The Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame & Museum Inc. is pleased to announce the launch of its Virtual Museum and Hall of Fame website. In addition, the organization has announced that pans are being developed for renewal of a Manitoba curling tradition in the form of the annual Hall of Fame Induction & Fund-Raising Dinner on Saturday, May 14, 2022.
The museum website, including the first Manitoba curling on-line museum exhibit as well as the on-line Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame, can be found at www.mbcurlmuseum.com
“With the support of our donors and with dedicated volunteer effort by our volunteers, we have accomplished one of our Board’s recent primary objectives,” says MCHoF&M President Peter Nicholls.
The MCHoF&M accepted some time ago that there might never again be a physical location for the Museum and Hall of Fame due to the costs involved. Therefore a commitment was made to establish an on-line presence to display the remarkable museum collection as well as to recognize Manitoba curling’s Hall of Fame inductees.
The first ‘exhibit’ in the on-line Manitoba curling museum is a history of the Manitoba men’s championship which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2025.
The Manitoba curling collection includes over 30,000 items including artifacts, historical images/photos and documents. The next stage of making this collection available on-line is the complete digitization of the collection and establishment of a searchable link on the website. This process is currently underway.
In the meantime, now that the Virtual Museum has been launched and the first exhibit is available for viewing, the challenge facing MCHoF&M volunteers is to develop new exhibits.
Before launching the new website, MCHoF&M volunteers also undertook to review all 200+ Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame inductee honour scrolls and update those which required renewal.
Along with updating all of the honour scrolls, five historically significant teams have been added as the 2021 Inductee class. These include:
- 1889: The Sam Harstone team from Winnipeg’s new Granite Curling Club – FIRST champions of the Annual Bonspiel of the Manitoba Branch of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club (later the MCA Bonspiel).
- 1900-1901-1902: The Hector McLean teams from Holland, MB., the first apparent ‘dynasty’ in Manitoba Men’s curling. They won the 1900 MCA Bonspiel championship and followed in 1901 & 1902, with winning the “Special Aggregate” in the first two years such an honour was presented.
- 1914-1915: In the style of the time, the record books show Mrs. F.R. Munro’s team from Strathcona Ladies CC were the winners of “The Ladies Competition” which was added to the MCA Bonspiel in 1914 and they won again in 1915 – the first champions of the first competitive women’s event in Manitoba (probably Western Canada)
- 1932: In 1924 and again in 1932, curling was a demonstration sport at the Olympics. In 1932, at Lake Placid, an international competition occurred involving four teams from Canada and four from USA. The four teams from each country played the four teams from the other country. Manitoba’s team, skipped by William H. Burns of Portage, was the only team to win all four games and hence was awarded the gold medals – Manitoba’s first Olympians.
- 1955: The Ethel Wright team from Flin Flon was the first Manitoba team to win the Western Canadian Ladies Curling Championship. As the first Manitoba women’s team to win at a level above the provincial championship level, the Wright team helped create the competitive opportunity for the many champions who have followed.
Manitoba curling fans are invited to visit the new on-line Museum and Curling Hall of Fame (mbcurlmuseum.com) and are encouraged to consider a donation to support the effort to celebrate Manitoba’s curling history.
There are links on the website to the Winnipeg Foundation (to contribute to our long-term Foundation account) and to CanadaHelps.org (to contribute to short-term operating expenses). Both are able to issue charitable donations receipts on behalf of the Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame & Museum.
Complete details on the Virtual Museum launch, the planning for a May 14, 2022 Dinner, and the 2021 induction of ‘historically-significant teams’ can be found at the new website www.mbcurlmuseum.com
