Morris has the right mix
Small town has qualities needed to host vibrant national curling event
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/11/2010 (5741 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
MORRIS — This Little Town That Could is doing just that this week, making Canadian curling history as what’s believed to be the smallest centre to ever hold a national championship.
The 2011 Canadian Mixed Curling championship, featuring a dozen teams from across Canada and The North, is being held this week in the Morris Curling Club. But only technically. Because in reality, this community of just 1,600 people, not just their club, is hosting this event.
And that is as it must be for Morris to hold an event that is generally held in centres many multiples the size of this southern Manitoba town. Last year’s Mixed, for instance, was held in Burlington, Ont., a city of 165,000.
While no one is ever going to confuse the Mixed with the Olympics, it still takes some serious organizing to stage an eight-day national championship that includes 12 teams and a total of 48 athletes from all over Canada.
But then Morris is not just any small town. This is a community, after all, that for the past decade has almost annually become an island as the Red River overflows its banks and washes away almost everything along Highway 75 except for this town, protected as it is by the combination of a sturdy ring dike and the even more impenetrable will of its residents.
So stage a Mixed? Bring it on. “I think this event is going to be talked about for many, many years to come,” says event co-chairman Resby Coutts. “When are you ever going to see a curling club in a place like Morris look like this again?”
Terry McNamee, who skips Manitoba’s entry, is playing in his fourth Canadian Mixed and says there is something special about being the big fish in a small pond. “I think the smaller towns generally put on better events than big towns,” McNamee says. “They just care more about the people.”
Which is why the Canadian Curling Association made a decision a couple of years ago to give small centres like Morris a chance to shine.
“We wanted to take some of our curling events and put them in places we haven’t been before and places that wouldn’t have had a chance to host an event before,” said Danny Lamoureux, the CCA’s director of championship services.
Lamoureux, who’s overseeing things in Morris, said part of the motivation is to give curling a bigger footprint in Canada, exposing new centres to the game’s highest levels and hopefully leaving behind lasting legacies.
And then there’s also the fact it is just common sense to put your event where it will be most appreciated.
“It makes no sense to stick an event like this into a place like Calgary,” he says. “It would just get lost.”
Morris isn’t the only small centre now getting a chance to host national curling events. Iqaluit, Nunavut (pop. 6,184) was the first community in The North to host a national curling event when it held the 2009 Mixed, while Digby, N.S., (pop. 2,311) will have a chance to show it can do more than just world-class scallops when it hosts the Canadian Seniors next March.
Coutts says organizers sold only a handful of tickets prior to this week, but expect to see crowds grow, particularly with McNamee the only undefeated team heading into Monday night and the final looming Saturday.
Coutts says organizers are confident they will not lose money this week and are hopeful that with a hot Manitoba team they might make a few bucks.
What’s more, they believe it will also only help grow the community’s Dekalb Superspiel, a men’s and women’s World Curling Tour event that is just in its third year but is already the third richest bonspiel in the province.
“We really want to solidify the reputation of this curling club as one of the best in the country,” says Coutts.
paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca
