From Wayback Wednesday!: 1959 Muskoka International Mixed Bonspiel Champions | Sponsored by Jamie Lockwood, broker/owner of Sutton Group Muskoka Realty

Wayback Wednesday, sponsored by Jamie Lockwood, broker/owner of Sutton Group Muskoka Realty, with family roots of more than 100 years in Huntsville and Almaguin

Victory smiles are beaming from the Huntsville team under the capable direction of Wes Payne, who won the top honours in the second annual Muskoka International Mixed Bonspiel. Pictured below from left, Milt Tibbett (Mayor of Huntsville 1964 – 1970 and First District of Muskoka Chair), Marg Tibbett, and Martha Moores and Wes Payne (Town Councillor).

Originally billed as “World’s Biggest International Mixed Bonspiel,” the Muskoka International, hosted by Huntsville, Bracebridge, and Gravenhurst, took off like a rocket. The first Muskoka Lakes International Bonspiel, where “Good Curling and Good Fellowship in Muskoka are Inseparable,” attracted 80 teams and took place in 1958. The bonspiel ran for 36 consecutive years until 1993. The Muskoka International Mixed Bonspiel attracted 112 teams, over 450 curlers, from over 50 different Curling Clubs, playing 500 games of curling with four tournament prizes for winners and runners-up, the top prize being the “Muskoka Rubberset Trophy.”

From the Huntsville Forester, December 1959:
“This Spiel, the Muskoka International Mixed Bonspiel, is one of the most phenomenal stories in Canadian Curling History, which was also cited as a shining example of cooperation and effort among once rival communities. Prior to the Muskoka International Spiel, the bitter rivalry between the three communities, Huntsville, Bracebridge, and Gravenhurst, was so keen that speaking to someone from a neighboring centre was looked upon as almost the act of a traitor. The increasing popularity of curling, particularly the introduction of lady curlers, gradually thawed the bitterness and created a new spirit of friendship in
Muskoka.”

Submitted by Dennis Rolland on behalf of the Huntsville Curling Club.

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