The floors creak, the fireplaces have seen better days and the draftiness makes the ice difficult to maintain. But there’s something very charming about the Ottawa Curling Club.
The façade of the building is covered in signs that proudly boast to the world that it is home to famous championship curlers such as Craig Savill, Jean-Michel Menard and many others. The Ottawa Curling Club certainly has reason to boast.
The walls are lined with so many championship banners that there’s no space for the newest banner that belongs to the recent Ontario champions, led by skip Rachel Homan.
The walls of the entry way are filled with portraits of all the past presidents, the largest portrait belonging to founder, Col. Allan Gilmour. It was Gilmour and 14 other members who started Ottawa’s very first curling club on the Rideau Canal about 160 years ago. Before its name change to the Ottawa Curling Club in 1855, it was known as the Bytown Curling Club.
O’Connor Street hasn’t always been the home of the club. In 1858, it moved to its first indoor location, a shed on Lisgar Street that was equipped with a single sheet of ice and maintained with water hauled from the canal.
The club’s earlier years saw it move four more times from building to building all over the Centretown area.
Gilmour and his nephews, the Manuels, were responsible for donating three sites to the club. Finally, in 1916 the Ottawa Curling Club found its home for the past 95 years at 440 O’Connor St.