Image via Wikipedia
I know there will probably be a lot of readers who have no idea what my blog title today means…but if you happen to be Canadian and if you happen to be spending all your free time this week watching the Men’s Brier, no more explanation needs to be made.
But for everyone else, please let me explain.
According to Wikipedia, “The Tim Hortons Brier, or simply (and more commonly) the Brier, is the annual Canadian men’s curling championship, sanctioned by the Canadian Curling Association (CCA). The current event name refers to its main sponsor, the Tim Hortons coffee and doughnut shop chain”.
The Brier is where the best male Canadian curlers gather to compete for the title and for the honor of representing Canada at the World Curling Championships, which this year will be held in Basel, Switzerland. At that event, teams from twelve countries will vie for the World Curling Championship title. Teams this year will represent Switzerland, Canada, China, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Czech Republic, Scotland, Germany, France and USA.
Note: The women’s World Curling Championship also takes place later this month, in Alberta, Canada. Similar to the men’s event, teams will represent their respective countries of Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Korea, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia, Scotland, Germany, USA, and Italy.
My father curling at a charity bonspiel.
We Canadians love our curling. We have curling rinks in almost every Canadian town and city, and we grow up knowing what the terms bonspiel, in-turn, hurry hard, and extra end mean. We start curling early on in our lives and many of us curl late into our senior years.
My father is a prime example of this. At eighty-five, he has been curling for well over forty years, and even though he can no longer get down in the hack, he still manages to throw his rocks and often leads his team to victory as their skip. He curls at least twice a week, sometimes even more often than that, and takes part in senior’s bonspiels throughout the curling season and in the Curl For Cancer fund-raising bonspiel every February.
If you were to suggest that he spend his winters in Florida or Texas or Arizona as a Canadian Snowbird, he would tell you that he can’t do that–he would miss curling too much. So he stays here, doing what he loves to do, and said he will continue this routine as long as his health lasts. I hope it lasts many more years.
Even I've been known to push some 'granite' down the ice.
So now you know why I haven’t posted this past week. I’ve been glued to my television set, watching the Brier games three times a day–morning, afternoon, and evening. And a couple of weeks before this I was glued to my television set, watching the Scottie’s games (the Canadian Women’s Championship event), three times a day–morning, afternoon, and evening.
Can you guess what I’ll be doing later this month? That’s right–I’ll be glued to my television set, watching the World Curling Championships. I’m not sure how many times a day games will be broadcast, but I’ll check the schedule to make sure I don’t miss an important draw.
You may want to check it out, too, even if you don’t live in Canada. The USA usually is represented by great teams at the World’s, and who knows–maybe the final game will be a showdown between our two countries!
Hurry–hurry hard!
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