From The Kitchen To The Clubhouse - The Standard, 2006

Page 12 • The Standard

History Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Centennial Highlights

From the kitchen to the clubhouse

Blind River Curling Club celebrates its 50th

By Shannon Quesnel Of The Standard

One of the coolest places to be in Blind River is the curling club.

Built in 1950, the Blind River Curling Club has been the place to watch relatives, friends and strangers play or compete tor personal neighborhood glory or for big cash prizes.

This year is the club's 50th and last weekend was its golden anniversary.

Players young and old attended the three-day event and swapped stories, slid rocks, listened to live music and generally had fun times.

Downstairs, at ice level, Ron Forest and Curly Everitt talked about how ice was made, how hockey beat out curling, about some of the players and people who played at the club and how it all got started.

The men say in the beginning there was no curling club, but there were players looking for a game.

There were people coming in from other communities who had curled and said. How come you don't have a curling rink in Blind River?" says Everitt.

It was these folk who decided they were not going to do without a rink.

"And it started with ,very few people.'

Everitt credits the early low numbers for a misconception.

Back then, and maybe a little bit today, people tend to think curling is the same as polo.

Like you have to be a rich person to curl," Everitt explains. ' And once they got the message that it was open to everybody, then membership picked up."

Kitchen Rink

The first rock that slid in Blind River was down the length of a kitchen and aiming hall at an abandoned bunkhouse.

"We used the McFadden (lumber) bunkhouse on Colonization Road, And there were two sheets of (natural) ice in there," says Everitt.

In 1955. the lumber company donated the land the present curling club now sits on.

"And it was always this size" says Everitt, except for the club-room.

Some of the construction materials used in the rink's making back then was laminated veneer from British Columbia.

A chap had come around and said to Alex Berthelot, (the president), 'I got what you need for a four sheet club.'

And (the materials) served us well since that date."

Berthelot was club president back then. Walter Bridges, a bank manager, was also on the board, but he was shot and killed during a bank robbery in 1957.

Forest says Bridges was a big supporter of the club.

Mind you he had a lot of local people behind him,' says Forest, such as Abe Shamas, Alan Mitchell, Al Desjardin, Harold Philips, Bill Regan and Don Mitchell.

One of the biggest organizers to help build the place was Louis Sauer

"He was a contractor and he understood the building situation and... he was looking after the construction," Everitt notes. Forest adds Sauer was also an excellent curler.

There were many good curlers playing on Blind River's sheets.

We had pretty good teams," says Forest.

Phil Laderoute played at the curling rink and was good enough that he went as high as the regional playdowns.

And every year, the Men's Closing Spiel is held at the Blind River club and close to 48 teams take part. Forest says by then, all competitive curling is finished and everybody comes to Blind River for a big bash.

Over the years, there were a lot of local competitive games, just between people living on the North Shore, such as the McDonald's Brier and the Labatt's Tankard.

But, like many things, people are as only as good as the materials they use and in curling the biggest thing is the ice.

Iceman

Unlike frozen over ponds or backyard rinks, making curling ice is not a simple process. Ice production was so important, the club's executive had a separate committee for it. Forest is the chair of the ice committee.

Everitt says in the beginning, the club's ice sheets were made over a sand floor. And there was a boardwalk on each side.

That all changed when the club moved the ice making plant in 1972.

Before that it had to have the chemicals piped in underground from the old Blind River arena, which was nearby.

That meant a lot of piping, more so than what there is right now beneath the ice. Right under the feet of curlers there is about five miles of pipe, says Everitt.

Back then ice was made differently.

"At that time we also had galvanized pipes, so things had to be done a little differently."

When they got the ice plant in 1972, they ripped out all the old piping and replaced it with plastic pipes. Then they replaced the sand with a concrete floor.

The chemicals flowing through the pipes are a mix or calcium and water, or brine, which is pumped through the pipes under the ice, The brine is what keeps the ice cold.

To create the ice, water is sprayed on in thin layers using a hose. The cold brine running through the pipes below then freezes the water.

Forest says it now takes about seven to 10 days to get the sheets ready, a fraction of the time it took back when Forest was 19 years old.

Everitt explains that in the early days of the curling rink the ice plant was at the arena.

"If there was something going on at the arena, and the (arena officials) in their mind thought it was more important than us, they'd shut us down.

"We'd have the ice started here and all of a sudden, the next day it would melt."

Continued on page 13

Photo Caption: In 1973, at the Blind River Curling Club, at the Hiram Walker 25th Anniversary Gary McLeod (left), Patty Dunlop. Ron Forest and Jeannette Forest did all right in the mixed bonspiel.