Despite several unforeseen expenses in recent years, the Shawville Curling Club executive expressed positivity for the club’s future at its 2025 annual general meeting on Friday evening.
Treasurer Andrew Rowat outlined some of those expenses, including a $29,000 compressor replacement last season and a chiller replacement in 2022 that cost over $40,000.
“Overall, the club is generating money [ . . . ] but the reality of the financial statement is that the curling operations are not meeting the costs,” Rowat said.
President Roger Younge said the club’s membership has also dropped since the COVID-19 pandemic, from 137 in 2019 to less than 100 the year after. While numbers have been slowly climbing back up, the club’s membership last year sat at 101.
The club has since pivoted to additional sources of revenue, acquiring a golf simulator in the basement with help from then-president Jeff Russell who worked with the MRC Pontiac to secure a grant.
“The golf simulator has been generating enough money over time to offset these hopefully rare capital expenses,” Rowat said.
Younge said a priority for the club will be to find and recruit new members across all age groups.
In that vein, the club will play host to a regional tournament on Jan. 17 for junior teams from across the Outaouais, with the winner advancing to the Quebec Games.
“We hope that it also encourages some more local kids to take up the sport [ . . . ] and knowing that they get a chance to go to the Quebec games, it’s a great opportunity,” Younge said, encouraging any young people to come out and give curling a try.
He said the club is always trying to find ways to attract new members from all age groups, including people from outside the immediate Shawville radius.
“Pontiac-wide, we’d love to see more people coming from that way,” he said, adding that the club attracted 30 new members last season and 10 already this year.
The club will be hosting a learn to curl event on Nov. 8 starting at 10 a.m. to try and bring people in for free and without any commitment to joining the club.
“We want to make sure that people that are wondering, ‘Gee, maybe I might curl this year,’ we want to do enough stuff early on to make them feel comfortable.”
Younge said the membership rate for new curlers at $275 and youth at $150 will remain the same, while full memberships will increase by $25 this year, up to $425.
“We don’t want to raise it so much that we turn members away, but we need to accept the fact that on the curling side, whatever we’re charging is not enough to break even.”
Overall, he said he and the executive remain optimistic going into the year, with equipment functioning as it should.
“Despite the fact that we had a pretty big deficit last year, it’s a success that we were actually able to pay an unforeseen $27,000 bill that came kind of out of left field.”
Younge said the club remains one of the cheapest places to curl in the Ottawa Valley.
“It’s cheaper than other clubs, and many of those other clubs make you pay more based on how many draws you want to go in. For us, you pay the one [fee] and you can play as many times as you want.”
Board members for 2025-26 will be Roger Younge (president), Gerry Ireland (vice-president), Andrew Rowat (treasurer), Caleb Nickerson (secretary) as well as directors Amanda McLachlin, Eric Smith, Jocelyn Pachal, Dalton Cluff, Jeff Russell, Keri Beck, Trevor Tanguay, Joey Hannaberry, and McKenna Richardson.
When the club’s official business wrapped up for the night, many stragglers hung back to watch the club’s big-screen TV as the Toronto Blue Jays took on the Seattle Mariners in the first game of the 2025 World Series.
