Yet another one of Canada’s fun winter pastimes is crokicurl. This game is a large scale hybrid of curling and the board game Crokinole.
Crokinole is part of many families so why not combine it with another popular winter sport, curling? The best part is any age can play.
The idea is to get as many rocks to the centre as possible, knocking out your opponent’s rocks with the end goal to score more points than the opposing team. In this case, instead of using curling rocks, coffee tins were filled with water, which makes them a little bit lighter than the standard rocks.
Bernard Steele and Richard Swallow of Windthorst decided to start building the outdoor Crokicurl rink between Christmas and New Year’s and finished it up just last weekend, despite the weather being a little bit too warm at times.
“I had seen it last year at Winnipeg at The Forks,” explains Steele, “and I said ‘Hey, why can’t we do this’ here in Windthorst.”
Swallow was definitely on board to go ahead and help build this for the community.
“Let’s get outside and have some fun,” says Steele.
“We found the instructions and the rules on the internet,” explains Steele, “and it went from there.”
It hasn’t been up and running for very long yet but there have been some people making use of it. There’s also a fire ring there for a bit of a warm up or if you’re just a spectator.
Communities from all around seem to be interested in this latest outdoor sport especially since the pandemic hit everyone hard this winter.
Talon Swallow gives a quick demonstration of how the game of Crokicurl is played while teammate Preston Jones watches and waits for his turn at throwing the rock. Photo by Laura Kish
