IRON CURLING

While granite stones are the traditional implements of use in curling games around the world, it hasn’t always been that way.

From 1807 until the early 1920s in Quebec and the Ottawa Valley, curling “irons” were the choice—markers made of metal that weighed up to 80 pounds. According to the book Sports and Games in Canadian Life, 1700 to the Present, Maxwell L. Howell and Nancy Howell suggest that the first of these irons were derived from the metal-rimmed hubcaps of gun carriages. Handles were inserted into these to turn them into curling “stones.”

It was only in this area that irons were used, and one of the reasons they disappeared was a financial gesture of the Macdonald Tobacco Company. It wanted to start a national curling championship and needed Quebec curlers to participate. To entice them, the tobacco company spent thousands of dollars to buy granite stones for many curling clubs in Quebec, easing the transition to the rock era.