Curling, Etcetera_ A Whole Bunch of Stuff About the Roaring Game - Bob Weeks [43]
Go to any big curling event and you’re sure to see pin collectors, both those who do the job seriously and put out massive displays, and others who are just trying to pick up a few while at the bonspiel or championship.
No matter what the level of interest, all these folks can thank one Saskatchewan resident for most of their fun. Laurie Artiss has become one of the world’s largest makers of pins, and it all started thanks to his love of curling.
Artiss started his association with curling in 1962, covering the Brier for the Brandon Sun. He moved to Regina in the late 1960s to take a job as a sports writer with the Regina Leader-Post, and in 1970 he started a curling supply business. Around that time, he grew frustrated by the lack of decent lapel pins available for events and clubs. So, taking matters into his own hands, he began The Pin People, a company that has grown into one of the largest pin-making companies in the world. Since that time, he has made the pins for thousands of curling clubs, championships—including most national and international events—and in 1988, the Olympics. There are not many curling pins today that don’t come from Artiss’s company. And it’s expanded into pin-making for just about every type of event or occasion—sporting or otherwise—imaginable. Each year, it produces hundreds of thousands of pins. For many years, the company was the official pin-maker for the Olympic Games.
In addition to his pin-making business, Artiss served as chairman of the 1973 World Championship as well as the 1976 Brier. For his efforts, Artiss was inducted into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame in 2006.
THE CURLING TERMINATOR
Eisschiessen is a popular game in Austria and is still played to this day. It is very similar to curling except that it uses “eisstocks,” which resemble bowling pins stuck on a Frisbee instead of stones. In many places around the world, Eisschiessen is played on curling rinks.
While it doesn’t take a great deal of muscle to get the eisstocks down the ice, one of Austria’s past national champions of the sport is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s father.
THE RICHARDSONS
Just as Gordie Howe is to hockey and Babe Ruth is to baseball, the Richardsons are to curling. A Saskatchewan family of two brothers—Ernie and Garnet (known as Sam)—and two cousins, Arnold and Wes, they were the first team to win four Brier titles. They accomplished this remarkable feat in just five appearances. A few notes about the famed family:
• The four are the sons of three brothers and, just to confuse matters, two of them married sisters. Sam and Ernie are brothers, while Arnold and Wes are cousins.
• Sam and Ernie attended the 1955 Brier in Regina and decided then and there that they wanted to play in that event. “I don’t think you’ll make it. I think you should have started earlier if you wanted to get into that,” their mother told the two boys in their early 20s.
• The Richardsons are the only curling team to appear on the cover of Maclean’s magazine.
• By 1960, the Richardsons were so popular, Ernie gave his name to a line of curling accessories—sweaters, brooms, boots… even socks. The team ended up making about $100,000 from the sale of these items.
• The team lost just seven games in five Brier appearances.
• A lobster supper may have prevented the team from winning a fifth Brier. In 1964 in Charlottetown, the night before the final draw, the team attended a lobster dinner at the home of a friend, and the seafood didn’t sit well in the stomachs of the Prairie boys. None slept well that night and they came out flat, losing their last game and any chance of a fifth title.
• Although there were rumours of dissension on the team,Wes Richardson didn’t play with the team when it won its record fourth Brier in 1963 because