Curling Club Wraps Up Season

Vermilion Curling Club members work together to take out the rink’s ice on March 28. Photo Caylie Gnyra

The Vermilion Curling Club held their Member Appreciation Night on Wednesday, March 27 to celebrate the season and start the labour-intensive task of taking out the rink’s ice.

About 20 members gathered that evening to throw some last rocks, help clear out the club’s fridge and freezer with great specials on beer and food, and carefully hammer the sponsorship logos out of the ice—the first step in the ice removal.

The next morning, a handful of volunteers joined the club’s second-generation icemaker Lawson Clyke to take out the beams separating the sheets of ice and break up some of the ice by hand before the arrival of a bobcat, which helped speed up the process.

Twenty-three-year-old Clyke began learning the trade from his grandfather Rick MacKenzie at the tender age of 15, when MacKenzie would invite Clyke to help him out with the Vermilion rink. Over the course of several years, Clyke learned the tricks of the trade, and today has an impressive knowledge of how to create and maintain ideal ice conditions for the varying needs of weekday league play and high-use weekend bonspiels. The work is full-time throughout the curling season, starting with the demanding month-long task of putting in the ice in October, and ends each year around Easter.

Though not as spry as he once was, MacKenzie still shows up to help the club take out the ice each spring. Alongside other volunteers, he helped to shovel ice and squeegee the rink’s cement surface dry after the bobcat had done the heavy break-up work.

The piles of sponsorship logos air-drying in the lobby and the willingness of club members to show up for this laborious work are testimony to Vermilion’s dedication to this community-oriented classic Canadian sport.