The 2022 Everest Canadian Curling Club Championships get underway Sunday at the Ice Palace in West Edmonton Mall, bringing together the country’s top men’s and women’s club curling teams.
Nestled into North America’s largest shopping mall for a week-long curling competition, the 2022 Everest Canadian Curling Club Championships promise to be an event like no other. The winners will be crowned national champions and receive an invitation to compete at the 2023 PointsBet Invitational (date and location to be announced by Curling Canada).
This year’s competition is chock full of talent from all levels of the game, from national juniors to international competition, along with some returning club-level teams with hopes of improving on previous podium results.
On the women’s side, Quebec’s Isabelle Néron is back at the event after earning a bronze medal at the 2019 championships. The 2013 Canadian mixed doubles curling champion is bringing back the same lineup from the Chicoutimi Curling Club in pursuit of a gold medal in the team’s second appearance at the event.
Néron will not be the only competitor at the event to have represented Canada at a world championship in the women’s competition. Ontario’s second, Lauren Harrison, won Canada’s gold medal at the 2018 World Mixed Curling Championship playing lead for Team Mike Anderson. Chrissy Cadorin of the Thornhill Club skips Harrison’s team in Edmonton.
Siblings Veronica and Sabrina Smith return to the ice at a national championship next week. The sisters, from the Summerside Curling Club, represented Prince Edward Island at the 2013, ’14 and ’15 Canadian junior championships.
Also in the field is three-time Scotties participant Meredith Harrison of Nova Scotia. Harrison represented the Bluenosers at the 2002, ’04 and ’07 Canadian women’s championships, and she will lead a team in Edmonton from the Bluenose Curling Club in New Glasgow.
On the men’s side, two teams from the podium in 2019 return for the 2022 rendition.
Quebec’s Team Jasmin Gibeau of the Buckingham Curling Club in Gatineau returns to the event after earning silver in 2019.
Northern Ontario’s team, led by skip Ben Mikkelsen of the Port Arthur Curling Club in Thunder Bay, also aims to improve its bronze-medal finish at the same event in 2019. Mikkelsen was a bronze-medallist at the 2001 Canadian Junior Men’s Championship, throwing third rocks for Brian Adams’s Northern Ontario team.
However, there’s plenty of competition to wade through to win the event on the men’s side, including a handful of Tim Hortons Brier competitors.
New Brunswick’s Jeff Lacey has competed at four Canadian men’s championships, including winning bronze in 1997 with James Grattan, and he’s bringing six-time Tim Hortons Brier competitor Peter Case into the mix as the team’s second. Lacey, of the Thistle-St. Andrews Club in Saint John, is hoping to improve on his playoff appearance at the club championships in 2019.
A skip with Tim Hortons Brier experience is representing Ontario. Greg Balsdon returns to a national championship after playing for the province in 2014 at the national men’s championship. Balsdon, also the 2013 Canadian mixed curling champion, leads a team from the Richmond Hill Curling Club.
There’s one other curler with international curling experience competing at the event. Yukon third Peter Andersen has competed at the 2019 World Mixed and Mixed Doubles Curling Championships and the 2019 World Mixed Doubles Qualification Event representing Kosovo. Andersen has been a key individual in developing the sport in the country after living there for more than two years.
The annual fundraising challenge to benefit youth curling across Canada will once again be a part of the 2022 Everest Canadian Curling Club Championships. Teams will be involved in fundraising, and the teams that raise the most money for junior curling will earn up to a $2,100 grant for their home clubs.
New this year is an online auction including unique items from across Canada being contributed by the participating teams that will run from Tuesday until next Friday during the event.
At the most recent Everest Canadian Curling Club Championships in Ottawa, teams from Northern Ontario (Team Tracey Larocque from the Fort William Curling Club in Thunder Bay) and Nova Scotia (Team Nicholas Deagle of the Bridgewater Curling Club) won gold and earned invitations to the 2022 PointsBet Invitational in September.
The Canadian Curling Club Championships began in 2009 in Toronto. Since then, Alberta and Ontario have each won the men’s title three times, while B.C. and Saskatchewan have each claimed two titles and Newfoundland & Labrador and Nova Scotia each have one.
On the women’s side, Manitoba leads the way with four championships, followed by Ontario and Alberta with three apiece, and Prince Edward Island and Northern Ontario with single championships.
Fourteen men’s teams and 13 women’s teams (Nunavut is not sending a women’s team) are slated to compete. The men’s field is divided into two pools of seven teams and the women’s will have one pool of seven and one pool of six. After the round robin, the top three teams in each pool will make a modified double-knockout playoffs, which begin Friday, Nov. 25, and conclude with the gold- and bronze-medal games on Saturday, Nov. 26.
On the final day between the semifinals and medal games, a variety of curling disciplines will be on display to mall-goers, including stick curling and wheelchair curling. Learn to curl opportunities will also be available for those passing by through opportunities with Curling Alberta.
Games from the 2022 Everest Canadian Curling Club Championships will be live-streamed on Curling Canada’s YouTube channel and features commentary from world men’s champion Randy Ferbey, world women’s champion and Olympic gold-medallist Jennifer Jones and Olympic silver-medallist Cheryl Bernard. The event will also be streamed on the TSN app. For the up-to-date broadcast schedule, click here.
Scores and standings from the event will be available at by clicking here.
For draw times, team lineups and other event info, click here.
