Curling Canada

You know, I think what's great about Kelowna is one, you've got some amazing volunteers that really can put on a show without too much problem.

The World Curling and the Canadian Curling Association knows that I've got a lot of experienced volunteers.

Two is that it's just a great place to visit.

Bringing the championship to Kelowna took more than a strong reputation.

One other quick note I wanted to mention here this week.

Nolan Thiessen, the CEO of Curling Canada, he has started a blog series recently.

sort of the best I can say.

You can also listen to this, I believe.

But it's an invitation to think about the future of curling.

So on the website, it is Chapter 1, The Future of Canadian Curling, where he's asking a lot of big questions and talking about who we are as a curling community, what Curling Canada is, what its role is, how...

Curling clubs can be places where we all come together.

We've talked on the show about third places, how curling clubs could be the third place or a third place and ways that we pass that down to the next generation.

We're going to the Scotties.

I kind of did a little inquiry with Curling Canada and they said, you know, I'm kind of half paid by them.

So they didn't really like the idea of coaching another, another country.

And, and, and I get it.

They've done some, you know, they did the club championships for a while when those were being broadcast.

I think they were on TSN's website and then Curling Canada had them for a while.

But they've definitely done some stuff before.

And you can tell, I think the cool part about commentating with them is you can kind of tell that it's the way that they would talk to each other.

I've done curling podcasting.

I've done curling video series and, I hadn't really done a ton of commentating until I retired.

And then I got asked by Curling Canada to do some at the Canadian juniors because they were just up the road from me in Langley, BC.

I was living in Vancouver at the time.

but back to the qualifier, the U25 event, it was really neat because Daryl G3 was out there with us.

He is, of course, one of the next gen coaches for Curling Canada.

So he was out there supporting all the next gen teams, which we're one of.

So we had him with us for two of our round robin games and that was super fun to have him involved with the team.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's exactly what they've always done before in curling Canada events.

So maybe they wanted to be a bit different, which I understand they want to differentiate differentiate themselves, but, But I just think maybe just a bit too complicated for the average viewer.

... we'll see what happens with that moving forward.

But, uh, but yeah, so no more curling events in this building, and we'll see if the new one, if Curling Canada decides that it's big enough.

Mm-hmm.

Actually, I should say there is gonna be one more, uh, the Slam.

Yeah

... weird things you were talking about.

Um, but like they'll keep going back there, Curling Canada.

They-

Another piece of news here.

Curling Canada a couple weeks ago announced a new direction for the wheelchair curling program, and there's going to be an expanded 2028 championship pilot.

So what they're gonna do, the 2027 Wheelchair National Championship will be in its normal spot in the spring, but in 2028, Curling Canada is going to try out an expanded format for the Canadian Wheelchair Curling Championship, featuring three disciplines of mixed team doubles and mixed doubles.

And so they'll all be together with the, uh, first event f- of taking place from January 7th to 11, 2028, and that's the four-person, uh, traditional teams.

And then doubles, mixed doubles will go after that from January 11 to the 15th with those two disciplines running simultaneously.

Yeah.

All right.

Uh, elsewhere, Scott, uh, we'll stick with Curling Canada here.