Rocking it

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/03/2021 (1671 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kim and Wayne Tuck are once again enjoying the fruits of their labour at the Canadian mixed doubles curling championship.

The couple from Strathroy, Ont., one of 35 competing twosomes, is in the business of making curling rocks, and the sets of stones inside the Calgary bubble are their babies.

In fact, all of the round and polished, nearly 19-kilogram slabs of granite used by Curling Canada at its major championships — the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and Brier, included — are manufactured by the aptly named Canada Curling Stone Co.

“It’s cool, for sure, to be using our rocks. They’re only about two years old. They were first used (at the 2019 national mixed doubles championship) in Fredericton,” said Wayne, in conversation with the Free Press over the weekend. “My expertise is the curling stones. They come off my table and then they go out to the curling clubs or the associations. I take a lot of pride in what I do.”

With the surname Tuck he must be a curler, particularly one that hails from Winnipeg. And he understands elite players demand the very best equipment possible.

“As a competitive curler, I want the best for the competitive curlers. So, when our rocks go out there — I’d say for the last seven or eight years — they’ve got into Canadian championships, the Grand Slams, and I get feedback from curlers and they just rave about them. It’s a good feeling,” he said.

“If we’re ever in an event where we see it’s our rocks, it makes us a little more at ease, a little more comfortable, playing at the event.”

Kim’s family has been running the shop, located on the outskirts of London, Ont., since 1992.

Her father, used to work in the sign industry in Toronto but purchased a company that sold ice-scraping machines for curling clubs. In the early ‘90s, the business got into the repair of curling stones and, ultimately, the production and sale of stones.

It’s still owned by her parents, Fred and Sandy Veale, while Kim handles sales and Wayne handles the intricacies of production.

Canada Curling Stone Co., uses granite, either blue or red, from the Trefor Quarry, perched at the edge of the north Wales coast. Another manufacturer uses material from a quarry in Scotland.

The Tucks’ company does more than 95 per cent of the finished work on its stones.

Manitoba granite, unfortunately, doesn’t have the high-density structure to, over time, endure the constant collisions inherent in the game.

“I get a lot of questions about why we can’t use granite from Canada, and it’s just the difference in the makeup of the stones. It’s gone through testing and it wouldn’t withstand the hitting that is in the game. It broke down and you’d have granite coming off the stones every time it hit… not something on curling ice you’d want,” Kim said. “It’s just in how the granite was formed, volcanically, way back in the day.

“(The Trefor granite) has been used since the late ‘60s for new stone manufacturing, and it’s a pretty big mountain so there’s not much worry about any shortage in material.”

The company’s stones are in some curling clubs across Canada. The life expectancy of a stone is 50 to 70 years, so many older clubs own stones that are beyond the point of repair and need replacing.

But it’s a pricey investment. A set of 16 new rocks runs about $11,600.

“Clubs, particularly in the last year, are on very strict budgets so they have to do a lot of fundraising. We have a lot of clubs that are getting to the point of replacing them,” said Kim, adding Winnipeg’s venerable Granite Club purchased some new stones not too long ago.

The demand from federations across the world has never been higher, she said.

“We are selling lots to Asia, which is a big market for us. The overseas countries used to buy a lot of used stones, but with Olympic money flowing to grow the sport a lot of those places are buying new stones,” said Kim.

The mixed-doubles event inside spectator-free WinSport Arena isn’t going as planned for Tucks, who were still looking for their first victory as of Sunday evening.

But the duo is only seven years removed from seizing gold at the Canadian championship in Ottawa, and wearing the Maple Leaf at the 2014 worlds in Dumfries, Scotland.

They also formed one-half of the Ontario foursome that lost the ‘09 Canadian mixed final to Winnipeg’s Sean Grassie way up in Iqaluit.

Wayne was born in Winnipeg but was only a toddler when his family moved to Calgary, and then later to Ontario when he was in elementary school. He’s still got a batch of relatives in Manitoba and stockpiled memories from regular summer vacations at West Hawk Lake.

His parents, Wayne Sr., and Kathy, now reside in Kelowna. But dad curled in league at the Heather when he lived in Winnipeg, and Wayne Jr.’s brother, Richard, and a few cousins currently curl at the Fort Rouge.

“One of the cool things about Wayne’s family (in Manitoba) is they are huge supporters of ours, huge fans. Winnipeg is definitely like our home away from home,” said Kim.

The couple that lives together, works together and curls together originally met, naturally, at a weekend bonspiel.

“I had never heard of Wayne. I’m a couple of years older, so we never crossed paths in junior. I was playing with a friend in an open ‘spiel in Ilderton (Ont.) with my dad and at that time Wayne was going to Western (University) and he came out as our fourth player,” said Kim. The couple has a son, Teegan, 14, and a daughter, Taylor, 11.

“Knowing he was from Winnipeg and knowing his last name, I was kind of surprised to see him slide out of the hack in a flat-foot delivery. I expected him to totally have a tuck delivery but he didn’t.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell