• 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…

The Canadian mixed curling championships gets underway this Saturday at the Westmount Golf and Country Club in Kitchener / Waterloo, ON. For event and ticket information, please visit the official website.

One of Canada’s longest running curling tournaments.

From the Toronto Curling Association’s website:

The TCA Energizer Men’s bonspiel is one of the world’s oldest continuous curling event. The winners of the first Championship was the Rennie Rink, from the Caledonia Curling club, in 1896.
Prior to 1896, there was a city competition, but the format was different. At that time, 16 players threw 16 rocks, and there was no championship. The game was played by eight man teams throwing one rock each. As time went on the game changed and by the mid 1800’s, the most popular format of play was the Single Rink.

A championship was proposed in 1895 and the first Single Rink Championship of Toronto was held in January of 1896. They played twenty-two ends on natural ice with straw brooms. The good news was you couldn’t sweep a rock until it reached the middle line.

Hiram Walker sponsored the event in those early years before passing the torch to the Canada Life Assurance Company in 1906. Every January for the next eighty years, curlers assembled in clubs across the city to compete for the right to call themselves “Canada Life Champions.”

From 1994 -1997, the Investors Group sponsored the event, and in 1998 a determined group of curlers from the Weston Golf & Country Club kept the tradition alive. Brick Brewing stepped in as sponsor from 1999-2001. In 2002 Johnson Controls assumed sponsorship of this great event, under the banner of TCA Energizer Men’s Bonspiel.

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Waterloo, Ontario

2005 Champion: Randy Ferbey