One of my passions and one that helps me get through the Thompson winters is curling. It has been about 10 years now that I began curling on a regular basis and, as it turns out, it is one of those few sports that I am actually reasonably good at.
Because of all of the foreign travel last year I had to scale back and I just signed up as a spare this season - in effect a rock thrower for hire. But, as I have already mentioned, as my traipsing off to foreign lands has been greatly curtailed I joined up with my team from last year and we had been enjoying some success. One of my team mates, Bob Wall, suggested we go on a road trip. Because of Thompson's remote location there are not too many places within a reasonable distance. As it turns out, the community of Snow Lake, approximately 250 km to the southwest held a bonspiel soon after Bob's suggestion. So he signed us up!
Now the team I curled with last year (Bob, Mike MacKay and Guy Hansen) only curled on Wednesday nights. But this year they signed up for Tuesday and Thursday instead with they recruiting a different person to play the skip position (in effect captain of the team) since it did not appear I would be available. For Tuesday they got a fellow new to town by the name of Gary Adams. And for Thursday a fellow by the name of Rory Ardiel. As it turns out Rory had a hard time making games and since I was available after all I took over skipping on that night.
The morning of the day we were to leave for Snow Lake Guy called me to say that he would not be able to go. Fortunately Gary agreed on short notice to join us in Guy's absence. So I left work early and then went and picked up the others. Because of the late notice Gary did not have his curling gear so we had to delay our departure. We finally got to Snow Lake just as the opening draw was beginning. So we quickly changed and went out on the ice.
While in Snow Lake e we stayed in a bed and breakfast, although we didn't get much for breakfast! At least the rooms and beds we comfortable and the price reasonable. Here is a picture of the the B&B as well as well as a view of Snow Lake from nearby. And after that a photo of the snow Lake curling rink. Note that the truck on the right is the new Honda Ridgeline Janice and I purchased at the beginning of January; a perfect vehicle for four men and their gear!
As a 
quick aside, like most towns in northern Manitoba Snow Lake came to be because of mining. In this case it originally was a gold mine called the Nor Acme mine that operated for about 10 years beginning in the 1940's. The gold mine shut down in the '50's. Fortunately base metals were found in the area about then and there have now been a total of 8 mines (Chisel Lake, Chisel North, Ghost Lake, Anderson Lake, Stull Lake, Rod, Osborne and Photo Lake). In the early 1990's the gold mine was reopened. But now all of the mines are closed which is one reason the numbers at the bonspiel were down. But there is hope in that another base metal deposit has been found at Lawlor Lake but it will be several years before production can begin.Most bonspiels guarantee a minimum of 3 games as it is usually a triple knock-out format. There are usually at least 3 events with everyone starting in the first event and with each loss one moves down to the next event. If you loose the third game you are out. Because of a lower number of entrants they changed it to two round robin pools of 5 teams in one and 4 in the other resulting in a guarantee of 4 games. As I always set my primary objective to play one more game than the minimum we were in a bonus situation right from the get go!
Here we have Bob (on the left) and Mike getting ready to sweep the rock I am about to deliver.During the round robin we were very fortunate and won 3 and lost only 1 resulting in being tied for first in our pool! Much better than I had expected or even hoped. And the team we lost against we gave them a good run for the money. As it turned out, when the results for both pools were tabulated we were in a four way tie for first place. So for the playoffs the four skips each attempted to draw to the button with the closest being declared 1st and so forth. I was able to put us in 3rd and as a result played off against the team that was 1st. Again we played well but not quite good enough. Regardless it was a great weekend.
And here is a picture of the full team, in front of the curling club logo. From left to right: Mike MacKay, Gary Adams, Bob Wall and myself.
