Curling, Etcetera_ A Whole Bunch of Stuff About the Roaring Game - Bob Weeks [35]
Olson was also the first person to use paint on curling ice to distinguish the house, that coming in 1926, and he also invented a curling rink ice shaver as an inexpensive alternative to the Zamboni. Among his other inventions are a pebbling can and a rock measure.
Olson passed away in 1964 and was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame in 2000.
HISTORY ON DISPLAY
Don and Elva Turner enjoyed collecting all things curling. In fact, they liked it so much they turned their basement into a museum to house all their wares. The artifacts the couple assembled are thought to be the largest collection of curling memorabilia in the world.
The collection began in 1974 when Elva curled in the Canadian Seniors in Halifax and returned home to Weyburn, Saskatchewan, with a small collection of pins and some curling photos. From there, the collecting became voracious and soon the couple’s basement was turned into a museum. School groups and avid curlers used to come by to see the displays.
That was great for a while, but eventually the collection outgrew their home. That’s when their home city of Weyburn stepped up and allowed them to create the Turner Curling Museum in a 2,600-square-foot building attached to the city’s recreation centre. The operation is the world’s first curling museum.
Inside, visitors see rarities such as a set of circular curling irons with iron handles, used in the late 1800s in the Ottawa Valley. There is also an early rock sharpener used by the Queen City Curling Stone Co. of Regina in the 1930s. A prized possession is a pair of rocks awarded as a prize in the 1927 Brier, the first Canadian championship.
But undoubtedly the most impressive display is the massive collection of pins, collected through years and years of attending major curling events, especially the world championship. It’s estimated there are 18,000 curling pins, and no one is quite sure if that is the largest collection in the world, but it is certainly impressive.
Don Turner passed away in 2006, and Elva maintains the museum.
CURLING IN THE BIBLE?
At the opening banquet for the 1966 Brier in Halifax, the speaker, Dr. J.B. Hardie, a professor at Pine Hill Divinity College, light-heartedly suggested that curling must have been around for a lot longer than originally thought. To back up this point, he gave a number of examples of curling being mentioned in the Bible. First he said that the purest of curlers must be the leads: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone” (John 8:7).
Then he said there were a great many talented curlers back in the Holy Land: “Among all this people, there were seven hundred chosen men left-handed; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss” (Judges 20:16).
Finally, he argued, there’s nothing like the Canadian men’s championship: “He that is best among them, is as a brier” (Micah 7:4).
LATE NIGHT CURLING
Curling made it to late-night television in 2002 during its play at the Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. That’s when the titans of American talks shows—Jay Leno and David Letterman—made light of the cult hit. Leno had a joke about it during his opening monologue on February 19, 2002, saying: “Did you see the curling today? Pretty exciting. The gold medal ended up going to a Brazilian cleaning team.”
Letterman used curling as a theme for one of his famous Top 10 lists. It was titled: “10 Ways to Make Curling More Exciting.”
10. How about calling it anything but curling?
9. Instead of weird lookin’ Norwegian dudes in sweaters—babes in lingerie.
8. Only allow French judges.
7. Sweep the stone toward the hog line and then…okay, I don’t know crap about curling.
6. Is it too much to ask for one curler to bite another