2010 at the Ogden Ice Sheet during the Vancouver Winter Olympics.
Team Canada in the Gold Medal match against Norway.
They’re the returning champions and on the tenth end…Canada is up 6-3.
The tension is palpable, the host country can taste the win.
Skip Kevin Martin is about to head to the hack, the foothold at the end of the ice to throw the granite rock harvested from the island of Ailsa Craig off the coast of Scotland once every decade.
Amid the horn and cowbells, a single person begins to sing…the home crowd joins in until the building shakes with the sound of Oh Canada.
A smile spreads across Martin and the team and then the words “Let’s get’er done” are heard.
“We stand on guard for thee” echoes in the building as a steely eyed Martin steps to the hack, he kneels down and studies the ice.
A few more throws and the gold medal is theirs, they’re too far ahead and Norway with their colourful and charming pants will not be able to catch up.
Martin slides back to the hack… the crowd roars… he picks up the rock and throws it on final time.
It’s not anywhere close to the house but it’s been perfectly aimed and so his team mates begin to celebrate before it knocks Norway’s rock out of the points guaranteeing the win.
The building erupts and the team is heard celebrating and saying, “we did it boys.”
Canada and Kevin Martin are Olympic Champions.
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx
On this bonus episode we’re hurrying hard with two Canadian curling legends to share the stories of The Brier and the Scotties!
Canadians do love curling, and I dare say, we are pretty good at it.
Going all the way back to the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, where we swept the podium winning the gold, silver and bronze medals.
It was just a demonstration sport at that point but still…pretty good.
Since the introduction of men’s and women’s curling at the 1998 Winter Olympics, Canada has continued its Olympic dominance.
We have collected 12 medals, including six gold.
But no matter how popular curling might be at the Olympics, nothing compares to the two biggest sporting events in Canada each year and their histories go back decades.
But…First things first.
Are you sitting down?
I have a revelation for you.
Curling was not invented in Canada.
We have invented basketball, modern hockey and taught Americans how to play the style of football they love so much.
But not curling which dates to early 16th century Scotland when a curling stone dated 1511, was found in a pond.
There are also written references to using stones on ice in Paisley Abbey in 1541.
The word, curling, first appeared in a poem by Scottish poet Henry Anderson in 1620.
Now that we have that settled, let’s get into the wild history of curling in Canada!
It should come as no surprise that Scottish immigrants brought the sport to our shores in the early-1700s.
Immigrants travelled across the Atlantic Ocean and settled in places like Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Upper Canada and Lower Canada.
The sport slowly grew in popularity and spread across British North America.
It was a match made in heaven.
A sport that used rocks on ice in a land of winter and frozen lakes for six months a year.
The first recorded curling match in Canadian history took place in Montreal on Jan. 27, 1807, when a group of Scottish merchants formed the Montreal Curling Club.
This wasn’t just the first curling club in Canada. It was also the first organized sporting club in North America.
And it is still with us today.
In fact, it took an additional place in our history in 1837 when the club opened the first indoor ice rink in Canada.
Once there was an organized club, curling began to grow into the modern era.
There were still some major differences between then and now though.
The curling rocks were made of iron and the shape of a tea kettle.
Men used rocks weighing between 27 to 36 kilograms while women used slightly lighter ones between 18 to 21 kilograms.
Iron stones were unique to Canada and were especially preferred by the Montreal Curling Club.
During these wild formative years for the sport, there were no standard requirements, and stone sizes could vary wildly between clubs.
As the sport grew clubs popped up in Halifax, Kingston and Quebec City.
In 1839, vendors in Toronto started to make granite stones and thus began an east-west rivalry… but not like the one involving Tupan and Biggie… this wasn’t for rap supremacy… It was a rock battle for which ones were best.
Soon intercity matchups, or bonspiels, began.
The Montreal Curling Club was the most innovative, and far ahead of everyone else because they were also the first to play indoors.
Soon after, in 1859, Toronto opened its first indoor facility, as did many other cities across the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick where it remained popular even after Canadian Confederation throughout the 1870s and into the late-1880s.
But then… the train helped carry it West.
As many stories in Canadian history, the Canadian Pacific Railway played a role in curling as well.
Towns popped up along the tracks and new immigrants arrived to claim farmland.
With them came curling.
Winnipeg was the first place to start sliding rocks down the ice in Western Canada in 1879 when the Winnipeg Curling Club was formed.
On Dec. 11 of that year, the first match was held, with the losers donating a barrel of oatmeal to the local hospital.
Curling arrived in present-day Saskatchewan by the late-1870s with clubs in Prince Albert and Battleford popping up.
Alberta took a bit longer… not until 1885.
That’s when the first curling matches were held in Calgary.
And in case you’re wondering… yes it was in the same year the CPR reached the city.
Edmonton followed in 1888, and Banff in 1889.
The sport was quickly sweeping across the nation, pun intended, but it took a while longer to cross the mighty Rockies.
The Lower Mainland was too warm to keep ice for outdoor curling, but the interior of the province was a different story.
In 1895 the first curling club in British Columbia appeared in Kaslo.
Known as “little Switzerland” the small, picturesque mountain village is located in the West Kootenay region.
As more clubs formed, yearly bonspiels increased, and exceptional curlers emerged.
Before long, curlers across towns competed to determine who was the best in the area.
Then curlers wanted to know who was the best in the province?
That led to the first curling provincial championships, at least for men.
Manitoba was the first to crown a champion in 1924. Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec followed in 1927. and then Alberta in 1928.
They then asked themselves. Who are we the best in Canada?
From that came the largest curling competition in the country.
The Brier.
In 1924, the Macdonald Tobacco Company had hundreds of employees making it one of the largest tobacco companies in North America.
Thanks to its founder William Christopher Macdonald the company was deeply rooted in Scottish heritage.
Born in Prince Edward Island in 1831, his paternal grandfather was John MacDonald of Glenaladale who had purchased 20,000 acres of land on the island for 200 members of his Roman Catholic clan to settle.
William Macdonald, and his brother Augustine, moved to Montreal where they established MacDonald Brothers and Company during the American Civil War.
It was a booming business from the start.
Tobacco in North America was only produced in the American South which meant as the Union and the Confederacy fought the North States were without tobacco.
As a Canadian, Macdonald swept in and bought Confederate tobacco then sold it in the North for a tidy profit as a middleman.
Macdonald died in 1917, so he never saw the role his company played in promoting the Scottish game in Canada.
By 1924, curling was growing nationwide, and George J. Cameron the president of W.L. McKenzie and Company, a subsidiary of the Macdonald Tobacco Company saw an opportunity.
He went to head office and pitched the bigwigs on the idea of a men’s national curling championship.
Because of its Scottish roots, the company was immediately on board.
It was meant to be an east versus west type of tournament.
But there was one problem.
The east-west rock rivalry reared its ugly head.
The east loved iron stones while the west preferred granite As the saying goes…
One stone to rule them all, one stone to find them,
One stone to bring them all, and one the bind them.
In the Land of Manitoba where the shadows lie.
One man found prophetic when convinced did he …over his brethren granite the key
That man was Howard Stewart, he was the Macdonald Tobacco Company’s president’s brother.
Howard preferred the granite stones, and he convinced his brother Walter they were superior and the better option.
If eastern teams wanted to take part in this new national championship, they had to use granite stones.
The company donated the Macdonald Brier Trophy at the Manitoba Curling Association Bonspiel and sponsored the winners in 1925 so they could travel East to play exhibition games.
A year later, Manitoba played in a Quebec bonspiel.
The matches proved to be very popular, and the company decided to sponsor a full national championship.
The Brier as we know it, was born.
You’re probably asking…why Brier?
It refers to the woody root used at the time to make tobacco pipes.
It was also a brand sold by Macdonald Tobacco.
Wanting to put their stamp on the tournament, so to speak, the company called it The Brier.
Macdonald also created the Brier Tankard Trophy, which was originally named the British Consols Trophy.
The heart shaped patches awarded to tournament winners were modelled after a tin heart that was pressed into the centre of Macdonald tobacco plugs with the slogan The Heart of Tobacco.
With a sponsor, and trophy, all that was needed now was a place to curl.
For that they turned to the last part line of the prophecy… Granite.
Founded in 1875, The Toronto Granite Curling Club, now known as Granite Club, has a long and illustrious history in Canadian winter sports.
The first hockey team in Toronto? The Toronto Granites — they went on to win two Allan Cups in 1922 and 1923 and hockey gold at the 1924 Winter Olympics.
The club is also renowned in figure skating. In 1929, the Club held its first Skating Carnival, which later transformed into an international world figure skating competition.
Since then, it has attracted the best figure skaters in the country and around the world including Barbara Ann Scott, Kurt Browning, and Patrick Chan.
And with Granite in its name, you can guess the club played a key role in another sport’s history.
The Granite Club was home to the Brier for two decades.
First held from March 1 to 3, 1927 the tournament featured eight teams.
Saskatchewan represented all Western Canada, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Northern Ontario, as well as two teams from Toronto and Montreal.
Games were played to 14 ends and each team competed in a seven-game round robin.
Whoever had the most wins in the end was the King of the Canadian Curlers.
That first champion was Murray Macneill from Nova Scotia. His team won four of their first five games.
They went into their last game and fell behind early but battled back and overcame an eight-point deficit to win the first Brier.
It was a success, and plans were put in motion for the second tournament the following year.
The 1928 Brier shortened its ends to 12, and Western Canada was represented by three teams: Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
It was the start of Manitoba’s dominating reign because from1928 to 1932 they won every Brier.
Over the next decade teams were added and dropped,
Toronto and Montreal each had their own teams until 1932.
Prince Edward Island and British Columbia joined in 1936.
By 1940, Winnipeg earned the right to host the first Brier outside Toronto.
If you are wondering, yep, Manitoba won that year.
The tournament returned to the Granite Club in 1941 for a final time.
It had hosted the event 14 times and since then it has never hosted another.
The tournament traveled to Quebec City in 1942 and then it lay dormant until 1946 as no Brier was held from 1943 to 1945 on account of the Second World War.
It was the only time the competition has ever been cancelled.
But prior to the stoppage standardization had been accomplished as rocks were all the same size and given different colors depending on the team.
When the Brier returned in 1946, Saskatoon hosted for the first time.
That year, the event was broadcast nationwide on CBC Radio.
Newfoundland joined Confederation in 1949 and within two years, the province was competing in the Brier.
Teams from the Yukon and Northwest Territories were added in 1975.
Despite new teams joining Manitoba proved hard to beat.
From 1928 to 1942, the province won 10 Briers and added another five from 1947 to 1956.
As the Brier continued to evolve into the modern era Western Canada’s dominance continued unabated until 1967 when Ontario won its first Brier in almost 20 years.
Aside from the number of teams included, there hadn’t been major changes to the tournament until 1977 when games were shortened from 12 to 10 ends.
This was done to speed up the games. The Star Phoenix wrote on March 10, 1977,
“It was expected that the reduction of Brier contests from 12 to 10 ends would chop a considerable amount of time off the proceedings, sparing the spectators several hours of numbness in their lower extremities.”
Quebec won its first Brier championship that year, and skipper Jim Ursel believed the move to 10 ends helped him capture the trophy.
Ron Northcott, a three-time Brier champion for Alberta, also liked the move and stated,
“As crowds got bigger and noisier, and more good shot makers came along, it is hard to maintain your concentration for 12 ends, especially against a slow player. I think it is better for both fans and players to get the game over in three hours.”
And more substantial changes were on the horizon.
For 52 years, the Macdonald tobacco company had been behind the Brier, but times were changing.
The harmful effects of tobacco were becoming clearer with each passing year.
To curb usage, the federal government brought in new laws to regulate advertising, meaning the Macdonald tobacco company couldn’t have their name on one of Canada’s biggest sporting events.
It was the end of an era, but a new brand lurked waiting to take over.
And as a new decade dawned Canada’s largest brewer would continue breathing life into the Brier
David Stewart, vice-chair of the Macdonald Tobacco Company board stated,
“We never viewed the Brier as a promotional vehicle. We were proud to be associated with it, but we felt just as good if our name wasn’t that high a profile.”
Afterall, it was their Scottish heritage that made them so happy to have supported the inception of the Brier.
Saying goodbye was tough but there was some solace when Labatt took over.
Company president Don McDougall stated said of the $50,000 sponsorship fee.
“I would like to erase the term sponsor. We see ourselves associated with curling. Our relationship is one of association, not sponsorship.”
No matter who sponsored…sorry associated…with the Brier, Canadians were tuning in from coast-to-coast.
It was one of the most viewed sporting programs of the year especially in Western Canada who continued to dominate.
Ontario was able to take three Briers in the 1990s, but then British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba won the rest.
It may have started in the east, but west was best when it comes to curling.
And that dominance would continue through more sponsorship change The cell phone company Nokia took over from Labatt’s in 2000, while they remained as the official beer supplier.
But new sponsors meant a welcome change in trophies.
From 1980 to 2000, the Brier trophy was a golden tankard introduced by Labatt’s.
When Nokia took over, they brought back the original silver cup introduced by Macdonald Tobacco.
It was their only lasting legacy because the Finish telecommunication company left Canadian curling behind in 2004 when another iconic Canadian brand took over, Tim Hortons.
By then curling and the Brier were hitting new heights.
It was now a cultural institution.
In 2005, the Brier was held at Rexall Place in Edmonton and it set an attendance record of 281,985.
It still stands today.
And the Brier continues to be the top men’s curling event in Canada even as a new sponsor, Montana’s, took it over in 2024.
In its history Alberta has won 29 times, followed closely by Manitoba at 27. The two provinces account for 59 percent of Brier wins.
New Brunswick, the Territories and Prince Edward Island have never won a Brier.
Since 1959, winners have represented Canada in international competition first at the World Men’s Curling Championships and 1998 at the winter Olympics.
To date, Canada has won 36 World Championships and 3 gold medals.
The Brier has also produced a lot of legends in its long history.
Brad Gushue is known as the King of the Brier, with a record six wins. He also holds the record for games played and perfect games.
Four other skips have won the Brier four times, Ernie Richardson, Randy Ferbey, Kevin Koe and the man who won Olympic gold in 2010 and is considered by many as the greatest curler of all time Kevin Martin.
He’s my special guest alongside his co-host and fellow Curling Hall of Famer Warren Hansen.
Our special conversation is coming up but before I get to them, I want to acknowledge that so far, I’ve only focused on the men’s tournament.
But in curling clubs across Canada women wanted the same opportunity.
That desire led to another very famous curling tournament.
The Scotties Tournament of Hearts
Alongside men in curling outdoor and indoor curling rinks were women sliding rocks down sheets of ice.
They also competed to determine who was the best of the best.
From the 1920s and into the 1950s, provinces held their own women’s curling championships.
However, women had no national tournament to crown the best curler in the land.
The closest women had held in the mid-50s.
It was sponsored by Eaton’s and known as the Western Canada Women’s Championship. There was no eastern championship for women at the time.
In 1959, Eaton’s pulled its sponsorship, and it became the catalyst for a national event.
Dominion Stores Ltd swept in to create the Canadian Ladies Curling Association and held an invitational for the western and eastern champions. called the Diamond D Championship.
Held in Oshawa, Ontario, the final featured the Smith Rink out of Quebec going up against the McKee Rink from Saskatchewan.
McKee’s won the best of three series and Saskatchewan was crowned as the first Canadian women’s curling champions.
Here’s a wild fact.
Playing on that winning team was Sylvia Fedoruk.
She co-developed the world’s first cobalt-60 unit used to target cancer using radiation.
She later became Saskatchewan’s first female Lt. Governor and is a significant figure in developing women’s curling in Canada.
The first invitational was a success, and it became an annual event in 1961.
It was held in Ottawa, where Saskatchewan won again.
The Double D Championship remained in the nation’s capital until 1967 when the company decided not to renew its sponsorship.
For the next four years, the Canadian Ladies Curling Association Championship was held without a sponsor.
But that couldn’t last forever.
In the early-1970s Sylvia Fedoruk became president of the Canadian Ladies Curling Association and she brought on a sponsor VERY familiar with national curling competitions.
Macdonald Tobacco.
In 1972, Macdonald began sponsoring the women and men’s national championships.
The men had the Brier, and the women had the Macdonald Lassies Championship.
The name came from the company’s trademark image of a Scottish woman on all their tobacco tins.
With their help the tournament grew.
Saskatchewan continued a winning streak which began in 1969 until 1974, when they gave way to other provinces.
From 1975 to 1979, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba all won the championship.
The sport grew across Canada increasing the level of competition at Macdonald Lassies Championship.
But just like the Brier, tournament sponsorship was impacted in 1979 by changing advertising law. Unlike with The Brier, which was quickly sponsored by Labatt’s t, the women’s national championship wasn’t so lucky.
They were once again without a sponsor for 1980 and 1981.
With the future of the event in jeopardy a curling champion helped save it. [BEAT]
Robin Wilson from North Vancouver enjoyed success in the 1970s when she won the national championship in 1976 and 1979.
She also earned Bronze while representing Canada at the World Championships in 1979.
Robin knew the national championship hung in the balance and with her sister and teammate Dawn Knowles, they looked for a sponsor.
Robin worked as a manager for the Scott Paper Company.
That is the Scott Paper Company, not The Michael Scott Paper Company.
Sorry, can’t resist a good Office reference.
Robin and her sister convinced Scott Paper to sponsor the national tournament in 1982.
It became the first Scott Tournament of Hearts.
The sponsorship became synonymous with the tournament as the event goes by the name: The Scotties.
That year the champion was Nova Scotia, and the skip was only 22 years old.
She would be the youngest skip to ever to win the Canadian women’s curling championship and she would become t a curling legend.
Her name? Colleen Jones.
She had made her first appearance at the national championship in 1979 when she was 19 years old and won the first of her 16 Nova Scotia curling titles. 1982 was her first national win and she would go on to win again in 1999 and then every year from 2001 to 2004.
Her six championships remains a record, she shares with Jennifer Jones, no relation.
Colleen Jones has also played more games in the tournament than any other woman.
By the time Colleen Jones won changes to the tournament were on the horizon, the most significant came in 1985 when the winning team would return as Team Canada.
To date, Team Canada has won 12 Scotties and has had 26 Top Three Finishes.
Team Canada is followed closely by Manitoba and Saskatchewan with 11 wins each.
Currently, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Northern Ontario and the Territories have never won the Scotties.
Much like with The Brier, the winner of the Scotties represents Canada at the World Championship and the Olympics.
Since 1979, Canada has won 18 World Championships, most recently in 2024 and the women have only missed the podium seven times.
At the Olympics, Canada won in 1998, skipped by Sandra Schmirler, who died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 36. We won medaled again in 2010 and 2014.
It is a testament to the incredible skill women have produced in our amazing country.
I hope you enjoyed that sweep through Canada’s curling history.
Liked it? Take a second to support CraigBaird on Patreon!
