When Pappy Wood won a hometown Brier

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/02/2019 (2426 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Canadian men’s curling championship came to Western Canada for the first time in 1940. The competition for the Macdonald’s Brier Tankard was played from March 4 to 7 at the Amphitheatre rink at Colony Street and Whitehall Avenue in Winnipeg, where hockey had been king since 1912.

Often called a “barn” the Amphitheatre was opened as a horse show building in 1909 but it was also one of the first hockey rinks in Canada to have artificial ice.

The championship known as the Brier had been played in Toronto at the Granite Club since its inception in 1927. A team from Manitoba made its first appearance the next winter and Gordon Hudson and his Strathcona rink captured the championship.

Hudson won again the following year and Winnipeg teams skipped by Howard Wood, Bob Gourley and Jimmy Congalton took the next three. Alberta ended the run in 1933, but teams skipped by Leo Johnson and Ken Watson, both from the Strathcona, and Glenboro’s Ab Gowanlock won three more Briers for Manitoba in the next six years.

The move to Winnipeg in 1940 proved to be successful both on and off the ice. Manitoba was represented by the Granite team of Howard Wood, Ernie Pollard, Howard Wood Jr. and Roy Enman.
Wood Sr. had not planned to curl in the MCA bonspiel that year, but his son convinced him to enter a rink at the last minute. Playing a total of 19 games over eight days, the pick-up squad won 17, captured the bonspiel grand aggregate and the grand challenge Dingwall Trophy. Winning the British Consols final over defending champion Ross Kennedy from the Strathcona earned Wood’s rink the right to represent the province in the Brier.

Feeling right at home — as the Granite club was on Mostyn Place, almost across the street from the Amphitheatre, and bolstered by Brier crowds that ranged from 2,000 to nearly 5,000 — the Wood foursome went through the nine-game round-robin competition undefeated. Games were 12 ends and in the ninth round Manitoba beat Alberta 17-11. That victory clinched the title over Saskatchewan, who lost only to Manitoba. Alberta finished third with a 7-2 record. It was Pappy Wood’s third Brier win, as he had curled third for Congalton’s Granite squad in 1932.

Mac McLaine, who got his start at the Elmwood Curling Club, skipped the P.E.I. foursome that year. Warner Bickle, formerly of Portage la Prairie, curled third and Lyle Hopkins, a former Hartney and Winnipeg Granite curler, played second for Nova Scotia.

Ernie Parkes, who played second for Ontario, had a hockey career that saw him play in three Stanley Cup playoffs for Vancouver during the early 1920s and then in the NHL in 1924-25 with the Montreal Maroons.  

In addition to drawing the largest crowds in Brier history, the event in Winnipeg had other highlights.
Players curled with neutral rocks for the first time, instead of bringing their own stones of different styles and weights. Each team would use the same set of rocks only twice during round-robin play. The rocks had red and blue handles so spectators could determine from a distance who was counting. Instead of giving the champions matched rocks as their prize, the winners received silver trays.   

Looking back at newspapers of the day, junior hockey was the bigger story on the sports pages. In a North Division semi-final at the Olympic Rink in North Winnipeg, St. James Canadians eliminated CUAC. In Brandon, the hometown Elks tied their South Division semi-final by beating the Kenora Thistles. Those games got the largest headlines in the Winnipeg Free Press the day following the Granite rink’s victory.

As the Brier was drawing to its conclusion, a second Canadian championship got underway in Winnipeg on March 3, as the Winnipeg Winter Club hosted the Canadian badminton championships.
The locals didn’t do so well on the courts, but Herb Richards won the singles consolation final and partnered with Virginia Whitehead to take the mixed doubles consolation final. Off the court, Winnipeg’s Les Johnston was elected president of the national association at its annual meeting.    

Memories of Sport appears every second week in the Canstar Community News weeklies. Kent Morgan can be contacted at 204-489-6641 or email: sportsmemories@canstarnews.com