Bernie Sparkes and his connection to Prince George curling history dates back 53 years.
Long before he was introduced to the CN Centre audience Sunday during the final of the BTK Tires and OK Tire World Women’s Curling Championship as one of the 2021 inductees to the World Curling Federation Hall of Fame, Sparkes was achieving legendary status with his 12 Brier appearances, three Canadian men’s championships and three men’s world championships in a competitive career that spanned three decades.
At the 1969 Macdonald Brier in Oshawa, Ont., Sparkes was playing second on the Alberta rink skipped by Ron Northcott of Calgary and they were flirting with for perfection. After eight draws, the Alberta team was undefeated at 7-0, but they were in second place in the standings behind the 8-0 B.C. rink skipped by Kevin “Duke” Smale of Prince George.
Smale, third Pete Sherba, second Bob McDonald and lead Pat Carr from the Prince George Golf and Curling Club, after eight years together, had finally made it their first Canadian men’s curling championship and they were intent on winning it, having beaten everybody except Newfoundland and the Alberta.
Northcott and Sparkes, with third Dave Gerlach and lead Fred Storey, were the defending Canadian champions, vying for their third Brier title in five years, and heading into the ninth end the Albertans held an 8-5 lead over Smale. At that time, curling games were 12 ends and B.C. scored one in the ninth and two in the 11th and Northcott blanked the 12th to seal a 9-8 victory.
B.C., in its final game in the 10th draw, went on to beat Bill Piercey’s Newfoundland rink 13-10 to finish at 9-1, while Northcott topped Ken Buchan of Ontario 11-9. Smale, who had a bye in the 11th and final draw, watched as Alberta beat Saskatchewan’s Bob Pickering 9-8 to cinch the title. Back then, there were no playoffs and Alberta became the first 10-0 Brier winners since Billy Walsh of Winnipeg went undefeated in 1952.
“The one game we had to win was against (B.C) because when you played through, your wins and losses in the round robin determined it,” said the 81-year-old Sparkes, who makes his home in North Vancouver.
“I remember how well we played. It was a real team effort and everybody was playing well, we just never thought of losing. We were playing good but so was Kevin, so was that team.”
Smale and his team were huge underdogs to curl as well as they did in Oshawa in their first of two Brier appearances (they finished fifth in 1971 in Quebec City). Sherba was named the all-star third and they were greeted with a heroes’ reception at Prince George airport that drew a crowd of about 1,000 people.
Highlights of the 1969 Brier are available here.
The tournament was sponsored by Macdonald Tobacco Inc., and the company made its presence felt at the Brier banquet when it supplied a pack of Export A cigarettes for each individual place setting. Smoking was the norm rather that the exception around curling rinks and the video shows Smale with a cigarette dangling from his mouth during the tournament and at least one player on the ice having a sip out of a beer bottle. How times have changed.
Sparkes moved to Vancouver in 1970 and went to eight more Briers as B.C. provincial champions. He skipped his own team to the Brier in 1972, played third for Jack Tucker in 1973 and third for Jim Armstrong in 1974 (the ’73 and ’74 teams also included Gerry Peckham of Prince George). Sparkes also skipped teams that won the B.C. title in 1976, 1978, 1983, 1984 and 1987.
His three Brier championships meant playing for Canada three times at the men’s world championship – in 1966 in Vancouver, 1968 in Point Claire, Que., and in 1969 in Perth, Scotland.
Curling’s international stature has increased exponentially since 1969, when the men’s world event was known as the Air Canada Silver Broom, and Sparkes when he received his Hall of Fame award he spoke to the CN Centre crowd of 2,292 he offered his take on much the game has grown.
“We were in Perth, Scotland and we played before 50 people at a curling club,” said Sparkes. “The Scottish official said, ‘It’s a might twisty out there today,’ and he was being very kind. The ice was absolutely horrible.”
The native of Claresholm, Alta., reminded the crowd that curling is team game and credited players like Northcott for helping pave his path to the Hall of Fame.
“Anybody who has played an amateur sport such as curling, which is a team sport, knows where I come from, it’s not the person, it’s the team, and I was so fortunate to weasel my way on to some good teams,” he said.
Also in the WCF Hall of Fame class of 2021 are the Annette Norberg Swedish women’s team and builder Johannes Arthur Jensen of Denmark. Their contributions to curling will be commemorated in a permanent World Hall of Fame display at the Word Curling Federation headquarters in Perth, Scotland. The WCF began recognizing curling career achievements in 1978 with the Elmer Freytag Award and that was replaced in 2012 with the Hall of Fame award.
“This has been the nicest thing that’s happened to me as far as presentations or awards, this is the crowning thing for me,” said Sparkes. “This has been the first one outside of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame where there’s been an actual presentation and that means a lot to me.”
Sparkes was also an exceptional baseball player who played professionally in the Brooklyn Dodgers farm system in the mid-late-1950s.
WCF president Kate Caithness presented Sparkes with an engraved silver platter during the intermission of the gold-medal game between Switzerland and South Korea.
“You’ve heard about his record, how many people have the record in curling that this guy’s got,” said Caithness. “He was part of the best front end for a whole era. He’s really a worthy recipient of the award.”
Sparkes is thinking about writing a book about the lighter side of curling and some of the funny incidents that came with the territory back in his heyday.
“There are so many stories I could tell, I might get sued about several of them,” he laughed. “There’s so much humour behind the scenes you don’t see. The sport on the ice looks so dry and they look so rigid on the ice, but off the ice it’s a different world for the curlers, or at least it used to be.
“I think they’re a lot more refined now than we ever were. I didn’t train in the early years but I did later. I got to realize my legs were not in good shape about 1990 and I started going to the gym to do curling-specific exercises. That enabled me to play in the masters for a number of years at a high level.”
After being named the all-star second at four consecutive Brier championships from 1966-69, Sparkes moved to Vancouver in 1971 and went to win nine B.C. championships. He won silver at the Brier in 1978 in Vancouver and bronze in 1976 in Regina.
