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When I returned to Canada in late 1961, I went to work for the National Research Council in Halifax and put my name on the waiting list to join the Halifax Curling Club. That was in 1962. I was invited to join the club in 1963. When I began to curl the only equipment required was a warm sweater, a pair of leather-soled shoes and a pair of toe rubbers. I was hopeless at the sport!!

The 1987 Junior Men’s Champions for Nova Scotia comprised  Robert Smith, Skip; Jamie Myra, Mate; Ricky Crouse, 2nd ; and Kurt Lohnes, Lead.  Brian Fogelson and I were the coaches. The Canadian Championship was held at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Three of the team were 17 and one was 18, probably the youngest team at the event. I’m sure that I was the most inexperienced coach!

I came to Lunenburg in May of 1964 as Plant Engineer of the new Lunenburg Sea Products Plant and joined the LCC that autumn. Those were the days when every club had their own playdowns to determine one team to represent the club in the championships to see who would represent the province. There was a lot of interest at the club level to see who would be in the Tankard, the Mixed, the Johnson Senior, the Provincial Juniors (curlers with no more than 8 years experience) and the Western Counties Bonspiel. I curled in a number of these competitions at different positions with limited success, except in the Western Counties at which my team represented the LCC five or six times.

My wife Roxie curled regularly at the LCC in the business girls league prior to the time we started going out together. Before and after we married we curled at a number of regional mixed bonspiels with David and Norine Beck and at LCC with Art and Linda Patterson. Roxie gave up curling after the first two children arrived. Meanwhile I became involved with a great deal of weekly curling and club committees , especially the match committee, and became president for two years in 1973 and 1974. During those years we installed the dehumidifier to improve the ice conditions and the sprinkler system, primarily to reduce the cost of insurance. Around that time we also started work on designing the changes required to replace the old steel pipe and sand floor system with an insulated concrete floor with embedded plastic pipes. For this design we used one of the refrigeration suppliers that supplied cold storage equipment to my employer, National Sea Products.

I will never forget the night I was inducted as President. We had a large number at the annual meeting and when the outgoing President, Puddles Crouse, came to the end of old business and before I could take over chairing the meeting, he suddenly called a recess and a bar break. There was a must-see playoff hockey game in progress on TV and by the time I could get the crowd back to the meeting many were well lubricated. A two-hour verbal fight then ensued over whether we should raise the next year’s dues by $2 or $3. Not being used to handling this type of situation, I finally got the meeting adjourned, went home and asked Roxie how I could resign in good grace. From the late 1960’s until the early 1980’s I was responsible for the engineering for all of National Sea’s 25 plants from Newfoundland to Florida, in Australia and South America so between travelling and curling a number of nights a week, I did not spend a lot of time at home.

I never did develop a classic curling delivery, I believe the stronger parts of my game were reading ice, sweeping (with a corn broom), and judging weight and location as a sweeper – i.e. my best position was as a lead. I did not really learn about the skills needed to properly deliver a stone until I got involved with coaching in the mid 1980’s. I started taking the Curl Canada instruction courses. Even if a person does not plan to coach, I really believe that he or she will enjoy the game much more having completed the Level 1 or 2 Coaching Certification. My biggest thrills in curling came from the success of the junior teams that I had a hand in coaching, all of whom became competitive at the provincial level. Both our daughter Heather and older son Robert skipped a team that made the Nova Scotia Canada Games playdowns and Rob’s team represented Nova Scotia in the Pepsi National Boy’s Championship; Laurie Mossman’s (Russell’s daughter) team was runner-up in the NS Junior Girl’s Championship; and Lindsay Gear’s team won the Nova Scotia School Boy Championship.

I was just about to retire from curling for good because of arthritis in my neck which prevented me from seeing the broom during all the phases of delivering a stone when, lo and behold, along came stick curling. That gave me the chance to continue to enjoy the game and the companionship – I hope for years to come!