Smash hit

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This article was published 19/02/2015 (4083 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MOOSE JAW, Sask. — All week, the rocks have been roaring, the 50/50 pots have been soaring and the seats at Mosaic Place have been full of delighted fans.

All in all, it was enough to prompt Canadian curling officials, in a press release, to call this week “one of the best Scotties ever.”

That may not be just lip service. Through six days of action at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, the turnout has often pushed the 4,000 maximium.

“We love our curling,” one local volunteer nodded, and when fans weren’t watching they were planted in the adjoining patch. “Yeah,” the volunteer grinned. “We like our partying, too.”

They also like their history. On the concourse in Mosaic Place, there is a stack of newspaper clippings documenting the province’s female curling pioneers. On Sunday, members of late icon Sandra Schmirler’s Olympic champion team delivered a panel Q&A, and her daughters snapped Instagram pictures with Rachel Homan and Team Canada.

In Moose Jaw, all those factors have settled in comfortably together, sort of a marriage between the modern high-stakes game and the cosy clubs of old.

“Moose Jaw stepped up,” said Canadian Curling Association spokesman Al Cameron Thursday afternoon. “You can always count on certain markets. Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta have always been go-tos when it comes to putting on a great event. You know there’s just a passion for curling on the Prairies that kinds of transcends everything else, and you’re definitely seeing that here,”

Look, it’s hard to compare host markets for the championships directly, given variations in size, culture and setting. But after a lukewarm run in Montreal last year where the Scotties competed to be noticed in the rush and bustle of a cosmopolitan city, Moose Jaw has been a smash.

“Montreal, we went there for a reason, and we knew there would be some challenges,” said Cameron. “The curling population there did step up and make it a success in the big picture. But you come back to a place like this… and you know they’re going to embrace it. This kind of market, you just know it takes over the city, and for the very right reasons. Going into the weekend, we’re looking at standing-room only, and that’s pretty cool to see.”

Around Mosaic Place, veteran Scotties hands widely agreed the week was among the better tournaments they can remember. And some, such as P.E.I. veteran Kim Dolan, can remember many. She played in 13 Scotties between 1983 and 2014, and is back coaching her provincial team this year. By now, she thought she’d seen just about everything — until a fan encounter earlier this week left her team grinning.

“We were standing upstairs, ready to leave, and this gentleman came up and asked for a picture, and then he just handed over some money, just gave us cash to go and buy ourselves lunch,” said Dolan with a bemused smile. “The hospitality and friendship has been beyond any experience that we’ve had… it ranks right up there among the best that I’ve been at, and I’ve been at a number of them.”

It’s big moment for Moose Jaw, which is situated about 70 kilometres west of Regina. For much of its life it has been a drive-by city, a blip on Treaty Four territory that most people know as a landmark on the way between somewhere else and Calgary. The city’s residents are keenly aware of this fact. Its slogan, “surprisingly unexpected,” is an open plea to visitors to turn south off the Trans-Canada Highway, and tour its famous prohibition-era tunnels.

A tourism website adds an additional, aspirational declaration: “What was once a city you were from is now a city everyone comes to.”

These days, that quote has a ring of truth and at least a good chunk of it has to do with Mosaic Place.

The old arena, the infamous Crushed Can, lived 52 years on a patch of scrubby prairie land close to the Trans-Canada. It was a curio in its time, looking something like a junior Saddledome with its swooping concave roof. But time did its typical work on the thing and by the early 2000s, the funeral dirges were warming up.

Erecting a new arena is nearly always a battle, and Moose Jaw’s was no exception. But despite a civic tussle, voters largely approved of plans to build the best arena they could find the money to buy: a $61-million, 4,500-seat ice palace and curling club just two blocks off Moose Jaw’s picture-pretty downtown.

The venue has its flaws. About 34,000 people live in Moose Jaw, and almost 40 per cent of them are more than 45 years old. It’s a retirement city and yet the arena features just two elevators to the concourse. There is talk of replacing one of the steep stairway banks with escalators.

For the most part, though, the arena — home of the WHL’s Moose Jaw Warriors — was a hit. Within the first few years of its existence, it hosted curling’s Canada Cup, the Backstreet Boys and the Moscow Ballet. It’s beautiful, too, which probably doesn’t translate on TV: spacious, sleek, with a comfortable bowl and a half-level of cleanly designed box suites.

From the moment Mosaic Place was built, the city and its residents craved a bigger event. For them, this Scotties is the maiden voyage of that journey, and residents have been anxious to impress.

In restaurants, servers dutifully ask about the curling. On the short drives between the arena and the hotels near the Trans-Canada Highway, volunteer drivers eagerly probe how the city is coming across.

“What happened here, this is the vitality of modern-day Moose Jaw taking place,” said Scotties host co-chairman Glenn Hagel, Moose Jaw’s retired former mayor and longtime MLA. He was an Alberta boy who lived in Winnipeg for a spell before following his wife back to her Saskatchewan hometown.

It’s been a long road for Moose Jaw, which exploded as a railway hub around 1910, and later added a Royal Canadian Air Force training base. (The famed Snowbirds fly out of 15 Wing Moose Jaw, which is situated about 11 kilometres south of the city.)

But by the latter half of the 20th century Moose Jaw, like many Prairie centres, was facing decline. So almost 20 years ago, the city commissioned a federal study on the future of their community. What came back opened their eyes: Moose Jaw should preserve its stock of 1920s-era heritage buildings, the study suggested, invest heavily in culture and keep its quirky history alive.

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Among other things, that led to the restoration of the stately Grant Hall Hotel; what Hagel calls “the most beautiful liquor store in Canada,” which is situated in a glorious old rail station; and the Temple Gardens hotel resort.

That resort draws on mineral water, which had bubbled up from the ground for decades. In fact, Hagel laughs, it used to heat the city’s swimming pool. That was more Prairie practicality than luxury: it was cheap, and pre-heated. Now, visitors pay up to $15.50 a pop on weekends to soak indoors, or outside in the crisp Prairie air — though it’s free, if you spring for a facial or a massage at the attached spa.

“We’ve managed to capture the pride of the ’20s, the old West, but with modern-day function,” Hagel said. “It feels like a big, small town. There is an ambiance about the place that’s often taken for granted by the locals… You don’t appreciate it so much when it’s the place you call home.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.