Nova Scotia·NewThe old Mayflower Curling Club building on Monaghan Drive was torn down Friday after serving as the club’s home since 1962.‘Every time you walked in the door, you felt welcome,’ says executive director of curling associationListen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.The Mayflower Curling Club’s old building on Monaghan Drive in west-end Halifax was torn down on Friday. (Patrick Callaghan/CBC)Dan Baldwin remembers the first time he glided a stone down the ice at the Mayflower Curling Club. “I was in high school. I had three friends that were curlers and they were looking for a fourth so that we could have a high school team,” he recalled Monday. Baldwin didn’t know much about curling in 1990 but he enjoyed his first game enough that it sparked his lifelong involvement in the sport. Three decades later, he’s the executive director of the Nova Scotia Curling Association.The Mayflower’s old building on Monaghan Drive in west-end Halifax was torn down Friday following the club’s recent move to a new $22-million facility in Timberlea. But the building, which had served as the club’s home since 1962 and hosted numerous major events and a list of legendary curlers, leaves behind fond memories and the promise of new ones.Baldwin said he’s confident Mayflower’s new location will share the same energy, since it was always the people that made the curling rink special. “Every time you walked in the door, you felt welcome,” he said. “You ran into people you knew that love the sport.”The club recently moved from its Monaghan Drive location in Halifax to a new spot in Timberlea on the outskirts of the city. (CBC)The original Mayflower club was founded in 1905 in downtown Halifax but was destroyed in the Halifax Explosion in 1917.In that short time, the club had already established itself as a community hub, even serving as a temporary morgue for Titanic victims in 1912. The rink was rebuilt on Agricola Street, but the club later moved to Monaghan Drive, where it stayed for more than 60 years. The Mayflower Curling Club on Monaghan Drive hosted a number of major curling events, including the 1985 Nova Scotia mixed championship. (Doug Sanders/CBC)Michael Christie, a former president of the club, was 10 years old when he joined Mayflower at that location nearly a half-century ago. He recalled a number of amusing anecdotes about the Monaghan Drive rink, particularly one about a game he felt he had in the bag but ended up losing — to a future curling star. “We played some younger guys and we just assumed we were going to win because we were older, were probably a foot taller at that time,” said Christie. “My gosh, we got into the game and they started making more shots than us.”One of those younger kids turned out to be Paul Flemming, who went on to play in his first national championship in 1987 and a year ago won the 2024 world senior curling title.Christie said in hindsight, it’s no surprise he lost the game.Flemming’s name was one of many that came to mind as Christie recalled some of the sport’s elite that competed on the old Mayflower building’s ice, including Colleen Jones, Heather Smith, Shawn Adams and Brad Gushue. A look into the futureOver the years, Christie said it had become harder to maintain the ice in the Monaghan Drive building, which made the club less competitive in relation to other facilities in the city.That challenge and the growing interest in curling pushed them to change locations, he said. The new building, which opened just in time for the 2025-26 season, can accommodate 800 to 900 members, up from the roughly 600 at the old location, he said. “Right now, we’re sitting at approximately 740 and growing. We’ve got so much interest. We’ve got lots of new members.”Baldwin said it was the right time for the transition. “I would suspect most people are excited with the opportunity of the new club and appreciate what the location was,” he said. “We have to recognize that curling clubs are businesses as well, right? So they need to grow and develop along with their community.”Christie’s daughter also curls and used to play at the old facility before it was torn down. (Michael Christie)Both Christie and Baldwin say the new building is an opportunity to train future generations. They have kids who went on to get involved in curling at the Mayflower club just as they did, so they’ve seen first-hand its intergenerational impact. “My daughter curled, I coached her,” said Christie. “And so we supported her over the years and we’ve met all kinds of wonderful people.”MORE TOP STORIESABOUT THE AUTHORGiuliana is a journalist originally from Lima, Peru. She is interested in stories about rural Nova Scotia, science, the environment and more. If you have any story tips, you can reach her at giuliana.grillo.de.lambarri@cbc.ca.
Mayflower Curling Clubs old home torn down with move to new location outside Halifax
