On Monday morning Shawville stone mason Wade Ellison could be found rolling a massive ball of black yarn from one end of the town’s curling rink to the other, and then freezing it in place with a small spray bottle. With the help of Steve “Bubbah” Smith, an ice technician from Cornwall, he was setting the lines for the rink’s three sheets.
Ellison has spent many long hours at Shawville Curling Club over the past two weeks, shuffling back and forth across the rink as he gradually, meticulously, prepares it for the upcoming season.
Now in what he figures to be his eighth year as the club’s ice technician, Ellison knows it takes at least 50 layers of ice to make the rink.
“I don’t count. Once it’s ready, it’s ready,” Ellison said Monday morning at the rink.
This year, that process hit a rather expensive hiccup early on, when the refrigeration technician found the ice compressor to be broken.
“You can get them rebuilt but your money is just better spent if you buy a new one,” said Joey Hannaberry, last year’s club president.
Buying a new one is what the club decided to do, at a cost of about $20,000, a lot more than the average cost of repairs.
“I don’t think there’s too much cash in the bank account right now,” Hannaberry said, adding any savings the club would have made over the last couple of years will have gone towards the new part.
Thanks to the long hours Ellison has spent building the ice, the season’s start was only delayed by a week, and is now set to begin Nov. 11.
“We have a small community, and in small communities you need certain things to survive,” Ellison said, explaining what drives him to do the work, and quickly.
This is welcome news for the club’s board, which needs to make back the money for the expensive repair. And part of making back the money will depend on building up the club’s membership, which took a significant hit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We had 134 members the year of covid, and it was 93 members last year,” said longtime board member Roger Younge. “Ninety-three is pretty bad.”
At a board meeting last week, Younge put his name forward to be club president this year, which will be voted on at the club’s Nov. 8 annual general meeting.
“I decided I’d like to step up and do my part and take our club to the next level,” he said. “A lot of it is trying to get back to where we were pre-covid, so take it back to the level it used to be.”
The community’s aging demographic poses a challenge to this ambition, according to Hannaberry.
“As people get older and quit curling there’s no one really younger starting it. It’s definitely a bit of a problem,” he said.
Younge said the club’s efforts to bring in new people have included installing a golf simulator at the club, which so far this year has attracted a record 25 teams to play in a winter golf league.
“That’s kind of guaranteed money which we’re excited for since we have this unexpected bill we have to pay for.”
New this year, the club is offering sponsors a free entry to the community bonspiel, the late January tournament which opens the clubs doors to anybody who wants to try their hand and sliding a rock across the ice.
“A lot of it is just to get people in the door with the hopes they’ll keep coming back,” Younge said.
