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Timmins history: The official opening of the Timmins Curling Club

As the sounds of last week’s U-18 national curling championship are lost in the rafters of the Mac, we wrap up our history feature on the first Timmins Curling Club.

Museum director-curator Karen Bachmann has already told us that the building is still standing, as the Cassidy Armoury.

“The club opens officially in December of 1924 with a wonderful bonspiel,” she continues. “They invite people from North Bay, from Iroquois Falls; South Porcupine already started their club, so they were also invited to come over and they had a great weekend, where they had a mini-bonspiel.”

Directors of the Hollinger Mine came up from Montreal for the event, as did members of that city’s Thistle Curling Club.  Bachmann figures the influence of the Timmins family was brought to bear on that.

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“The curling rink and the club continued right up until 1940. But during the Second World War, the curling rink itself was commandeered by the Department of National Defence, and it was taken over for war purposes to do some training and to do all of those wonderful things.”

Bachmann says DND held on to the building after the war, and curlers were absorbed by the McIntyre, Dome and South Porcupine clubs.

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