The Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame & Museum Inc. is pleased to announce the launch of its Virtual Museum website.

The museum website, including the first Manitoba curling on-line museum exhibit as well as the on-line Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame, can be found at www.mbcurlmuseum.com

“With the support of our donors and with dedicated volunteer effort by our volunteers, we have accomplished one of our Board’s recent primary objectives,” says MCHoF&M President Peter Nicholls.

The MCHoF&M accepted some time ago that there might never again be a physical location for the Museum and Hall of Fame due to the costs involved. Therefore a commitment was made to establish an on-line presence to display the remarkable museum collection as well as to recognize Manitoba curling’s Hall of Fame inductees.

“Over the past couple of years, we have undertaken fund-raising to develop the website and we know that our contributors have been looking forward to seeing the on-line result,” says Nicholls. “We think they will like what they see.”

The first ‘exhibit’ in the on-line Manitoba curling museum is a history of the Manitoba men’s championship which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2025.

The exhibit outlines the history of the Manitoba championship, which pre-dated the Canadian Brier by two years, including a pictorial display of the trophies which the Manitoba men have competed for (only SIX trophies in the nearly 100 years), notes about the various sponsors (only FOUR sponsors in the nearly 100 years), plus record of all of the championship venues, the champions and other championship details.

The Manitoba curling collection includes over 30,000 items including artifacts, historical images/photos and documents. The next stage of making this collection available on-line is the complete digitization of the collection and establishment of a searchable link on the website. This process is currently underway.

In the meantime, now that the Virtual Museum has been launched and the first exhibit is available for viewing, the challenge facing MCHoF&M volunteers is to develop new exhibits.

“Just as this first exhibit focuses attention on the Manitoba Men’s championship which will be played in Selkirk in two months’ time, our task will be to develop future exhibits which are both timely and informative,” Nicholls says.

Before launching the new website, MCHoF&M volunteers also undertook to review all 200+ Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame inductee honour scrolls and update those which required renewal.

“As curling is truly a lifetime sport, many curlers continue to play at a high level for years after they are inducted into the Hall of Fame,” Nicholls explains. “The best example is probably Jeff Stoughton who was recognized initially for a Hall of Fame Mixed career and went on from that to set records in the Manitoba Men’s championship which may never be matched. That information has all been updated at the online Hall of Fame.”

Manitoba curling fans are invited to visit the new on-line Museum and Curling Hall of Fame (mbcurlmuseum.com) and are encouraged to consider a donation to support the effort to celebrate Manitoba’s curling history.

There are links on the website to the Winnipeg Foundation (to contribute to our long-term Foundation account) and to CanadaHelps.org (to contribute to short-term operating expenses). Both are able to issue charitable donations receipts on behalf of the Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame & Museum.