I curled one winter when I was in high school in eastern Ontario – just enough to learn the bare basics. After I graduated from Engineering at McGill in 1968 I moved to Saskatchewan to work for the Department of Highways. As you could easily believe they took their curling seriously.
The department held a once a year bonspiel, where the staff from the five regions and head office played. It was called the” piss-pot “ bonspiel and it was aptly named as the trophy was a urinal!
So one cold Saturday morning at 5 am we all (some 25- 30 people) got on the bus (loaded with cases of beer) in North Battleford to go the spiel in Prince Albert – some couple of hours away.
So we hit the ice at 9 am in a rather merry fashion after drinking beer on the bus on the way over. As I was not a curler I was the lead on one of our teams.
Our first game was against the Deputy Minister of Highways. All went fairly well and the game was close and the rocks were going to have to be measured to see who won. On our last rock I slipped and fell and cleaned out the house. Was the Deputy Minister ever mad!!!—“ You bunch of drunks etc …”
I often wonder why I was assigned to a project in the far north of Saskatchewan the following summer – maybe he did remember my name!