CURLING ADVOCATE
Shirley Burch loved the sport
Shirley Burch was a keen member of Edmonton’s army of sports volunteers, the kind of person who routinely stepped up to make sure special events — big and small — ran smoothly in the city of champions.
She was most passionate about curling, logging thousands of hours in coaching, competition and fun on ice sheets across Edmonton. The old Balmoral Curling Club on the University of Alberta’s south campus served as her home base, but if there was a curling competition of note taking place in Edmonton, Burch loved to be there in some capacity.
She kept a close eye on many sports. She followed hockey, baseball and speed skating to name a few.
And the Edmonton Eskimos could count on Burch to cheer the team on from the season seats she shared with her husband of 55 years, Bill Burch. The couple attended several Grey Cups, both home and away, and she would sit with ease in a crowd of Stampeders fans at McMahon Stadium cheering on her beloved Esks, usually sporting her green and gold scarf or sweater.
But curling was the sport Burch both loved, and worked at. “Her eyes just lit up when we could get out on the ice,” said Joyce Bruyer, whose friendship with Burch spanned 56 years. “She was just that passionate about it.”
Burch died on Sept. 30 after a brief illness at the age of 79. She left her family and friends with memories of a welcoming hostess and gourmet cook who made entertaining seem easy, a great travelling companion and a patient coach who loved to introduce teenagers and adults to the finer points of curling.
“It was always fun with Shirley. She had this big throaty laugh and she liked to debate things,” said Pat Wintoniak, whose friendship with Burch started at the Balmoral Curling Club 50 years ago in a daytime women’s league. “A lot of times I think she was just pushing our buttons because she’d end up laughing.”
The Fort Saskatchewan-born Burch took up curling on a casual basis as a young woman working in Edmonton in the late 1950s. She worked as a flight attendant with Pacific Western Airlines and an X-ray technician before starting her family.
Burch met Bill at the Balmoral when she was there with friends watching a men’s league game. They married a year later in 1960. She remained active in the club as a mother, helping in so many roles over the decades that the Balmoral named her an honorary lifetime member.
“She was always one to volunteer to take new curlers, women who hadn’t curled before,” Bill said. "She just liked to help people to get better at it.”
Most of Burch’s curling was at the club level, though she did compete in some ladies and mixed events. Her family said she would likely list her part in the 1971-72 Northern Alberta Curling Association’s mixed championship team among her best personal curling moments. She played third in a rink skipped by Bob Hawkins, with Bill Brown and Myrna Hawkins for that event.
Burch preferred to play skip or third. And though she had a competitive streak, those who know her say it was the atmosphere and social opportunities that she valued. “It was a family and we just went out for the love of it,” Bruyer said. “Shirley had an extremely beautiful delivery and her love of the sport and her love of teenagers is what prompted her to take it to that one next level and become a coach.”
Coaching was a natural fit. As a Curl Canada coach, she worked in the 1980s with junior curlers in Edmonton, impressing friends with the enjoyment she got working with teenagers.
When Burch and her husband moved to St. John’s, Nfld., for a few years due to Bill’s work, she shared her love of curling at the Bally Haly country club and started a juniors program there. She was delighted years later during the 1999 Brier in Edmonton when a member of the Newfoundland team who she’d coached looked up into the audience, saw her in the stands, called out her name and waved to her.
“She was a super volunteer,” her daughter Jackie Gervais said. “She volunteered for Grey Cups, du Maurier Classics driving the lady golfers, Universiade, Commonwealth Games.”
The list goes on, and it is a long list once you start adding in multitude of curling events.
Though Bruyer stopped curling in her mid-60s, she continued to frequent Edmonton curling venues, joining Jackie and her team every Wednesday to watch their matches.
Above all, however, Burch’s main goal was to make sure people enjoyed their experiences.
“That’s what she wanted out of life, was for it to be fun,” Bruyer said.