History of the City View Curling Club

This oral history was transcribed from a tape recorded in 2005 by members Bob McLean and Carmine Luciani.

Voice of Bob McLean: Hello, what you are about to hear is an oral history of the CityView Curling Club. A few stories about its founding, its growth and development - some of which may even be true. The next voice you are about to hear is that of Mr. Carmine Luciani who was there when the Club was established in 1957 and still curls regularly in 2005, almost 50 years later.

Carmine: Greetings, this is Carmine. Hopefully in the next few minutes I can give you some back- ground as to how the CityView Curling Club came to be. In the year 1956 a group of employees of the Communication Research Centre at Shirleys Bay had done some outside curling at what is now the Carleton Heights Curling Club. There were two sheets of ice. They were outside. Having gone through this painful way of trying to curl in late 1956/57 they had a great desire to form an indoor curling club.

They recruited some of the local residents and some of them were the land owners who had land anywhere from Baseline to past what is now the Hunt Club Road and also from Woodroffe to Fisher Avenue. These people were farmers and were well known in the area and obviously very well placed with the local politicians because when they came to find land these farmers were better able to give them some insight. So land that we sit on was free land because there was a housing development to the east and the big commercial area from the land to Merivale Road. There was a problem with doing this in the first instance in that the land had been zoned as residential. Building a curling club required that the land be re-zoned and so we had a re-zoning of the land as a non-conforming building. At that point they had to determine how best to obtain the equity that would be needed in order to obtain a loan so they canvassed the residential area of City View which at that time included St. Claire Gardens and Meadowlands.

Rapping on the various doors they were able to obtain 100 prospective curlers each of whom had to buy at that point a $100 bond. The $10,000 was used to purchase the land and hence obtain a loan to build a Club. The monies available and the collateral necessary would only support the building of three sheets but they had hoped to build four sheets. The land in question at the time was relatively swamp land. That swamp land had to be excavated and filled with gravel. That is the base underneath the ice pad even at the present time. The curling area was then laid out on sand with plastic pipes laid on a sand base. The ice machine was a refurbished second- hand machine and rest assured there was a need to do an awful lot of work in order to get it to do its chore. There were no boards between the sheets at the time they started to curl but we will talk about that a little later.

The clubhouse downstairs only occupied an area behind the glass to the inner wall of what is now the men’s and ladies change rooms . You can understand the confusion when there was a change of draws at any one time. Curling actually did not begin at the curling club until the spring of 1958. That allowed our new members such as myself who had never curled before an opportunity to learn the game. In the fall of 1958 curling began as we know it with 100 men members. When additional new members wished to join the Club they were required to pay an initiation fee. The monies were pooled and at the end of the current curling year it was used to pay off the $100 bonds by lottery depending on the amount of the initiation fees collected. Eventually all the bonds were redeemed and at that time the initiation fee was dispensed with .

Some of the earlier curlers donated their bonds when their names were selected. These names are listed on the board next to the bar. All bond holders at that time were given a 10% reduction in curling fees. Our curling format at that time was no fixed rinks. They were all drawn. You can understand the dilemma of the draw committee who were probably more knowledgeable curlers in trying to bring together rinks in balance when 75% of the curlers had never curled before. At the end of each schedule rinks were redrawn and so it proceeded until such time as probably about maybe 10 years after when we got into the fixed mode.

The ladies joined the City View Curling Club not as members but as curlers almost like what we have as rentals today . They were not members of the City View Curling Club but we will talk about that later. Once the ladies began to curl in earnest, of course, we had to look at mixed curling and so there was a league set up for Saturday night mixed curling. Again the dilemma was that these were drawn rinks and difficult to get the draw and balance out the rinks. It was required on the Monday that the sheets go up and that you put your name down if you wished to curl on a Saturday night. It so happened it was so popular that if you name was not on the list by some 4 o’clock on Monday afternoon you did not get to curl that Saturday night!

Eventually we found that there was a problem with the ice particularly during the spring and there were times when you had to take almost some two (2) feet of negative ice in order to make a shot. Therefore it was decided that it would be a good idea to put down a concrete pad on top of the sand base. This did not really cure the problem. The Building Division of the National Research Council was brought in who at that time installed several thermocouples at different sites and at different depths and what was found was that in fact the ice machine in making the curling ice was putting frost into the ground and it was quite a large bowl effect. So they decided to adjust it and we should put down four inches of styrofoam on top of the concrete and then put the sand and pipes on top of the styrofoam. This technique in fact cured the warping as we did not have to stand on the sideboards calling for negative ice in order to make your shots! (ed note: read more about the wonky ice problem here)

At about that time boards were introduced between the sheets because you can imagine that with so-called curlers of a very novice nature, when shots that called for heavy takeouts, those rocks were wandering into every other sheet. That’s how the curling club began.

Some of the highlights that came into being was the expansion of the club house. It had been hoped that the clubhouse could go closer to Capilano. Unfortunately the bylaw prohibited the front to be any closer than it is now to Capilano.

One of the highlights was the burning of the original mortgage in 1982 with a very grandiose party held no less than at the Chateau Laurier complete with pipers and all of the good things that go into making a grandiose party. The week before that there had been a closing mixed bonspiel so that as many people who could be accommodated were and therefore the party at the Chateau Laurier was over-subscribed.

One of the things that is missing at the present time at the Club that we used to do in the past was to have an annual closing mixed bonspiel which lasted for one whole week. Following the conclusion of the mixed bonspiel we would have a large closing banquet. Because of the response the club could not in fact accommodate the people who wished to participate and so various halls around the west end were rented in order to accommodate this rather large and raucous party.

The ladies of the curling club used to have their own bonspiel during the daytime. At the end of their bonspiel and in the curling club itself upstairs they would put on a somewhat tremendous party. This you could only visualize because these girls had all kinds of energy. Remember they were only in their mid thirties and early forties at that time.

Another great event that occurred in the early seventies was the hosting of Governor General Roland Michener. At that time three of our members, Vic Prest, Doc Maclaver and Al Leach, wore the red jacket of the Governor General’s Curling Club. They were able to persuade the aide-de-camp that since we had three members on that curling rink that we should host the Governor General and lo and behold if that didn’t come about. Well you can see the dilemma as the RCMP became involved because they had to do a real good search to ensure that the Governor General was going to be in safe hands. Another thing as part of this particular event was that the ladies of the Club put on the dinner . It was a lunch time dinner and it was restricted to the attendees. In fact if memory serves me right there were only six of us who were on the board at the time who were part of the curling fraternity. The Governor General had as part of his rink - himself, his aide de camp, and two members from our board of directors, I believe it was the President and the Vice President who played with them - and I happened to be on the opposite rink. We only curled four ends and then it was into the clubhouse. Knowing that the Governor General was a good scotch drinker there was a bottle of scotch on his table and no one was allowed to touch it but him and he drank it neat, but I can’t recall whether he drank the whole bottle, but all in all it was a great show.

In the time of my Vice Presidency and Presidency the former President and I asked the question if something should happen to the club who would own the assets. And so at that point we decided that the best thing to do was to revise the constitution to in fact address that very point. In making this decision it wasn’t simply the fact that whoever is a member would get his fair share; so it was decided that the curlers who had done so much in the club, started the club, carried it through, should be given some preference over a person who had been there for one year. And so we introduced into the constitution what you now read as your point shares. At the same time the women were made full members. You recall that at that time prior to this they were only renting the club.

In today’s booklet of membership you will find the term social members. That is a misnomer. These people pay the full membership fee. Therefore they were supposed to be classified as non-curling members. Social members normally at one time would not have any say in the club but now you have the ladies who have full ability, in fact, we already have had a woman President

Another highlight in the Club in 1997 was the 40th anniversary of the club. I was instrumental in trying to persuade the Board that we have that 40th anniversary mainly because those of us who were, in fact, the initial members of the club were slowly diminishing in numbers. As a matter of fact at the 40th anniversary of the 100 curlers who began this club there were only eight (8) originals present. There is a picture on the wall next to the bar depicting these eight (8) individuals. At the present time as we curl in the year 2005 there are only four (4) of us who were original curlers. So hopefully those who are now beginning to think of a 50th anniversary let us only hope that those four (4) individuals will be able to attend.

Some other highlights include the obtaining of a liquor license when we first got the upstairs done. There was no license there at the time and you can imagine all of the drinking that was going on would have been looked down on in today’s legal aspects. So in order to sort of overcome some of this someone decided that we should recruit the Chief of Police for the Township of Nepean which we did and I am not even sure if we paid his curling fee. This we had hoped would give us a little bit of consideration by the constables when they see some cars weaving down from the curling club to the St. Claire area or the Meadowlands area at some two or three o’clock in the morning and it worked very effectively. There is a real story behind how we obtained that liquor license. I don’t have the full knowledge of that because I was not involved but if ever Jim Bryden is at the Friday luncheon ask him to describe to you the shenanigans that he went through with Jake Dunlap and Aubrey Moodie going to Toronto in trying to get that liquor license. It’s quite a story.

Well that's all I have to tell you at this time. I’m hoping that this little discussion will have some interest for you who are relatively new to the curling club. Good curling and gidday. I’m Carmine.