The Canadian Firefighters Curling Championship will make one more effort to stage its 61st national event on P.E.I. after a frustrating two-year delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The championships, originally set for early spring 2020 in Charlottetown, are now scheduled for March 24-April 2, 2022, at the Montague Curling Club.

Peter MacDonald, left, and Winston Bryan, co-chairmen of the Canadian Firefighters Curling Championship, go over plans for the national event. The rescheduled championships are now set for March 24-April 2, 2022, in Montague. – Contributed

“It’s our fifth attempt to host this event. We’re confident we can hold a successful championship next spring,” says co-chairman Peter MacDonald. “If we can’t do it next March, then that will be it. We can’t go into 2023 against the Canada Winter Games on P.E.I.”

Co-chairman Winston Bryan said the move to Montague was necessary because of the lingering uncertainty surrounding the future of the Charlottetown Curling Club (CCC). The CCC didn’t open this season because of a major plant breakdown.

“It’s been a frustrating period,” said Bryan. “We were two weeks away from the start of the 2020 nationals when we were forced to postpone because of the pandemic shutdown.”

Organizers then hoped to hold the event in the fall, but those plans were scuttled with a second wave of COVID, as were attempts to hold it this spring. MacDonald said there were too many uncertainties for this coming fall, so a decision was made to stage the event in late March 2022 amid high hopes that vaccinations will finally help defeat COVID.

P.E.I. will hold provincial playdowns in January at the Silver Fox in Summerside to select its representative for the 2022 nationals. Skip Alan Brown from Charlottetown Station One had won the P.E.I. title in 2020.

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