Dream comes true, with fairytale ending, for Dunstone

Before sliding out of the hack for his Brier-clinching shot, Matt Dunstone took a moment to soak it all in and reflect.

“I pretty much told myself in the hack — sorry, I’m trying not to get emotional — that the five or six-year-old me would be so proud of what was about to happen,” Dunstone told the Free Press on Tuesday shortly after returning home to Kamloops, B.C.

Team Manitoba’s 30-year-old skip, who was born and raised in Winnipeg before moving out west in 2018, executed a winning takeout to perfection to clinch a 6-3 victory over Alberta’s Kevin Koe in the Canadian men’s curling final on Sunday in St. John’s, N.L.

Dunstone was overcome with emotion and fell to his knees before a joyous embrace with teammates Colton Lott, E.J. Harnden and Ryan Harnden.

“That’s something I’ve been dreaming about or thinking about as soon as I figured out what the Brier was. Any skip will tell you just to make contact to win a big championship is everyone’s dream,” said Dunstone.

“And just with the storylines along with our team like Colton and I getting our first, Ryan waiting a long time for his second, E.J. going out with a fairytale ending and then the brothers winning together again, I think that’s why you saw that much emotion.”

This is a team that had lost both the 2023 and 2025 Brier finals, and most recently, the Canadian Curling Trials final. Dunstone admitted there were times where he wondered if he’d ever get over the hump.

“It’s like ‘Oh man… we just can’t make it happen.’ You do question it a little bit, for sure. And you question yourself and whether or not you’re good enough to be the player you need to be in big moments in big games,” he said.

“And so, I think all the heartbreak leading up to it makes it way more special, rather than if this was my first final and we had gone out and won it. I think the losses make this that much better.”

The road to hoisting the tankard couldn’t have been more challenging. They opened the playoffs with a win over hometown hero Brad Gushue in the final Brier of his hall-of-fame career, outlasted reigning Olympic champion Brad Jacobs in the semifinal, then knocked off an undefeated Koe to win it all.

“Yeah, and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Dunstone, who curled 94 per cent in the championship game.

“Those are the people that you want to play to win these types of events. It kind of validates the feeling at the end of it to just know that you had to run through all the top teams and guys who have won thousands of games at Briers and multiple Briers as well.”

Since the game ended, it’s been an endless stream of phone calls and messages from people congratulating Dunstone on the feat.

“The Sunday night party the phone was put away and I was going to worry about all of that Monday. And then Monday, it was overwhelming. I didn’t think as many people were going to reach out as they did. It was again, very, very overwhelming,” he said.

“I was like ‘I got a six-hour flight I need to take on Tuesday’ so on Monday I put the phone away again and on the flight this morning, I took care of it and tried to get back to as many people as I could. It’s been a very overwhelming experience in the best way possible.”

The Granite Curling Club, Team Dunstone’s home rink in Winnipeg, held a watch party on Sunday.

Jeff Stoughton in 2011 was the last time a team out of the Keystone Province won men’s nationals.

“I’m very, very fortunate to be a part of the Manitoba curling community. Everyone within Manitoba and outside understands how special a place it is,” he said.

“We totally felt the love and we’re just super happy to end a 15-year drought.”

Dunstone will use the next few days to catch up on sleep, celebrate some more on Saturday by dropping the puck at a Kamloops Blazers WHL game, and then gear up for the next assignment: wearing the maple leaf at the World Men’s Curling Championship (March 27-April 4) in Ogden, Utah.

Dunstone hasn’t repped Canada since the 2016 World Junior Curling Championships in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“I just feel super blessed and excited for the opportunity. We know the worlds are tough and everyone else is really good, but we’ve been doing a lot of winning this year and we stack up really well against anybody in the world as long as we bring our best stuff.”

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