Curling, since its early days, has been mostly a sport for those of northern European origin, due to its Scottish origin and the need for a sheet of ice. The Cornwall Curling Club is pleased to have partnered with the PEI Association for Newcomers to Canada to introduce the sport, which now has more participants in Canada than everywhere else in the world combined, to a whole new audience — newcomers to our country from places like China and South America. With the help of our great volunteers, we taught the basics of the sport to dozens of Newcomers, over three weeks in January, and an extra night in February, and all indications are that they really enjoyed it. Who knows – maybe next season we’ll see some of them back here as members!

We also received some ice rental income for the Club on our mostly unused Sunday evening timeslot. Thanks to the Newcomers association, and also to the funding assistance we received from the Sport Partnership and Engagement Program, a project of the Sport Participation Bilateral which is jointly funded by the Province of PEI (Department of Health and Wellness) and the Federal Government (Canadian Heritage – Sport Canada).

Of course, the biggest thanks must go to our many volunteer instructors, including Vernon Chowan, Paula Ling, Paul Arsenault, Paul Durant, Donald Weeks, Myron and Diane MacKay (who didn’t get to go on because we had more instructors than we needed that night, but we thank them anyway!), Frank Martin, Brent Irving, Angela Sanderson, Frank Weiler, Bryan Sutherland, Krista Affleck, Ankur Deshpande, Carlene Peters, Edgar Coffin, Paul Neima, Joe MacKinnon, and anyone I forgot, too!