The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The Uptown Curling Club recently celebrated 75 years of curling in Flin Flon. I wondered what curling was like in those early days and how it has progressed till today. So I went down memory lane with Nell Cutt, Marg McBratney, Wilma Gallagher and Beatty Byers. As Marg said, Uptown was always known as the "mother" club since it was the first curling club established in our community. In 1930 there was a "club house/cabin" situated about where City Hall is now with two sheets of natural ice going out towards the "red square". Nell Cutt remembers well, "curling on those two natural sheets and how cold it was to curl. The rocks weighed between 40 to 42 pounds, they were not matched and they were owned by Mr. Campbell!" Nell relates how most of the women who curled had babies and since the women only curled during the day, (cause with two sheets the men curled in the evening) they didn't get babysitters. They simply bundled up the babies and brought them in a sleigh. Each had a well labeled bottle and if they woke up the iceman, Mr. Emrie, kept jam pails filled with water on his pot belly stove and he would simply warm the bottle, pop it into the prospective baby's mouth and continue watching the curling! Nell said, "Some women curlers came all the way from The Pas on the freight train (there were no roads into town then), they'd curl their afternoon game and then hop the train back home in the evening! One of them was a Mrs. Mulhall and her daughter." John Bracken was the Premier of Manitoba during the time of the first bonspiel in Flin Flon in 1931. He offered what was known as the "Bracken Cup" to the winning team. In those days the teams were selected by a draw from a hat. In order to qualify to curl in the bonspiel you had to have four players and if something happened to a curler you simply played with three. Well, the draw was made and the team consisted of J.M. Allen, Nell Cutt and May Greenberg, and a "lady of the night" from North Avenue who played lead. However, the lead only played one game because she got so cold that she never showed up for the next game, and the team won the bonspiel playing with three members. They were the first winners of the Bracken Cup. A few years later the actual Uptown Curling Club was built next to the hockey rink. The curling rink had nine sheets of natural ice. Marg again talked about the mismatched rocks and said, "If you came to curl late Ñ because people came early to match their rocks Ñ you got stuck with what was left, some rocks weren't even the same shape. The rocks were all the same colour and in order to identify them, they had coloured pompoms put on them!" There was no bar in the curling rinks in those days so everyone carried their own 'little mickey' with them. Marg spoke about going to bonspiels in Sherridan and Snow Lake and arriving there by plane Ñ again there were no roads. She laughs as she relates curling at Sherridan when it was 62 below, no heat in the rinks and winning two games and coming home with a case of tomato juice as a prize! Bonspiels in those early years up till perhaps the mid 60s were more of a test of endurance and could have been known as a curling marathon! For example, each team played on both sides of the draw. The first side was HBMS and than there would be about four or five events below that. On the other side, it was the Burkett's Event later to become the Lavitt's Event and the same thing, with four or five events on that side. The bonspiel went all week and still there were many entries from out of town. There was a waiting list to curl, with over 100 teams entered. The incredible draw masters in those days were Tom Howatt and Russ Milton. "The more you won the more you played," stated Beatty and she should know she was on the Tina Konik team, that was the team to beat from about 1956 to 1975. It wasn't unusual to curl 21 games in that week! It was not unusual to find curling members asleep in the locker rooms either on the top of the lockers or on the floor in both the men's or the women's locker room depending upon whose bonspiel it was. Happily two woman finally put a stop to that! Neva Lockhart and Kay Smith brought it up at a meeting right after a banquet during a bonspiel. The meeting being held in the Jubilee Hall. The bonspiel then went to become a weekend affair, playing only one side. You choose when you entered what side you wanted to play on. Then the curling began on a Thursday evening because still there were so many entries and sometimes the lesser events would be played off on Monday night. In those days the curlers hoped there wasn't an early thaw, or the games would be cancelled till the middle of the night, natural ice remember! Marg said, "Well, curling was something to do and such a social event. The winters were long and curling became the highlight of our social lives. Once we finally got heat into the curling rinks, we curlers looked much better because we lost so much weight! Actually we only had to wear half the clothes we used to wear to keep warm!" Curling was very affordable due to the efforts of HBMS who wanted to keep the families in Flin Flon. Also, the Flin Flon Community Club was formed and, in early years, charged a minimal amount to join and enabled families to participate in branch clubs such as badminton, bridge, all the curling clubs, men's and women's fastball, glee club, hobby club, minor hockey, men's intermediate hockey, pottery and ski club. Here are only some of the names that we came up with on our trip down memory lane: For the womenÉ Sybil Woods, Winnie Andrews, May Greenberg, J.G. Allen, J. M. Allen, Eva Garant, Ruth Goldsmith, Smitty Austin, Agnes Raven, Ruth McConnell, Mrs. Plummer, Nell Cutt, Helen Dempsey, Mary Boyce, Anne Wiebe, Nellie Hutchinson, Ann Hicks, Marg Steventon, Anna Pelletier, Helen Pelletier, Babe McCullum, Helen Murton, Toddy Murray, Patsy McIsaac, Audrey Reeves, Edna Hayes, Alice Kynes, Dorothy Douglas, Edna Mast, Joan Howatt, Muriel Smith, and Anne McLellan. Some of the men wereÉ J.G. Allen, Ed Longmore, Jim Cook, James McFarlene, George Rawson, Pete Hume, Bert McAree, Bill Croft, Fred Ford, Pinkie Davie, Bob Lawrence, Walt Cunningham, Cy Gilmore, Harry Grose, Mac McCrimmon, Jim Wilson, Al Hume, Tom Longmore, Bob Green, Harold Vance, Norm Snyder, Bill Duncan, Guy Hume, Blake Hume, Jack Betteridge, Doug Gourlay and Jack Scott. Curling has come a long way and has been a major part of many people's lives in Flin Flon. We went up to having four rinks and now with the demise of the Ross Lake and Creighton clubs, we are down to two clubs and membership is struggling. However, a book could certainly be written on the incredible history of this sport in our great community! Congratulations needs to be extended to the tenacity of the Uptown Curling Club for their 75th anniversary and of continued success. My apologies for people I have inadvertently missed. Space is limited in our paper to document everything. My thanks goes out to the four great ladies who gave up their afternoon to fill me in on what happened those many years ago! What fun, great laughs!
