A great tournament and Canada has a strong pair of representatives in Kevin Martin and Cheryl Bernard (both from Alberta). Here are some of the best shots from that wonderful week of curling from Edmonton:

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer. Before you know it curling will be upon us again.

Until then look back again and marvel at this shot that Glenn Howard made at this past year’s Brier. I think it’s still the best shot I’ve ever seen, what do you think?

Due to popular demand we have added some new local city curling club listings to CurlingRink.ca.

We’re hoping to make it easier for to find the best local club in your area.

We’ll be adding listings for all the major centres across Canada over the next while, but here is our first set of listings. We hope you find it helpful.

An interesting post over at the Blind River CC blog as Glen Austin revisited a curling syposium that was put on earlier this summer by the NOCA (Northern Ontario Curling Assoc).

The symposium centered around the operational aspects of maintaining a successful club – especially as things have gotten more challenging. Things like insurance, member recruiting and media sterategies were covered.

What stood out more than ever was the need to look at curling from a business standpoint. With times being the way they are, small clubs ( and larger clubs!) need to get creative in moving forward and maintaining the club. Undoubtedly, there is definitely a need to look to outside funding sources for revenues needed for club maintenance. These monies by and large can only be accessed by those clubs which are “Not for Profit”. This is where our club has to go and as fast as we can. I was surprised to see how many clubs have already done this,…and already accessing dollars for various initiatives within the club.

Interesting read if your club is looking at their future path as many others are…

If you’ve ever wondered the process they use to make a curling stone, watch this interesting video:

Here is a fun video that promotes the social aspect of curling from the fine folks at Banff/Lake Louise Tourism.

This video was filmed at the Banff Curling Club in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

No this isn’t your Monday night rec league, but a funny clip of a classic SCTV skit with the (late) John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy and Rick Moranis. Great stuff – enjoy…

• First and foremost for the digital enthusiast: curling looks unbelievable in High Definition – this is marked as the first event to be broadcast 100% in HD
• Semifinal #1: in a squirrelly game on the new ice Howard gets the breaks early and Middaugh gets them late, when it counts, and takes the first match
• The Rama Entertainment centre ice, sitting on top of the room’s concrete floor, played as you would expect in the first game. But should be kenner by the time Sunday’s final rolls around
• Is the best still to come for Wayne Middaugh: he seems to have just been ‘hanging around’ the high echelons on the game the past few years. Will we see Wayne take a run at a Brier or an Olympic berth in the next few seasons? I suppose he has to get out of Ontario (and by Glenn Howard’s team) first…
• Remains to be seen is Howard’s team has the same magic as they did a season ago. maybe its time to switch up those white belts??

More later…

Calgary Herald columnist Al Cameron has launched a great new blog and today I noticed an interesting post he wrote about Russian skip Liudmila Privivkova’s team and an alleged (foot wedge) sweeping violation they committed that has caused somewhat of a stir:

Sweeping used to be the one big area where you’d find rulebreakers who used dumping techniques — in essence, moving debris in front of the rock with their brooms in an attempt to either slow it down or adjust its line — to some perceived advantage, although the big problem today, I think, is that nobody really understands the convoluted language of modern sweeping rules, so it’s tough to actually break the rules.

Here is the visual evidence from Youtube:

So, what do you think? We’d like to know.

For the record we think its looks a little suspicious and here is what Al Cameron thought:

First of all, I tip my cap to anyone who can use their foot that precisely to help make a shot, so I have an extremely hard time believing she did it on purpose. I believe it was purely accidental.

But — and this is a Sir Mix-A-Lot big but — I also have an extremely hard time believing she didn’t know her foot had touched the running stone, and therefore, it was up to Ezekh (the sweeper on left) to tell someone she’d done it. And, after a round of oh-so-Euro high-fives all around, she did no such thing. And that’s reprehensible. In Canada, a player who did that would be, quite rightly, ostracized as a cheat and would have a hard time finding a new team.

Are you a curling enthusiast? Are you an amazing writer and journalist? Then you are perfect for CurlingRink.ca.

CurlingRink.ca is looking for an outgoing individual who loves curling to join our team as a Curling Writer and Community Manager. The Curling Writer and Community Manager will contribute to our online community as well as explore the web for more content to incorporate in our site. With the bloggers’ excellent writing skills, he/she will post blogs about the Brier, the Grand Slam, what’s going on in competitive curling, and other events on our website for our up and coming online community.

If you have something to say – we’ll give you the avenue to say it. Please drop us a line if you’re that person, we’d love to hear from you. This is a wonderful opportunity to talk about curling at a national level.

Please send correspondence to: courses2007@ontgolf.ca