Canada Curling Stone Company Is In The House
by Liz McGeachy
Photos Supplied Courtesy Robert Wilson and Canada Curling Stone Co.
THIRTY years ago, curling had a reputation as “ice shuffleboard” among the winter-sports enthusiasts who had even heard of it. But that all changed when curling became an Olympic sport in 1998 and the whole world watched players sliding stones across the ice toward a target while teammates brushed the ice with brooms to alter the stone’s progression.
That change was a boon for Fred Veale, president and owner of Canada Curling Stone Co. in Komoka, Ontario. It’s a small company–only seven employees–but when a curling club wants to buy new curling stones, Canada Curling Stone is one of only two companies in the world where it can get them.
“Thirty years ago, curling was seen as an old man’s sport. The Olympics changed all that,” said Veale. “This is a very niche market, but the different twist of our product has kept us going in an otherwise slow economy. It’s a unique product with limited availability.”
Curling stones are unique in that how they look isn’t as important as the pounding they can take. They’re also made to last. If a stone is made well and maintained, it can last forty to sixty years.
“These stones are not particularly pretty; they’re pretty blah. But they need to be able to pound each other,” Veale said.
For those who aren’t familiar with how curling is played, here’s a brief description: Players on teams of four take turns shooting or sliding a 40-pound curling stone down a 146-foot sheet of ice, helped by two other teammates who use brooms to sweep the ice and control the distance and direction of the stone. The goal is to get the stone close to the center of a target (or “house”) and to knock the opponents’ stones out of the target area. There are usually eight ends, or innings, during which each player on a team shoots two stones. The stones closest to the center of the target get the most points, and the team with the most points at the end of the game wins. The term “curling” comes from the curved path of a stone as it travels down the sheet of ice.
Curling in some form or another is probably one of the world’s oldest team sports, since all it really requires is ice and stones. A form of curling is depicted in Northern European artwork from as early as the 16th century when it was played on frozen lochs and ponds. Most people believe it originated in Scotland in the 1500s, and the first formal curling clubs were organized there in the 19th century. When the Scots settled in other cold-climate countries, they took curling with them.
It’s hard to estimate how many people participate in curling teams today, but certainly the number took off after curling became an Olympic sport. The World Curling Federation has more than a million registered players, and more than 15,000 curlers participate in clubs with the Canada Curling Association. That’s a lot of stones knocking up against each other, which is good business for Veale.
Veale got interested in curling when he was co-owner of Ice King Scrapers in the 1980s and went to a lot of curling tournaments. He started working with curling stones in the early 1990s, at first reconditioning many of the stones that had been manufactured thirty years earlier. Then he became friends with the owner of Trefor Quarry in Wales, one of only two main sources of the type of unique stone needed for curling stones, the other being the Scottish island of Ailsa Craig. Once Veale had a source of the raw granite, he began manufacturing new curling stones.
“Pros prefer a Trefor granite stone,” Veale said, because it is tough, dense, resilient, and non-absorbent. This type of stone is not technically granite, Veale said, because it is so fine-grained and has no quartz in it, making it able to take three times the impact of traditional granite.
The process of making a curling stones starts at the Welsh quarry, where large chunks of stone weighing several tons are selected and excavated by machine, not explosives. These stones are then cut into 5 1/2-inch thick cylinders and the rough corners rounded off. Then the cylinders are shipped over to Canada.
At the warehouse at Canada Curling Stone Co., a hole is drilled for attaching the handle and a diamond-cutter machine carves the stone into the shape of the curling stone. It’s buffed and polished for a smooth surface. Then they blast the sides with tiny glass beads to pit this part of the stone to better distribute impact force. This helps keep the stone from chipping when it hits other stones. The stone gets a final polishing with sandpaper to give it more traction on the ice. Finally, the handle is added.
Canada Curling Stone has had to develop its own machinery for this special product.
“Because of the uniqueness of it, there’s not a machine built just for this,” Veale said. “We customize our own tools.” Computerized machinery may be coming soon for this business, he said, but they are not there yet. They also manufacture scrapers and blades and other ice equipment at their facility.
Since curling season runs roughly from September to April, this is when they focus on new stones. During the off-season they refurbish the old ones, giving them several more decades of play. Veale said they sell approximately 2000 new stones per season and refurbish another 3000 to 4000 each year.
“The Canada Curling Association has said that they think their association has about a million stones in play. We’ve refurbished 40,000 so far, so we’re not quite halfway there,” he said.
That’s good news for Veale and for his daughter, Kim, who is in charge of sales and marketing at Canada Curling Stone and will likely take over the business some day. Curling clubs are continuing to spring up from Europe to China, and there are wheelchair clubs, opportunities for children to play, and plenty of clubs for people who just want to enjoy the sport. Veale is one of those social curlers, while his daughter is a competitive curler.
“It’s one of the few sports you can start at any point – even well into your 50s and 60s and still excel,” Veale said. “Even if you have bad hips and knees you can do it.”
Find out more about Canada Curling Stone Co. at www.canadacurlingstone.on.ca. There’s also a video of how curling stones are made as part of the “How It’s Made” series on YouTube.
For more information on curling in the U.S.A. visit the United States Curling Association at http://www.usacurl.org