Women and a Fight to Join the Curling Clubs

How Curling Club Became

Have you ever joined a curling club? See today a curling club looks much different from a curling club of the past. Today when you join a curling club it means you are joining a location-based club. It means you are signing up to play once a week at the same place with the same people. Today curling clubs surround the idea of a building that has ice, a bar, seating areas, and locker rooms, among many other things. Truly the point I am trying to make is a modern curling club bases its identity in a building. Today when you tell someone you are going to the club, it means you are going to the building. However, looking at curling clubs’ histories, I can tell you this was not always the case. Using stories from some of the oldest curling clubs, there is a divergence between today’s meaning of the club and curling clubs of the past. These early curlers were not simply joining a building, but a group of similar-minded people.

The Montreal curling club is not only the oldest in all of Canada but the oldest active sporting club in all of North America. The thing is when you look at how this club started, you will notice that there was no building that the club curled in. The curling club began with about 20 merchants who had a passion for curling. The first official meeting of the curling club was in January 1807. The men of the brand-new Montreal Curling Club held their first meeting in Gillian’s Tavern and officially began the club. They met in the Tavern because curling was not something you did inside yet. These merchants were used to curling on the St Laurent River. This curling club did not move indoors until 1860, which is over 50 years after it was formed. This story tells us that in the early days of curling the game took place on rivers and lakes. How could a curling club refer to a building if there was not one?

The Fergus Curling Club is considered one of the oldest curling clubs in Ontario next to Kingston. they start very much the same as the Montreal Curling Club with no building to speak of. The Fergus Curling club realized that their local bodies of water were not creating enough ice in the winter, so they were one of the easiest to make a structure for curling. In the 1840s they constructed a dam to ensure some good ice for the curling season. Then they realized they need somewhere to store their stones away from their harsh winter conditions. In 1846 the Fergus Curling Club built a hut to keep their rock safe. They were able to accomplish this because of donated material from their member who was showing their love of the sport. After that was not enough, they made a covered facility in 1879. 

Putting a Stop to Women, A Man’s Game

When curling clubs developed in Canada. it meant one thing for women, a man’s club. If you were lucky there were rules against women entering or playing at curling clubs. Some clubs would not even mention it. a woman at all. Women stopped being allowed to curl because they were being prevented from joining a curling club. Curling clubs push women away from the sport. Before there were curling clubs, Canada was based on settler culture and women were more incorporated into daily life with all the work that need to be done. women work alongside men, so they curled alongside them two. There is no way of knowing the exact details of women curling this early on. There is evidence of women curling outside all bundled up in their many layers with their hats.

It was truly a turning point for women when clubs were invented, and the game slowly moved towards the indoors. There was then a door that could be closed in their face to prevent them from entering. They began to be regulated. Then when a woman was finally allowed access to indoor curling, they were still being controlled. They were forced to play only during certain inconvenient hours and locations. It was only near the end of the 20th century that it became more common for women to be presidents and managers alongside men.

Curling did develop to be considered a game for men. If you ever have the time and interest, a digital copy of the first-ever book on curling published in Canada is out there. It was written by James Bicket in 1840. It is called the Canadian Curlers Manual. This book holds information on things like the description of curling, terminology, the early history of curling, and the Toronto rules of curling. When looking at the rules section you will find that there is not too much detail in this section but it is an early rendition of the rules of the game. Now here is a quote from one of the rules written down because language is important.

“6^th- the player may sweep his own stone the whole length of the rink; his party not to sleep until it has passed the first hog score, in his adversaries not to sweep until it has passed the tee - the sweeping to be always two aside.” (Bicket, 21)

Even if this quote is not the best sentence ever written, it does use the word he or his a lot. The entire book never mentions women as if women do not exist. there are so signs of her or them. This is the earliest book published in Canada and clearly, the rules are referring to a man playing the game not a person but a man. You combine this with the fact that clubs put restrictions on women; it becomes quite clear that during the early periods of curling, women were not accepted in playing the game. It also does this in the section where it describes the player.

It is in the early days of curling that the game quickly becomes a man sport. women were put on the back burner and not let into the game until much later. I wish I could tell you that curling is an equal sport today, but I cannot. I grew up being told that women will never be as good at curling as men. I was told that women do not have the strength to throw multiple take-out shots. I saw that the only person who had ever come close to being able to compete with men is Rachel Holman and still she was seen as having never been able to beat a man. I participated in my fair share of four-person mix curling bonspiels and the thing I notice every time is the skip of the team was mostly men because they were the better curlers. I do not know what to tell you other than that from the start of curling to the end, the game is seen as a man's game.

Small Case Studies: Hercules Club and the Fergus Curling Club

Usually, what happened when women were starting to join curling clubs, they would form their separate sub-clubs. This sub-club would then need to join an already-established Men’s curling club. This was certainly the case for one of the first-ever women's curling clubs to officially start curling. It was in July of 1895 when the Royal Caledonian Curling Club or RCCC officially accepted the Hercules club into their organization. This club was made up of women whose club name suggests they were strong and mighty. This is how many women were able to join a curling club in the Victorian Era.

Speaking of the Fergus Curling Club, they were not a welcoming place for women. The Fergus Curling Club was a men-only membership until 1950. It was this year that the club finally agreed to change its rules surrounding women. However, there was still a clause when this change came into effect. To join the club, women needed to form their club and request permission to curl. This meant that it was not only until 1954 that women found themselves on the ice of the Fergus Curling Club. The last thing that was needed for women to curl there was a fee of $5 that would restrict them to use the club’s space two afternoons a week and on Friday nights.

 The Ladies’ Montreal Curling Club

At the 100th anniversary of the Montreal Curling Club, they created a book in their honour. In this book, they dedicated a few pages to the women’s section of the club. Here is a more personal story of how the club worked. In December 1894, what becomes the official Ladies’ Montreal Curling Club had their informal start. The book makes it very clear distinction that the ladies’ club is entirely separate from the Montreal Curling Club. As the book states, the club welcomed women into their organization and offered up some ice time with access to their indoor rooms for a fee of course. The club was started by Mrs. E. A. Whitehead, Jr., who was the first present of their self-governing body. The book does make a point to honour the women who started the club and those who participated claiming there were pioneers. It also suggested that curling was becoming more popular among women, as the Ladies’ club saw increasing numbers of members.

There is something else I would like to highlight about this section of the book. It is a fact that this club is referred to as a ladies’ club. See when looking at history it is more common to use ladies and gentlemen over men and women. Today, we say Men’s curling or women's curling. It is no longer referred to as ladies curling as it does for this book. The transition between ladies to women took much longer than that of gentlemen to men. Even today, it remains the Canadian Ladies Curling Association which never changed its name to women. This phrasing is regarded as outdated and something that should be changed.