Murray Wood: Who's hot and who's not
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look at the big news stories and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week's list ...
When it came to which city would host the 2024 Brier, Curling Canada decided one bid stood out over the rest.
The organization on Tuesday announced the 2024 Brier will be held March 1-10 at Regina’s Brandt Centre.
“We were just looking for the best possible bid and Regina put in the best possible bid, so it was an easy decision from our standpoint,” Curling Canada’s Al Cameron said following the announcement at Mosaic Stadium. “You’ve got a great facility, the city stepped up and the Province of Saskatchewan were huge supporters.
Curling Canada’s Al Cameron announces the 2024 Brier will be held in Regina. (Britton Gray/980 CJME)
“You’ve got the arena, which is a great facility to work with, and great hotel space in this city.”
It’s the first time since 2018 that the Canadian men’s curling championship will be contested in the Queen City.
“We are tremendously excited. Coming out of COVID, we want to have and host sporting events in Regina,” said Bernadette McIntyre, who was the chair of the Curl Regina bid committee.
One of the major selling points Regina has compared to other cities is the ability to host the curling as well as the Brier Patch on the same property.
“It’s so convenient for hosting and being able to have an inside festival atmosphere around the event. The interconnectivity is such a huge asset in Regina,” McIntyre said. “People really appreciate that, especially if it’s a little cooler than we like it.”
The economic impact of the event has led to more support being thrown behind bids.
“This is one of the things I’ve seen evolve over my 25 years of doing this,” McIntyre said. “We used to really do this somewhat on our own as Curl Regina and CurlSask. Now we have all the wonderful support from Tourism Saskatchewan, Tourism Regina, REAL and we have a whole team and they put together such a professional bid.
“They realize what the economic impact is. It’s probably conservatively between $10 (million) and $12 million but as you heard from Curling Canada, in Lethbridge (in 2022) it was $16 million.”
The winner of the 2024 Brier will represent Canada at the world men’s curling championship, March 30 to April 7 in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. The Canadian champions then will return to defend their title as Team Canada at the 2025 Brier.
One man who knows what it’s like to win the Brier as Team Saskatchewan is Jim Wilson. He was the lead on the Rick Folk rink that won the Brier in 1980 and then won the world championship that year.
“Any Brier that you play in is amazing, no matter where you play it. It’s great to win your province first of all and then to come to a Brier with so many fans like Regina will have, it’s simply amazing,” Wilson said.
As the CurlSask president, Wilson hopes it could have a ripple effect on clubs in the province.
“Every time that you have a Brier, you have membership of clubs — juniors, everything — just jump up. People want to play the game and get back into it,” Wilson said. “After having two years off (due to COVID), we definitely need that at this point in time.”
Ticket and volunteer information will be released in early 2023.
Earlier this year, Regina city council voted in favour of providing more funding for a bid to host the 2024 Brier.
On Monday, Regina Exhibition Association Limited CEO Tim Reid said REAL District will be ready to stage the championship.
“We’ve proven how great events are in Regina,” Reid said. “Most people probably don’t realize the tourism industry in the city of Regina creates more than 8,000 jobs that impact more than 350 businesses that call Regina home. It fills restaurants, it fill hotels, it fills bars, and helps our airports. It brings new money to our community.”
