Curling

Last week was Winnipeg's bonspiel. A bonspiel is a curling tournament between clubs. For eight days, wherever you went in Winnipeg, you saw the curlers leaving one rink, on their way to another. Many of them were elderly men, all serious, carrying long brooms and heavy sweaters; they looked up at the sky, which was tranquil, and said gloomily that it might bring baugh ice, meaning a thaw.

On the hard, slick ice of many Canadian cities the curlers use irons, but in Winnipeg, as in Edinburgh and other conservative places they use 35-lb. stones--solid bowls of granite or whinstone, beautifully smooth, with a twist of handle on top. Each side has four players, each player two stones. Players slide the stones at a tee at the end of a 114-ft. rink. One man runs his stone up dead; his partner lays one to protect him. If a deft opponent may skid between them, knocking both aside, curlers say he gie'd them breeks.

There were 768 curlers in the Winnipeg bonspiel; one woman, a Mrs. Snell, got into the men's bonspiel somehow, but indignant curlers said this would never happen again. This time spectacled old Malcolm Cambell, who has been in every spiel since 1889, did not win anything. Richard Waugh, Liquor Commissioner, Life Member of the Manitoba Curling Association watched many matches. Howard Wood's team from the Granite Club won twelve times, was beaten only once, finishing first in the bonspiel and earning the right to represent Manitoba in the world's curling championship.

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