The Brier - History

History

In 1924, George J. Cameron, the president of W. L. Mackenzie and Company of the Macdonald Tobacoo Company pitched the idea of a national curling championship to Macdonald Tobacco and was accepted. However, at the time Canadian curling was divided between the use of granite and iron curling stones with the latter being used in Quebec and Eastern Ontario and the former being used everywhere else. The granite camp held the advantage, as Macdonald Tobacco President Walter Stewart brother, T. Howard Stewart (also of Macdonald Tobacco) supported the use of granites, and was able to influence the decision for the new national championship to use granite stones.

Before the creation of the Brier, Macdonald Tobacco would begin by sponsoring the 1925 Manitoba Bonspiel, the provincial championship. The winner of this tournament would be sent to Eastern Canada to compete in a number of exhibition games against local teams. In 1926, the winners of the Bonspiel were sent to play in the Quebec Bonspiel. This visit was deemed popular enough to spur on the idea of a national championship to be held the year following. The first Brier would be held at the Granite Club in Toronto. Eight teams would play in the first Brier, from across the country. One team would represent Western Canada, while one team would represent the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, while an additional entry was given to Northern Ontario and one each for the cities of Toronto and Montreal. Games in the 1927 Brier would last 14 ends in length, and each team would play all the other teams in a 7 game round robin with no playoffs unless there was a tie for first. The first winning team would be from Nova Scotia, a rink skipped by Murray Macneill. The other four curlers on the team - Al MacInnes, Cliff Torey and Jim Donahue - were normally skips in their own right - but were added to the Macneill rink because the rest of his normal team could not make the trip.

By 1928, games were shortened to 12 ends in length and each of the three prairie provinces would get their own separate entries, bringing the number of teams up to 10. In 1932, the separate entries for Montreal and Toronto would be removed, but Northern Ontario- which is not a province- kept its entry, and still remains the only non provincial or territorial entry to this day. In 1936, Prince Edward Island and British Columbia were given entries followed by Newfoundland (later Newfoundland and Labrador) in 1951. Finally, the Territories were given representation with a combined entry beginning in 1975. Two years later, in 1977, games were shortened to 10 ends, which is the current length for matches (there is a move to shorten games to 8 ends, much like they are in Grand Slam events). Up until 1973, games had to last the full 12 ends. After 1973, teams could concede defeat before the end of the match if they wished.

From its beginnings until 1940, the Brier would be played at the Granite Club in Toronto. After then, the event would travel around the country, and would be played in all 10 provinces. Also at this point, rocks were coloured differently for each team and were matched to be of equal size. Play was discontinued between 1943 and 1945 due to World War II. After World War II, the event became more of a popular sporting spectacle across the country thanks to Macdonald Tobacco enlisting media outlets to cover the event. In 1946, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation began covering the event live across the country on the radio. By the 1960s, the CBC began showing curling on television, at first giving daily half-hour reports. In 1962, the CBC showed the tie-breaking playoff match up. In 1973, they began regularly showing live coverage of the final draw of the event.

In 1977, Macdonald Tobacco announced it would no longer be sponsoring the Brier, and the 1979 Macdonald Brier would mark the final event to be sponsored by the event. A committee headed by the Canadian Curling Association was put in charge to find a new sponsor, which would end up being the Labatt Brewing Company. The event retained the "Brier" name, despite the word being the property of Macdonald Tobacco. However, with the sponsorship of the Labatt came some changes to the event, such as adding a new championship trophy and adding a TV-friendly playoff round after the round robin games. Labatt remained the title sponsor until 2001 when Nokia took over. That sponsorship only lasted four years before Tim Hortons took over. When the Labatt sponsorship ended, the original Brier trophy was brought back and the names of the winners during the Labatt era were engraved in it.

Beginning in the 1990s, curling became more profitable, and the event would mostly be held in larger curling friendly markets (such as Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Saskatoon). At the same time, the World Curling Tour made the sport more lucrative, and curlers demanded cash prizes at the Brier, and the ability to display their sponsors on their jerseys. The CCA ignored their demands, and when the Grand Slam curling series was instituted in 2001, many of the top teams in the country boycotted the Brier in favour of playing in the Slams. Curlers' demands were eventually met and the boycott ended in 2003. The dominant Brier team of the era, the "Ferbey four" did not boycott the Brier, and won four of five Briers during the era, while other top teams such as Kevin Martin's boycotted the event.