jean Sonmor identifies the egalitarian nature of the sport: "In curling rinks you see vivacious stay-at-home grandmothers in intense conversation with slick male accountants. On the street, they inhabit different worlds but here, in the club, they are buddies." The sport forgives the less-than-athletically inclined. It’s a "thinking person’s game" that celebrates strategy.

But perhaps its popularity is also born from the social warmth that is fostered off the ice. Mull over the early rules of the Montréal Curling Club – later renamed the Royal Montréal Curling Club. One stated that the losing party was to pay for a bowl of whiskey toddy, which was to be placed in the middle of the table for the enjoyment of their opponents. So in a country whose history is in large part defined by the enmity between language groups, the sport of curling is a common community communication from coast to coast to coast.

The origins of the game, however, are contentious and often rely on etymology as evidence. In his 1811 book, An Account of the Game of Curling, Reverend John Ramsay of Gladsmuir, Scotland argued in favor of its Continental beginnings. His research into the origins of curling words such as bonspiel, brough, colly, curl, kuting, quoiting, rink, and wick led him to conclude that they were derived from Dutch or German. Claiming that most of the words were foreign, he wrote, "but the whole of the terms being Continental compel us to ascribe to [it] a Continental origin."

The famous historian, the Reverend John Kerr contested Ramsay's views and campaigned in favor of Scottish beginnings to curling. In A History of Curling, published in 1890, Kerr questioned, "if Flemings had brought the game to Scotland in the 1500's, why did Scottish poets and historians make no special mention of its introduction before 1600?" He also saw no proof that many of the terms were Continental, explaining that many were of Celtic or Teutonic origin (examples: channel stone, crampit, draw, hack, hog, skip, tee, toesee, tramp, and tricker).

Whatever its origins, curling became a religion in Scotland – literally. The first hand-written record of what could be called an early curling game dates from February 1540, when John McQuhin of Scotland noted down, in Latin, a challenge to a game on ice between a monk named John Sclater and an associate, Gavin Hamilton. And records from a Glasgow Assembly of Presbyterians in 1638 accused a certain Bishop Graham of Orkney of succumbing to the temptation of the ice. His sin? "He was a curler on the ice on the Sabbath."

By the eighteenth century curling had become a common pastime in Scotland, the passion for which did not abate in the crossing of the Atlantic. A seventeenth century French Canadian farmer was startled by its importation to New France: "Today I saw a band of Scotsmen who were throwing big iron balls like bombs on the ice; after which they cried 'soop, soop,' and then laughed like mad; I truly think they are mad." A bomb was an apt description. Some curling romantics claim that in the aftermath of the fall of Québec City in 1789, the sports-starved 78th Highlanders melted down cannon balls and made kettle-like curling irons.

The colonial backwater of Canada offered one distinct advantage over the homeland – Scotland enjoyed only a few weeks of good curling due to weather. As one Scottish curler noted on 25 February 1853, "the water coming through the ice was rather troublesome." The colony however, offered far more days of ice-covered ponds. One Scottish immigrant was not impressed though, complaining of the cold and asserting, "it does not follow that where there are plenty of men, water and frost, there will be curling."

So while the Scots in Scotland worried about keeping the ice cold, Canadians in Canada struggled to keep themselves warm. The solution for both was the covered rink. By the mid to late nineteenth century, curling rinks could be found in Montréal, Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa and Winnipeg. At the turn of the century, most Canadian curling clubs had moved indoors.

When the Scottish curling team toured Canada and the United States in 1902, they were clearly envious of the evolution of the game in the New World:

It is not simply in the quantity of frost they have that our Canadian children are so happy. Their advantage as compared to ours is that they can attend to business all day, and adjourn to the rink in the evening…. In the majority of cases they can have every kind of comfort in their retiring-rooms, and can either play or do the plate glass skip business, i.e., criticize those who are playing.

Seven years later, Canadians went to Scotland to reciprocate the expedition. Teams from various parts of the country were on the tour, but it wasn’t until after the First World War that a national championship was considered. In the aftermath of Vimy Ridge and Passchendale, Canadians returning home from the mire of war emerged with a newfound nationalism.

Such enthusiasm seemed promising but a national championship didn’t emerge until 1927. In the 1920s, George J. Cameron, the president of W.L. Macdonald and Company and the representative for Macdonald Tobacco in western Canada, convinced Macdonald Tobacco to put up the trophy and prize for the Manitoba Bonspiel. And what was the prize? The tobacco giant picked up the tab for an all-expenses-paid trip to eastern Canadian cities for a series of goodwill curling matches. The seeds of a Canadian championship were thus sown from Prairie friendliness reaching east.

Succeeding company founder Sir William Macdonald in 1917, Walter M. Stewart continued his mentor’s philanthropy. In an era before the United States Surgeon General linked cigarette smoking with an increased risk of death, Stewart believed sports fit neatly into the Macdonald Tobacco Company’s philosophy. But unlike contemporary Big Tobacco, in the fifty years in which Macdonald funded a new national championship of curling, no money was spent on advertising. Apparently, Stewart believed he was funding nationalism.

Nonetheless, the name of tournament came from a brand of Macdonald tobacco known as Brier. Advertisements claimed a national reach: "Everywhere! Brier smoked by more men than any other brand in Canada. It’s the tobacco with heart."

And so, on 1 March 1927, at the Granite Club near the intersection of Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue in Toronto, the first rock was thrown for the Dominion Curling Championship for the Macdonald’s Brier Tankard. Eight curling associations had been invited to compete in the new venue, billed as "the largest single covered expanse of artificial ice on the American continent."

The Toronto Star was not as effusive in its coverage, relegating its story of the opening day of play to the back of the sports section, behind reports of women’s college hockey, badminton and Babe Ruth’s signing of a new contract for $210,000. But when Professor Murray Macneill skipped the Nova Scotia rink from an eight-point deficit to defeat the Montréal entry, the Halifax Herald ran a large page-one headline: "Local curlers win Canada Championship."

As Roaring Twenties staggered into the Dirty Thirties and the Great Depression, Canadians hunkered down with winter sports to take their minds off economic woes. The voice of Foster Hewitt’s nation-wide broadcasts of hockey linked the country through the airwaves, while curling linked people town to town to town to town. And they found their hero in Canada’s first curling star, Winnipegger Gordon Hudson. Known for his accuracy, Hudson was dubbed "Lindbergh on ice," as he skippered his Manitoba team to take the Brier tankard. Popular with fans, the Manitoba team impressed with their powerful sweeping. The Toronto Telegram lauded how "the brooms are plies with a precision and vigor that makes a vacuum cleaner look, by comparison, like an antiquated carpet sweeper."

Since then, the heroes of Canadian curling, their equipment and the times have changed. The 1955 Brier saw the Saskatchewan rink of the Cambells (Garnet Campbell, Don Campbell, Glenn Campbell, Lloyd Campbell) take the tankard. Ten years later, the Braunstein brothers from Manitoba faced anti-Semitic taunts in Saskatoon, but prevailed in the finals against British Columbia. And between 1959 and 1964 the Richardsons were to curling what the Montréal Canadiens of this era were to hockey: dominant.

One of the younger curlers who watched the Richardsons win all those championships was Benito, Manitoba native Eddie Werenich. "I followed the big names such as Matt Baldwin and the Richardsons as they competed each March," Werenich writes in the Forward to Bob Week’s book, The Brier: the history of Canada’s most celebrated curling championship. What made the Brier particularly tempting to Werenich was its accessibility:

Like every young curler, I thought there would be nothing better in the world than to play in the Brier. And unlike the Stanley Cup or the Grey Cup, there was something appealing about it because I knew I had a chance to make it there. Even though I was from a small Prairie town, I could follow a long road and eventually get to the greatest curling event in the world.

Benito, Manitoba is a farming community of 5000 people near the Saskatchewan border. Considering there are more than twice as many curlers registered in Saskatchewan as in the entire United States, the “roaring game,” is a fixture in the small town’s landscape.

Escaping Europe as the storm of war gathered in 1939, Werenich’s Ukrainian parents immigrated to Benito as grain farmers. The agrarian life in which Werenich grew up may help to explain the ice in his veins when he faced competitors on the curling rink. He was nicknamed "the Wrench" because he ratcheted up the pressure on the ice, and often abraded other players and curling officials off the ice.

At age 10, Werenich was introduced to the game, and after finishing high school he moved to Toronto. A rough farm boy in a big city, Werenich eked out a living. But it was in 1972, when he joined up with Paul Savage, that the ice began to run smooth. Savage, raised in suburban Toronto in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood, met his opposite in Werenich. The two often clashed on the ice as teammates, but the levelling surface of the curling ice took them to the Brier in 1973. Werenich played second to Savage’s skip, but it was the reverse that brought them both their first tankard. They lost in 1973 and it took a decade before the pair would return to the Brier with a new rink to taste victory.

By the 1980s, there was a new sponsor, a new tankard and a new hero. In 1979 the Macdonald Tobacco Company withdrew its sponsorship after 50 years and the Macdonald Brier Tankard was retired. When Labatt Breweries became the Brier sponsor in 1980, it introduced a gold Labatt Tankard.

In 1983, after years of acrimony between the pair, Savage and Werenich reunited to create what was known as "the Dream Team." Pundits had no doubt as to their abilities; the question was, however, could the rink contain their egos and personalities on one ice surface? Finishing with a 12-1 record, the Ontario squad hoisted the Labatt tankard at the Avonlea Curling Club in Sudbury, Ontario, managing to answer their critics in the process.

That year, Werenich followed his Brier championship with his first world championship. Repeating the victory his idols, the Richardsons managed over the Scots in 1962, Werenick’s rink took the gold with a victory over the visitors from Scotland at the Agridome in Regina. Seven years later, with a new supporting staff, and in Vasteras, Sweden, Werenich won his second world championship.

The Wrench has been the face of Canadian curling for more than 20 years. Sometimes he was in the face of his teammates, opposing players and the curling establishment. But for Werenich, the game, and specifically the Brier, is in the end about friendship amongst people passionate about the game: "It doesn’t matter what you do, where you come from or whether you’re watching or playing; once you are there, you are a curler and part of a special fellowship."

Across the border from Benito, Manitoba is the town of Biggar, Saskatchewan. And in the town that claims, "New York is Big But This is Biggar," there is a monument to arguably the best female curler of the 1990s. The Sandra Schmirler Olympic Gold Park honours the woman who skipped her team to Canada’s first Olympic gold medal in Women’s curling.

Born on 11 June 1963 to Art and Shirley Schmirler, Sandra was introduced to the game of curling at the age of eleven. After high school, where she helped win two provincial curling championships, she completed a physical education degree at the University of Saskatchewan. She then skipped her team to six provincial championships. Next, the Schmirler rink won three Canadian championships and three world titles in 1993, 1994 and 1997. Schmirler followed these victories with a win at the Canadian Olympic Trials, giving her team the opportunity to represent Canada at the Nagano Olympics in 1998.

In Japan, Schmirler’s rink finished first in round robin play with a 6-1 record and went on to win gold. Canadians could readily identify with Team Schmirler – Sandra Schmirler, Jan Betker, Marcia Gudereit and Atina Ford – a group of friends and mothers from the prairie heartland.

Tragically, at the height of her young career and just two months after the birth of her second daughter, Jenna, Schmirler was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 1999. While a fighter to the end, she lost her battle with cancer on 2 March 2000 at the age of 36.

Canadians across the nation mourned the loss. These Canadians were farmers, fishermen, stockbrokers, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. They ran computers, hairdressing salons and supermarkets. The mix was as diverse as the country, and as diverse as those who take up the game that Schmirler played with precision and passion.

Lesson 1. The language of sport.

Burned stone. Button. Counter draw weight. Flipped out. Hacks. Hog line. Pebble. Split-raise. Wick and roll. These are all words and phrases used in curling. And like many sports, to play the game is to speak a distinct language.

Students are to locate another sport with its own language and find the origins of those words. For example, why is the blue line in hockey blue? Why is a score of two under par in golf called an eagle? And what is the history of the bull’s eye in archery? Once students have compiled a list of at least five words, they are to present their findings to the rest of the class.

Lesson 2. Breaking down the rules.

The better you understand the rules of a sport, the more enjoyable it is to play and watch. In groups of 2-3 students, students are to present a component of the rules of curling to the rest of the class. The website for the Canadian Curling Association has an excellent online resource outlining the rules of the game, which can be accessed at www.curling.ca/learn_and_play/rules_of_the_game/index.asp. Depending on the size of the class, each group is to select specific issues to teach the rest of the class. Groups must include the following presentation techniques in their explanations:

· Freeze frame
· Short skit
· Illustration

Lesson 3. Healthy sponsorship?

At one time, many sports facilities were named after teams or cities. In the United States, there was the Boston Garden in Massachusetts, and Tiger Stadium in Detroit. Many sports stadiums in the United Kingdom are named after locations. Wimbledon is in Wimbledon. The Manchester United football team plays at Old Trafford, named for the area where the stadium is located. Today, the playing field is different. Boston Garden, home of the Celtics professional basketball team is now the Fleet Center, named after a bank. Canseco Fieldhouse, home of the Indiana Pacers basketball team, is named after an insurance company. In the United Kingdom, an increase in commercial sponsorships has resulted in Reebok Stadium, and Bradford and Bingley Stadium (savings and loan). In Australia, there are ANZ Stadium (regional bank), North Power Stadium (power company), and Aussie Stadium (Aussie Home Loans). Closer to home, the Forum is now gone and the Molson Centre is the new home to the Montréal Canadiens.

But as the history of the Brier attests, there is a long narrative to corporate sponsorship. Clearly there are advantages to the infusion of cash allowed through such funding. Nonetheless, how appropriate is it for a sport to be associated with a tobacco or alcohol company?

Students are to write a 250-word letter to the editor of a local newspaper. The letter should argue for or against the (theoretical) sponsorship of a local team by a company that sells a product that adversely affects one’s health.

Lesson 4. Curling celluloid.

Photographs illustrate the emotions of both the photographer and the subject of his or her work. The camera lens may view the world impartially, but the photographer constantly judges.

Go to the Canadian Curling website and a page on the history of curling, which includes historical photopgraphs of the sport, at http://www.curling.ca/content/GoCurling/historyOfCurling.asp. Ask students to identify markers that help contextualize the photographs. Is the photograph in colour? What are the curlers wearing? What other parts of the photographs help place the image in a specific time? What do these photographs tell us about the time? In groups of 2-3, students are to stage a series of photographs from a specific Brier or Tournament of Hearts. That is, students are to imagine that a group of photographs have recently been unearthed at the National Archives in Ottawa. The "newly found" photographs depict the exploits of Canadian curlers of the past. Students must remember to contextualise their photographs, illustrating the time and place to make them as authentic as possible.

Lesson 5. Curling quiz

In groups of 4 (in recognition of the number of players on a curling team), students are to produce 10 questions (as in the number of ends in a game) about the game of curling. Each group is to take turns asking a question. One point is scored for a correct answer. As well, one point is awarded to the team asking the question if no other team answers correctly. After 10 questions (ends), each of which should be recorded on the board, a winner is crowned with a trophy, the name of which could be determined by a class vote.