The Canadian team has been chosen to tour Scotland from January 10 to February 3, 2018 for the Strathcona Cup men’s tour, and it includes three Islanders- George Koke from the Montague Curling Club, Bill Jenkins, now living in St. John’s NL, and curling out of the Bally Hally club, and Bob MacWilliams, a long-time member of the Cornwall Curling Club, who moved to Sackville New Brunswick last season, and is representing both the Sackville and Cornwall curling clubs. Koke is a former president of Curl PEI, while Jenkins skipped his PEI team to victory at the 1977 World Junior Curling Championship. MacWilliams is a former PEI Masters and Senior Mixed champ.
The Strathcona Cup competition, which has been going for 115 years, is the oldest international curling competition in the world. It is contested every fifth year between Canada and Scotland with each country acting as host every tenth year. The 2018 competition will see 40 Canadians arriving in Scotland on January 10th for 23 days of competition, returning home on February 3rd. The competition, which has a packed itinerary of social events and dinners as well as the curling competition, is run under the auspices of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club (RCCC), and Curling Canada. The Tour was last in Canada in 2013, and visited a number of PEI Curling Clubs. A full report on their visit to the Cornwall Curling Club may be found at https://peicurling.com/2013/01/20/cornwall-curling-club-hosts-the-scots/
The two countries compete for the Strathcona Cup, commissioned by Sir Donald Smith, 1st Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, a Scotsman who made his fortune in Canada. You may know him as the person in that famous picture driving the “last spike”of the transcontinental railway at Craigellachie, B.C. on November 7th, 1885. The Cup has scenes etched onto it from both Canada and Scotland.
Photo: Strathcona Cup
You can follow the Tour, including results and daily journals of their progress, at http://strathconacup100.ca/2018_TOUR/index2018.html