Twin Cities: a metro curling tradition
By STEVE SMITH
March 27, 2006
For most people, the curling season of 2005-2006 is on the downslide. What with the Brier, the Tournament of Hearts and the Olympics all in the books, there doesn't seem to be much left to capture the attention this season.
It's true that the women's world championship has been taking place this week, and the men's is about to start; but to most Canadians, these are usually somewhat anti-climactic, even more so in an Olympic year.
I'm happy to say, however, that the highlight of my curling year is yet to come. It's the 43rd annual Twin City Bonspiel, hosted this year by the Dartmouth Curling Club. Teams from all metro-area curling clubs take to the ice on April 1 at four local rinks (Dartmouth, Halifax, Mayflower and CFB Halifax) to vie for a pleasant array of prizes and bragging rights.
The Twin Cities, as the bonspiel is commonly called, isn't the big deal it used to be (heck, Halifax and Dartmouth aren't even twin cities anymore). The big-name teams don't bother with it and, by April, many curlers have had just about all the granite tossing their creaking knees can stand.
As for me, I wouldn't miss it. It's a great chance to test out the facilities at other clubs, and many teams use it to "kick the tires" on a new alignment for the succeeding season. My connection is a bit more personal. The Twin Cities was the first bonspiel I ever went into with my father.
Father and son moments for the men of my generation weren't all that common. Most fathers were much less involved in child-rearing than we are today. My father would have fainted dead away had he been in the delivery room with my mother, and I'm willing to bet he never changed a diaper in his life.
Once or twice a summer, he would forgo his usual golf game and take us to the beach, but being on the fairways was where he was most comfortable. In fact, family legend had it that he was golfing when the ammunition depot was blowing up in Dartmouth in 1945.
Fearing she was in the middle of another Halifax Explosion, my mother gathered her two sons, and cowered at home in a protected corner until the explosions stopped. My dad and his golfing partners dove into a sand trap, waited for a few minutes, then continued their round. Years later, he would tell us rather sheepishly, "I suppose I should have come home, but I couldn't. I was two under!"
No, golfing was not going to be the bonding ground for my dad and me. He was too good a player and I lacked the talent to inspire him to teach me. Curling was a much better bet.
He was an average curler by the time I started to play the game and I've always thrown a pretty good rock. Plus, in the old days, there was nothing an old fogey curler liked better than to have a couple of young bucks playing front end for him, who could pound the old corn brooms and sweep their draws an extra couple of feet.
So curling was where we would meet. It was a game in transition in the 1970s. It had, for many years, been an old boys? club kind of game. In many curling clubs, women were not even allowed in the upstairs bar and young players were expected to show suitable respect for their curling elders.
On Saturday at the Halifax Curling Club, members would drop in for an afternoon luncheon served by members of the club's executive. After the meal, teams would be drawn from a hat and players would curl for glasses or spoons. The elder players would always skip and the younger ones would do the grunt work on the front end.
Members could always bring guests to this affair, and one of the proudest moments of my youth was standing up and introducing my father to the assemblage (he was a Mayflower curler because he thought the Halifax curlers were too big feelin'). It felt to me that I had perhaps grown up.
There were many special competitions at curling clubs in those days. There was a doubles competition at the Halifax (two players per team), and a babies event (for curlers with less than four years as a club member). The points competition (what you see now on TV as the "Hot Shots") was also popular.
But the most prestigious competition, if you weren't going to the Brier, was the Dennis Medals. This was an inter-club affair among the Halifax, Mayflower and Dartmouth (I don't think CFB was involved and I'm not even sure that Dartmouth was). At the Halifax Curling Club, a committee of senior curlers would decide who would represent the club in these competitions. It was a great honour to be chosen and you were expected to behave with decorum.
Bob Mitchell, a longtime Mayflower curler, told me that one year at his club, competitions were held to see who would go to the Dennis Medals. When his young team surprised all and qualified, he was taken aside by the club's older members and told he'd better behave himself at this event and not embarrass the club's good name.
But those days of manly camaraderie have fallen into disfavour now. Men are no longer comfortable in the company of their fellows on a Saturday afternoon when there are minivans to be driven and kids to be dropped off. Players today jump from club to club with never a thought of loyalty or tradition. Soon our curling clubs will suffer the fate of those out west that are no more clubby than your local bowling alley. Out west, the winning team doesn't even buy drinks for the losers (a tradition we stubbornly cling to here in the Maritimes).
So, to me, the Twin Cities is a remaining link to a fast-fading past. At the risk of sounding like a beer commercial, I'll do my best to win every game, but I won't mind if I lose. After all, the winner has to buy me a drink.