Cornwall Curling Club member Derek MacEwen was selected as a national finalist for Curling Canada’s Volunteer of the Year award for the 2017-2018 season. He was presented with a personalized Curling Canada jacket just prior to Cornwall’s Annual General Meeting on Friday evening. MacEwen was nominated by the Cornwall Curling Club, Curl PEI, and the PEI Curling Hall of Fame and Museum for the work he has done with each organization, beginning with creating the Cornwall Curling Club’s website in 1999, followed by the Curl PEI website and results system in 2001, as well as writing hundreds of curling news items and posting thousands of pictures to both sites to further the sport of curling on PEI. He was also an early leader in connecting these sports websites to new social media platforms. He has also been the media coordinator for the PEI Curling Hall of Fame and Museum since its inception in 2007, setting up their website, coordinating news releases, taking pictures, as well as building a multimedia presentation for their awards ceremony, and at the PEI Sports Hall of Fame during the Road to the Roar event in Summerside. At the Cornwall club he is the drawmaster for one evening, is a former Club President, and helps out at many events.
Photo (L-R) 2017-2018 Curl PEI Vice President Sandy Matheson, Jerry Muzika, President of the PEI Curling Hall of Fame and Museum, Curling Canada Volunteer of the Year finalist Derek MacEwen, and Gary O’Sullivan, president of the Cornwall Curling Club.
On hand for the presentation were 2017-2018 Curl PEI Vice President Sandy Matheson, Curl PEI Executive Director Amy Duncan, Jerry Muzika, President of the PEI Curling Hall of Fame and Museum, and Gary O’Sullivan, president of the Cornwall Curling Club.
The winning national award winner was Roger Smith from La Peche Quebec, who was honoured during an on-ice ceremony at the 2018 Tim Hortons Brier in Regina. Smith’s accomplishments included spearheading the drive to get a new curling facility built in the municipality of Chelsea.
Curling Canada’s 14 Member Associations submitted applications for the Curling Canada Volunteer of the Year Award, and it was narrowed down to seven finalists, including Smith and MacEwen.
The other National Finalists were as follows:
Guy Beaudry (Manitoba)
Milledge Sheridan (Nova Scotia)
Stephen Goulding (Newfoundland and Labrador)
Rose Tallevi (Ontario)
Randy Brown (Ontario).