Curling reenactment Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Dressed in period costume, Evergreen Curling Club member Sean Henry delivers a stone Tuesday at the Lloyd Center during a reenactment of a curling game played at Fort Vancouver in 1847.

On a winter day 160 years ago, Hudson's Bay Company employees at Fort Vancouver played a game of curling against sailors from the Modeste, which was docked there at the time.

One of the HBC employees made a note of it in his log. According to his note, the sailors won the game by quite a margin.

Two weeks later, the sides squared off again, but there is no known record of the result.

Apparently this is the first known example of a team sport played in the Northwest. Tonight, with the assistance of the National Park Service, Evergreen Curling Club members challenged sailors on the Hawaiian Chieftain and Lady Washington tall ships to reenact the game.

Becky Horn (left) of the Hawaiian Chieftain and Tara Horn (no relation) of the Lady Washington sweep a stone Tuesday during a reenactment of a curling match played at Fort Vancouver in 1847.

Fort Vancouver supplied period costumes for the curling club participants. The players from the tall ships, which are in town for the Rose Festival, had their own costumes.

The participants played the game in the manner it would have been played in the 1800s, albeit on artificial ice in a shopping mall. They used corn brooms and threw the stones from a standing position without sliding from the hack.

Read more about the reenactment on the Evergreen Curling Club website. Check their links for even more information.