Public meeting will gauge interest in building Stouffville club
Jim Mason

Do you have thoughts of rocking the house in your home town?

Mayor Wayne Emmerson has called an open house to find out if there is sufficient interest to build a curling  club in Whitchurch-Stouffville.

The meeting is March 11 at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at the municipal offices.

Former councillor Cliff Dunkeld, one of several Stouffville residents curling in Uxbridge, supports the idea.

A youth program in Uxbridge draws youngsters from the Stoufville area, too,

Other residents who curl competitively in Unionville have also approached the town about a local club.

“I understand there’s a lot of interest in the municipality,” Mr. Emmerson said. “Unionville and Uxbridge are both near capacity, from what I’m told, so maybe it’s time we have our own club.”

Mr. Emmerson foresees a club with four sheets of ice in a private building on public land. Memberships would pay expenses.

A site has not been selected, but the town has land available, he said.

Memorial Park has been mentioned.

If plans proceed, a committee would investigate possible grant money.

There hasn’t been a curling club in Stouffville for several decades, but the sport has a proud local history:

• Curling was first played in Stouffville around 1890, on the mill pond where the Latcham Gallery and Care & Share Shoppe are now.

• The sport moved indoors, to Daley Hall at Main and Market streets, which was destroyed by fire, and then to two sheets of an arena on Park Drive north of Main Street. That rink was sold and a new one went up without curling facilities. A rink built in the 1960s in Gormley is now a banquet hall at Rolling Hills golf club,

• Stouffville’s Ray Grant played at The Brier, the Canadian men’s championship, in 1955, 1958  and 1965. Sons Randy and Gary Grant curled on the Ontario circuit out of Uxbridge.

• Stouffville’s Murray Roberts skipped a rink to an Ontario title in 1959. Other team members were Andy and Ray Grant and George Rumney.

• Other curling clubs in York Region are in Unionville, Newmarket, Richmond Hill, Sutton and Thornhill, which has two.

—Source: Stouffville 1877/1977, a pictorial history