Six Star Magazine Six Star Magazine Fall 2016 | Page 33

Ice capades
Long before Canada was even a country, its love affair with curling
had already begun. Example: Inaugurated in 1807, the Montreal
Curling Club was not only the first organized curling club on the
continent, but it’s also the oldest sports club in North America.
This very Canadian sport’s earliest origins can be traced to
Flanders around the 16th century, but curling’s precise lineage
is mired in controversy and hearsay. (And although we enjoy a
good yarn, we’ll just stick to our side of the story.) Thankfully, the
arrival of curling in Canada is a bit clearer—a bit. And we can give
a shout out to our Scottish immigrants for bringing the ice-bound
sport our way.
As the story goes, when the 78th Fraser Highland Regiment
found they had an abundance of cannonballs lying around, they
decided to melt them down to make curling stones. As we always
say, never let a good cannonball go to waste!
So if that happened in Quebec around 1759–60, it didn’t take
long for the curling bug to slide all the way across the country.
Countless communities embraced the game as a means of coming
together and socializing. Today, nearly three quarters of a million
Canadians hit the ice with broom or stone in hand. Meanwhile,
curling clubs in every quarter offer classes where, in the span o