Huuurryyyy, hurry haaard! Sweep your butt right on down to Gibsons Curling Club (GCC), Saturday, Dec. 2, from noon to 3 p.m. to watch some of B.C.’s best junior curlers, in the U-21 Regional Curling Playdowns.
The entire weekend event, Dec. 1 to 4, is free and open to public viewing. And on the Saturday, GCC is hosting a free Discover Curling family event.
Come watch competitive level U-21 curling. Bring your kids and teens to play in the many off-ice activities. Participate in the hot-shot competition (for adults and kids; no experience necessary). Enjoy free snacks. Learn about the Junior Curling Program and Spring Break Curling Development Camps.
Come on, give it a whirl, and you’ll soon be rockin’ your inner Scotsman. That’s all it took to hook me, my first day on the ice back in 1994. I’m not a Scot by blood, but a piece of Scottish heritage certainly flows through my veins with vigour. I am a curler. I’ve embraced and nurtured this part of myself since the moment I stepped on the ice at eight years old. Since then, the commitment I have made to this sport has been returned to me in countless opportunities.
I’ve enjoyed many a wailing bagpipe and dancing kilt, announcing the entrance of our troop of athletes as we pour out onto the ice surface with honour and pride, preparing to represent our team, our home town and our nation. Curling is a sport of honour, mutual respect, technique, finesse, precision, communication, cooperation, camaraderie, and what I like to call “physics on ice.”
Curling has given me the opportunity to experience B.C., and to realize that I would one day migrate from the Atlantic to the Pacific, to make this place my home. In 2004, at 17 years old, I stepped off the plane in Victoria, to touch Pacific lands for the first time and participate in my first national junior curling championship. I took one look around and said “Wow, I’m going to live here some day.”
In that moment a seed was planted, and over the next 10 days I enjoyed intense competition, meeting new life-long friends and soaking in the awesomeness of the Coast Salish landscape.
After ranking in a fourth-place tie at our first national competition, we returned home to P.E.I., each in anticipation of our next adventure. Mine was a year-long Rotary youth exchange to the Baltic State of Latvia.
When I arrived in the fall of 2004, curling was relatively new in Latvia. A small but determined group of Latvian business people had spent three years introducing the sport to their country, and had managed to persuade a single hockey arena, in the whole country, to convert its ice to curling ice, twice weekly, from 5:30 to 8 a.m. The majority of the members drove over an hour to get there – they were determined and thirsty for personal development in every domain imaginable.
It didn’t take long for word to spread that a Canadian curler had dropped in on their country and was planning to stay a while. Just like that I rose to celebrity status and was recruited within days to join the club and coach two of the leading national teams. It was such an honour to share my knowledge and so humbling to offer inspiration to this amazing crew of individuals. Throughout that year we grew in many ways together, learning language in both directions and travelling out of the country for several international bonspiels including Finland, Estonia, Czech Republic and more.
I returned to Canada in late 2005 and was asked to rejoin my previous curling team. Together we took the provincial title once more, to represent P.E.I. at the 2006 National Junior Curling Championships in Thunder Bay, Ontario. As I was moving to New Brunswick for undergrad, I was recruited by N.B. players, and in 2007 we took the provincial title to represent New Brunswick at nationals in St. Catherines, Ontario. What a run through the competitive curling world.
Curling experiences have offered me insight, exposure, composure, respect and humility – as well as friends for life and a teammate now turned colleague, as the values we learned from the game inspired us both to pursue professions in restorative health care – she a chiropractor and me a naturopath.
The sum of these experiences has contributed to leading me into the here and now, in Gibsons, practising medicine and supporting the development of the Junior Curling Program at Gibsons Curling Club, as the program development chair.
My focus in my practice, as in my day-to-day life, is to inspire individuals to engage in their own life, to invest in themselves, and to empower their own being with vitality, light and love. So take a leap, be inspired, and among all the opportunities out there, consider this one.
Gibsons Curling Club has opened ice time for the Junior Program, from 3 to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday all season. Registration is $25 for the whole year. We’re accepting ages 10 to 21 this year, with intention to expand the program next year to include ages six to nine. I am volunteering Mondays and Tuesdays, 3 to 5 p.m. all season, while Jay Dear and Peter Beynon are volunteering Wednesdays all season, to coach the kids in on-ice skills, off-ice strategy and mini games. Now is the time. Let’s rock it out.
