january two sailors bonspiel winners
TRANSCRIPT
Hack & Back
The
October
Club Executive
President Bonnie Talbot
Vice-President TBA
Past-President Avon Giddings
Treasurer Steve Graham
Secretary Deb Wilson
Club Directors Debbie Burt
Mark Cripps
Brian Gibbons
Carl Gray
Bob Hook
Calum McGeachie
Kiril Rashev
Chris Williams
Newsletter Bill Longshaw
Club Executive
January
Editors note: We don’t usually feature bonspiel winners on the front page of
the Hack & Back but in this case we thought we would. We wanted to em-
phasize what a wonderful sport we belong to. Here is a family team who
made the best of curling emphasizing family and friends are often included
too. Young and old, any gender and nationality can join in and enjoy curling.
Bring your family and friends to come for a date night out of fun and enjoy
some relaxation in these busy times. Curling seems to be a fraternity of
people who enjoy friendship with a little competition thrown in!!!
Two Sailors Bonspiel Winners
Curling is truly a family sport and the Gordon Family shows that.
They entered the Two Sailors Bonspiel on Sat. Jan. 4 sponsored by
Eccelstone Financial Group. Unfortunately one sailor couldn’t make
it this year. John Anderson was a little under the weather that
weekend but the other sailor Gary Waterhouse on the right and his
wife Lynda convened the day in great style. The winners from Fer-
gus were Scott Gordon vice-skip, Hanna Gordon skip, Kayla Gordon
second, and Phil Gordon lead. Well done Gordon Family.
Theme of Wilkin Ladies Bonspiel
Many thanks to those who contributed here. Tania, Paul, Karen, Lynda and Roberta
Despite the terrible downpour the turnout for the
bonspiel was terrific. Teams from Ayr, Kincardine, Ac-
ton and of course Fergus took part in the fun. Unfor-
tunately the team from Owen Sound, Bluewater could
not get here and were missed.
The team from Ayr came out on top with Wilkin’s team
a very close second.
The theme, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” was a great
success with teams dressed in a variety of costumes.
Even the chef dressed up and danced around the hall.
Many thanks to Wilkin Jewellers for their continued
support and everyone who volunteered their time to
make this day the success it was. The visitors were
quick to thank the ice makers, bar tenders, kitchen
staff for making it happen.
A special thanks to the Wednesday Night Ladies (Bad
Habits and Nunsense) for stepping up and making the
day work. You ladies were the best! Our thoughts are
with Deb Wilson who fell and dislocated her left shoul-
der. She is a real trooper! Thanks Lynda
Winners of the Wilkin Ladies Bonspiel hosted by Lynda Water-
house, from Ayr Curling Club L to R: lead Brenda Totten, skip Joy
Wright, vice-skip Isobel Dobbin, and second Denis Ontonovich .
Community Bonspiel
First draw winners : second Marg Plue, vice-skip
Peggy Kenny, skip Donna Bessey, and lead Helen Berry
Overall winners from Gordon Dairy Farm.
Lead Dawna Laitar, skip Chris Laitar
Scott Gordon and Katrina Gordon. (President and convenor Bonnie Talbot on the
left and convenor Greg Moulton on the right
in both photos.)
The 2nd Annual Community Bonspiel was held on Saturday Jan 25th, 2020. Once again we were able to field 2 full
draws who were paraded down the ice lead by the Fergus Pipe Band.
We are slowly making a mark with this spiel in that 11 teams were returnees from last year, including CW Town-
ship, RLB Accountants, RBC, CW Fire & Rescue, Legion Br 275, Groves Volunteers, Lion’s, Optimist & Red Brick.
Rookies this year included Diane Cook Travel, BLR Drafting, Bridge Church and Gordon’s Dairy Farm.
We used one of our Club sponsors for our lunchtime meal this time around…Barburritos! Owners Kauresh and
Meghna Patel assembled 70 delicious burritos in a timely fashion. Bonnie Talbot and
her kitchen team of Rhonda Buck, Ginny Warren and Kelly French served a bowl of soup
and a delicious home made fruit crisp topped with ice cream. Suffice it to say, no one
left hungry.
Thank you to Fred Buck and Jim Carter for bartending and to Andy Maine and Rick
Marshal for prepping the ice.
A good mix of non-curlers, occasional curlers (1-2 times a year), new curlers and vets
graced our ice surface and a fun time was had by all. I observed some of the stronger
teams helping their opponents with suggested broom placement, line calls and other tips during their games.
Laughter could be heard from one end of the rink to the other.
Another Club sponsor, M&M’s (Aileen Hawkins) helped with the prize table. Everyone got a prize... everyone was
happy. No cracks in the ice … Andy was happy. No blood on the ice … I was happy.
From the curlers who participated, the food vendor, prize table and volun-
teers from the Club, I felt this emphasizes what Community is all about.
A special shout out to 2nd year curlers Richard Hoekstra and Pat MacDougald
who were last minute standby spares. They answered the call at 8 am on
Saturday morning and rushed over to the club. Upon their arrival I intro-
duced them to their team and oh BTW – you guys are playing Vice and Skip.
Despite pulling last year’s winner in their 1st round, they managed to win
their 2nd game quite handily.
In the end, Groves Hospital Volunteers won the 1st Draw and Gordon’s Dairy
Farm won the 2nd Draw, along with the overall title for this year. Congratulations to Scott and Katrina Gordon
and their teammates, Chris and Dawna Laitar.
CW Township was best dressed while CW Fire & Rescue 1 & 2 made a valiant attempt to empty the beer cooler.
Thank you to all who played a role and see you next year.
Greg Moulton
These are our sponsors
please support them when
you can!
It’s classified as one of Australia’s most baffling unsolved crimes
and remains one of its mysteries… strangely, it involves curling.
What? Curling Downunder - are you kidding? Absolutely no mates.
Sure it may only be about 250 curlers in all of the country, much
less than the estimated 2.5 million surfers but in Melbourne, Victo-
ria they have a season from April to October at O’Brien Arena in
the docklands area. Commonly referred to as the ‘Icehouse’, it is
shared with hockey players, figure skaters and public skating en-
thusiasts.
But this seemingly harmless game became victim to a criminal fac-
tion and the news rocked the curling world throughout the country.
It was February 27, 2010 very late at night. The refrigerated
truck pulled up to the docklands with its expensive load of what the
thieves figured were stones being diamonds or something exotic
but of course they were curling rocks brought in from Canada. The
truck and it’s contents were swept away never to be found. The
load represented one third of the country’s curling stones, 58 in
total, valued at $25,000. Some fool sent an elaborate ransom note.
“I figure they are somewhere at the bottom of the Yarra River,”
Curling Federation member Ian Palangio suggested.
I figure it remains a cold-case because the police have no idea
what they’re looking for. Curling rocks in Australia!
Curling Rocks in Austrailia?
Contributor to the Hack & Back... Bob Grant
The Snow Belles of Wednesday Night
As tradition dictates, the Wednesday night ladies hosted the Christmas
Annual Snow Bell, jingle Bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! Oh what fun,
it is to curl, on a Wednesday Night Team, hey! If you didn’t attend, you
really should have. When else will you play bumper cars, crazy eights,
what’s on tap, and time zones on ice? Followed by great snacks (thank you
ladies) and bingo and trivia. A big thank you to Rick for always having the
ice in great shape for us! We bet these girls didn’t have as much fun as
our Wednesday Night Belles.
Thank you Karen Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!
GREAT TRUTHS THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED: 1) Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree. 2) Wrinkles don't hurt. 3) Families are like fudge...mostly sweet, with a few nuts. 4) Today's mighty oak is just yester-day's nut that held its ground. 5) Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside. 6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fiber, not the toy.
Worlds Largest Curling Stone The small town of Arborg Manitoba population of approximately 1,500 is
located 2 hours (103 km) northwest of Winnipeg. The local curling rink Ar-
borg-Bifrost Curling Club is home of the world’s largest curling rock
erected in 2005, The Rock pays tribute to local high school teams who
have won the Provincial Curling Championship titles. The rock is next to
the parking lot and the main entrance to the rink. The stone measures
4.2m (13.78 ft.) across and 2.1m (6ft. 10.68in. tall) and is constructed of
steel, foam and fiberglass. It weighs over 3,000 pounds.
Don’t forget to bring in your bits of scrap metal
To all those who made and purchased tickets on the Christmas
Basket Raffle. The sum of $2,695.00 was raised and will be used
to purchase new and to upgrade our kitchen equipment.
Feb. 01 2020…….Groundhog Spiel…….Bob Fleischauer
Feb. 08 2020…….Little Rocks Bonspiel……..Lynda Waterhouse
Feb. 12 2020…….Giddy’s Masters Bonspiel…….Sue Graham
Feb. 14/15 2020……..Sweethearts Bonspiel……..Jennifer & Jeff Gleva
Feb. 22 2020……..Mixed Doubles Bonspiel……..Donna Bessey
Only room for 64 in clubroom
Signup sheet coming in February
March 21, 6pm
Come and Wok with Scott It’s getting to that time of year again folks when member
Scott Hall fires up his famous Wok to make some Thai stir
fry dishes for us to sample. Stay tuned.
Raffles and lots of fun
I found this somewhere and thought it was a good read.
Curling etiquette offers rules for life
I am a curler. Ok, you can stop laughing now.
Yes, I’ve heard all the jokes about fat, out-of-shape old guys. I’ve explained to my fashion-conscious friends that we don’t wear
those hand knit sweaters anymore (although CBC radio host Bill Richardson recently caused a near-riot on his show when he
refused to return one of those classic sweaters, bought in a thrift shop in Saskatchewan, to its original owner). I’ve patiently out-
lined the strategy of the game, which has more to do with chess than shuffleboard. I’ve tried to convince the cross-training,
weight-lifting, aerobics set that 10 ends of sweeping draw shots into the eight-foot around a centre guard most certainly provides
a more than adequate workout for the cardiovascular and muscular systems. I’ve dared detractors of the roaring game to get
down in the hack and throw a perfect draw to the button – to which most reply, “Why would I want to?” Yes, I’ve heard it all.
But you will never convince me that curling isn’t one of the greatest games on earth, and it’s all because of etiquette.
I took up curling at the old age of 35. My childhood had been spent in curling clubs watching my parents indulge their passion
for the sport. Toronto’s CFB Downsview was their home club, and it was a drab, boring place for a little girl to spend countless
Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Sometimes I stayed home with my older brothers while my parents went off to bonspiels and competitions. One of my older
brothers once wrote a school essay entitled “I Am A Curling Orphan.” We all hated the game that our parents loved so much.
None of us took it up.
But of course things change. My husband and I moved, with our daughter, to a small town in |Eastern Ontario where my mother
was living and where I had some other family connections. Vankleek Hill boasts a population of 1800 and sits on top of a hill
surrounded by farmland in all directions. Ottawa is an hour away in one direction, and Montreal is an hour in the other direction.
There isn’t much to do in the winter, apart from shoveling vast amounts of snow, and we wanted to find a way to meet and so-
cialize with our new neighbours, so on the advice of my still curling-mad mom (now a spectator rather than a player), we joined
the local curling club. It changed my life.
For one thing, I found out I was good at it. After the first awkward games, I started to get the feel for the ice, for throwing a rock
with the right weight and the right turn. I discovered that I was a pretty good sweeper too. My mom would come to watch my
games and I would see her there, beer and cigarette in hand, behind the glass. She never said it, but the “I told you so” was glow-
ing in an invisible speech bubble right over her head.
Right from the start, my curling colleagues started teaching me about perhaps the most important part of the game: curling eti-
quette. Shake hands before - and after - the game. Stand still when the other team is throwing. Admit it if you touch a rock with
your broom, even though that rock must be removed from play (often to your own team’s disadvantage). Don’t jump in the air
and celebrate when the other team misses a shot. Compliment good shots, no matter which team makes them. Respect your oppo-
nent.
Curling in a small town, in a two-sheet club, brings you into contact with all sorts of people. My first skip was a farmer (who
missed the first game of the season because he was in Toronto showing cows at the Royal Winter Fair). The high school princi-
pal was a teammate, as were, at various times throughout my years in Vankleek Hill, a nurse, lots of teachers, a labour relations
negotiator, the town lawyer, the bank manager, the lady who ran the dress shop on Main Street, various high school students,
stay-at-home moms, retired seniors and many farmers, who often arrived late for the first game of the evening because they had
to finish milking. Out on the ice, it didn’t matter who you were outside the walls of the club: young or old, male or female, em-
ployed or not, English or French. It didn’t even matter if you were a good curler. We played our games, shook hands, and sat
down in the lounge while the winners bought the losers a drink – another example of curling etiquette. Yes, it may look like a
funny game, but the lessons learned from curling can take a person a long way.
Or not. I was helping out for the first time in a Sunday afternoon junior program recently. A young curler was breaking some
basic rules and I stopped to correct him, at which point he became rude and aggressive. He was surly to his teammates and to me.
I asked one of the organizers how much curling etiquette they had been teaching, and the man shrugged and said not much, since
the kids have so much to think about while trying to get that rock down the ice.
I looked at that young boy, maybe 10 or 11 years old, and thought to myself, “Young man, you’re not going to get too far in this
game.” And he won’t get too far in life either, with attitude like that.
Imagine if everyone respected their teammates and opponents in life, shook hands after every confrontation and bought each
other a drink. Imagine if we all stood still while others were concentrating on their life’s work, offering encouragement not dis-
traction. Imagine if we celebrated our opponents’, as well as our own, accomplishments. No, it’s not a perfect world, but it could
be. And it is – on a sheet of curling ice.
Posted by Jean Mills
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