Tough year for Canadian curling clubs

The good news for curling is new rinks are opening. The bad news is even more are closing.

Chilliwack, B.C., Berwick, N.S., Chelsea and Riviere-du-Loup, Que., have opened, or are about to open, new facilities for their local curling clubs this year.

Regina’s Tartan Club, Toronto’s Scarboro curling club, Winnipeg’s West Kildonan, and the Churchill Curling Club in Innisfil, Ont., have shuttered in the last two years.

Winnipeg’s Rossmere Curling Club announced in September operations are suspended for 2018-19 due to an expensive equipment failure. Toronto’s Weston club has also suspended curling operations for the season.

Reasons for closures are mostly financial, stemming from a combination of dropping memberships to aging icemaking equipment and buildings to high utility and insurance bills.

For curling facilities attached to golf clubs — a sport also struggling to attract memberships — curling can get sacrificed, as was the case with Scarboro.

According to the Toronto Star, golfing shareholders voted in favour of a public transit expansion that demolished the curling club.

Danny Lamoureux, Curling Canada’s director of championship services and curling club development, acknowledges the country is losing “too many” facilities.

Curling Canada is resurrecting the Curling Assistance Program (CAP) that operated between 1999 and 2016 in a different format.

CAP will provide loans towards capital projects at less than prime with a reasonable payback schedule, he explained.

Curling Canada plans to provide $125,000 in loans for each of the next four years for a total of $500,000, he said.