Building bridges to a good time

Game brings romance, fun, friends to those who play it

For Roger Buckland and Huguette Joly, bridge is much more than just another card game.

The Shediac, New Brunswick, couple met while playing the complicated pastime and have spent much of their retirement years devoted to it.

“We independently took up playing bridge and we met playing bridge and this is what we do,” the 76-year-old Buckland explained while attending this weekend’s sectional bridge tournament at the Victoria Park Armories in Sydney, the first time in 21 years such an event has been held in this area.

“We play bridge in clubs and we really enjoy traveling through the Maritimes, playing the tournaments and the different provinces. We play a tournament a month approximately and we just enjoy the game and love the people we have met in the bridge circuit.”

Joly, 72, is also an enthusiastic player.

“Absolutely, we travel a lot because we are a couple — it’s easier for us and we really love the game,” she says. “It keeps the brain matter going.”

For Joe Aucoin, president of the Cape Breton Duplicate Bridge Club which is hosting this weekend’s event, keeping the mind active is one of the major benefits associated with it.

“It’s definitely a complicated game. It’s great for the mind because you have to think on so many levels,” says Aucoin.

“There’s a lot of thinking involved and strategy.”

Bridge is played with a standard deck of cards and involves two partnerships challenging each other. Duplicate bridge is a version of the game that removes the element of luck. With duplicate style, the focus is on players’ strategy because each partnership in the field plays the same cards.

The game is generally considered to be beneficial in countering the effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Although often associated with older players, the game has been becoming much more popular among younger players as well, says AuCoin. The age range at the Sydney tournament was 20 to 90.

Connie Bartlett, 66, of Moncton, New Brunswick, also travels through the region playing bridge. She believes it’s a great way to meet people and make friends.

“I love to play bridge and it’s a great reason to travel and meet people and challenge one’s little grey cells, to quote (Hercule) Poirot,” says Bartlett.

Bartlett travels around Canada and the U.S. with her friend, Jennifer Huntsman, 61, also from Moncton, playing at various bridge tournaments along the way.

Huntsman has played bridge most of her life. As a child, she played with her mother when she hosted bridge games in her home and when she grew older, she and a group of friends played regularly twice a month.

“It was the only thing that I can say that I did for me — every two weeks I’d play bridge with my friends,” recalls Huntsman. “Other than that I was a mother and a worker and a taxi driver. So now our children are grown up and we’re both retired and we play this very serious competitive bridge and we just love it. We travel all over and we go to big tournaments in the states sometimes and we’ve met so many people I could probably put a name on half the people in this room because we meet them at a tournament in Moncton or Halifax or St. John.

“It’s a really interesting world of people.”

And that world of people staying in hotels and eating at local restaurants will be helping the local economy, says Aucoin.

“Over the past two years we’ve been planning this event and I guess we got close to 40 tables today so it’s four each and that’s around 160 or so — it’s really good turnout,” says Aucoin. “It’s good for the economy, the restaurants and all that.”

Once the tournament ends Sunday, the professional players will keep moving around playing tournaments while the locals will keep playing at the Cape Breton Duplicate Bridge Club at 12 Cecilia LeVatte Cres., otherwise known as the chapel building at the old radar base.

According to Aucoin, there are games being played there three days a week and on other days in other Cape Breton communities as well.

“There’s bridge being played all over the island — New Waterford, Glace Bay — it’s definitely getting more popular.”

ELIZABETH PATTERSON/CAPE BRETON POST These four players from New Brunswick were on hand at the bridge tournament taking place in Sydney this weekend, including, from left, Roger Buckland, Shediac; Jennifer Huntsman, Moncton; Huguette Joly, Shediac; and Connie Bartlett, Moncton. Huntsman and Bartlett are longtime friends who enjoy going to bridge tournaments across the Maritimes while Buckland and Joly met and married each other while attending tournaments.

ELIZABETH PATTERSON/CAPE BRETON POST About 160 players from across North America are in Sydney this weekend to play duplicate bridge.

ELIZABETH PATTERSON/CAPE BRETON POST (ABOVE) Duplicate bridge players from all over North America are in Sydney this weekend to play in a sectional bridge tournament including these four from or with roots in Florida. From left, Chuck Bucknell, 20, from Naples, Florida and the youngest person in the tournament; Doug Walters from New Glasgow and Clearwater, Florida; Andrew Bucknell from Naples, Florida and father to Chuck Bucknell; and Doug Roberts, originally from Glace Bay but now from New Glasgow and Clearwater, Florida.

ELIZABETH PATTERSON/CAPE BRETON POST (LEFT) Joe Aucoin, president of the Cape Breton Duplicate Bridge Club, speaks to those attending a sectional tournament in Sydney on Friday.