Banff Curling Club offers an inclusive, accessible and safe environment to learn a new sport and meet people from near and far. We are nestled in the heart of Banff National Park, Treaty 7 Territory, and are proud hosts of weekly leagues, public programs, bonspiels and world-class events.
We cannot speak about the Banff Curling Club without acknowledging the land upom which it sits, and the people that came before it. Banff Curling Club is nestled in the heart of the Rocky Mountains in Canada's first National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site. From the Club you can see many mountains including one of Banff's landmarks: Sleeping Buffalo Mountain, contemporarily known as Tunnel Mountain. Prior to the arrival of European settlers and for more than 10,000 years, Indigenous peoples used this land and nearby river for travel, hunting and fishing. This Bow River spans from Bow Glacier all the way down to Calgary which is now referred to as the Bow Valley, and as of 1877 is within Treaty 7 Territory. This is the traditional land of the Region 3 Metis Nation, the Blackfoot Confederacy - including the Siksika (sik-see-gaa), Kainai (gaa-naw) and the Piikani (bee-gaa-nee) nations, the Tsuut'ina (sue-tsee-naw) First Nations, and the Iyahe (eey-ah-ee) Nakoda Nations of Chiniki, Goodstoney and Bearspaw.
We at the Banff Curling Club are ever grateful, honored and privileged to live, work and curl on this traditional land. We wish to offer our deepest respect to our Indigenous community members and neighbours by acknowledging this sacred land and the struggles that Indigenous people have, and continue to face; past and present. We invite all attendees of the Banff Curling Club to reflect on our collective Canadian history; to learn and to pay respect to this land and the people who first called it home. If you wish to learn more about Banff, its history and its people, please visit banff.ca.
Now onto a little curling history. It is believed that curling was invented in as early as the first part of the 16th century in Scotland – the first written reference to a challenge of throwing three rocks on ice was in 1540. Curling was first played in 1789 by a Scottish regiment stationed in this country. Clubs were established in eastern Canada in 1820 and moved west with the railroad in the late 19th century. The first winter Olympic Games in 1924 had curling as a demonstration sport – it wasn’t added to the competition until the 1998 Nagano Games. The Brier was established in 1927.
According to Canada Curls – An Illustrated History of Curling in Canada by Doug Maxwell, curling formally arrived in Banff in 1889, as well as in Macleod and Anthracite, and preceded by clubs formed in Lethbridge (1887), Calgary (1888) and Edmonton (1888). (The first curling club in the west was Winnipeg in 1876. Prince Albert, Rosthern and Battleford were the first clubs in Saskatchewan, formed in 1879.)
The Banff Curling Club moved indoors to a facility on the present location in 1960 and upgraded several times. The Fenlands replaced this facility and opened November 1, 2010. The Banff Curling Club now boasts a spacious lounge with ample seating, and a beautifully architectured rink complete with a TV monitor system so that audience members don’t miss a shot! We have upgraded our technology to include live streaming, which we use to feature some of our world-class events like the Qualico Mixed Doubles Classic!
