Accessible curling at unique Peterborough bonspiel
Sticks, Stones and Wheels bonspiel helps prepare club to host the 2022 provincial championship
The second annual Sticks, Stones and Wheels bonspiel was held at the Peterborough Curling Club on Saturday and Sunday.
It’s one of the few wheelchair bonspiels to be held in Ontario.
Wheelchair teams from Ottawa, Toronto, Ilderton and Peterborough competed in a three-game round-robin, then played in the finals to determine the gold, silver and bronze medallists.
Team Armstrong — Jim Armstrong, Collinda Joseph, Jon Thurston and Reid Mulligan — took home the gold medal. Team Armstrong was the reigning champions. Team Rees — Chris Rees, Shauna Petrie, Sarah Benevides, Wayne MacDonald — from Toronto won the silver medal.
The team from Ilderton, skipped by Tony Reynen, placed third.
The second on Team Armstrong, Jon Thurston, who lives in Dunsford and curls at the Peterborough Curling Club, just returned from Lohja, Finland and the B-Event World Wheelchair Curling qualifier.
Thurston threw fourth stones for Team Canada, and helped Canada win the qualifier and guarantee Canada a spot in the 2020 world wheelchair curling championship being held in Wetzikon, Switzerland from Feb. 29 to March 7.
Of the 280 or so curling clubs in Ontario, only about 15 clubs are capable of holding a wheelchair curling event.
The idea to hold a wheelchair bonspiel came about after the Peterborough Curling Club was awarded the 2022 Ontario Provincial Wheelchair Curling Championship.
Hosting a wheelchair curling bonspiel requires enough onice volunteers (two per curling sheet) to assist the curlers with moving the stones into position for delivery and also to catch stones if they roll out of play.