MORRIS — Robert Campbell won that day. Won it all, in fact.
But it is Jeff Stoughton who has done all the winning in the two decades since.
And so even as the Prince Edward Island skip returns this week to the scene of his greatest curling triumph, Campbell’s memory of that win in Brandon over Stoughton in the final of the 1989 Canadian Mixed Curling Championship has a bittersweet tinge to it.
Not, mind you, because of anything that happened that day at the Keystone Centre; rather, it’s everything that has happened in the lives of the two men since.
“I would gladly trade places with Jeff,” Campbell said here this week at the 2011 Mixed, “if Jeff would be willing.”
Campbell was just 22 that day in 1989 when he faced Stoughton, the defending Canadian Mixed champion that year, in the final.
Stoughton was 25 at the time and had the edge on Campbell in terms of experience. But the Charlottetown skip was hardly a green rookie. While he hailed from a tiny province with a thin curling history, Campbell brought big-game experience to that showdown with Stoughton. Four years earlier, Campbell had lost a Canadian Juniors final to some skip from Alberta named Kevin Martin.