Pallister curls from one House to another

Adam Daifallah
Source: National Post

April 13, 2004

For Brian Pallister's sake, let's hope Paul Martin doesn't call a federal election in the next week. If he if does, Pallister, the Member of Parliament for the Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar, would have a pickle of a time getting out on the hustings.

Pallister's going to be busy throwing stones at the house as skip of one of the eight rinks in the Ontario Mixed Curling Championship, the opening draw of which takes place tomorrow night at the Guelph Curling Club.

Pallister and his team of vice Lesle Cafferty, second Dan Cheney and lead Claudette Bockstael qualified for the event out of Ottawa's Rideau Curling Club, coming out of the A-side in both zones and regions. Pretty good for a team that was put together just a few months ago. And Pallister thinks they've got a pretty good shot at taking the title.

"I think we definitely would have less experience as a team than anyone else there, but that being said we've been able to come back against some pretty good teams," Pallister said in a recent interview.

You might wonder how someone with an MP's schedule could find the time to curl at all, let alone competitively. Between sitting in the House of Commons, committee meetings, case work for constituents and travelling back and forth to their home riding, politicians don't exactly have much free time. Perhaps that explains why there are so few elite curling politicians. The only one other than Pallister who comes to mind is Rick Folk, the two-time Brier and world champion, who served as a cabinet minister in Grant Devine's Saskatchewan government in the 1980s.

This year Pallister took out a membership at Rideau, where he hooked up with Earle Morris, a three-time Brier participant and father of John, the former world junior champ and winner of the recent PharmAssist Player's Championship. Morris helped the politician brush up on his delivery and technique.

Despite the hectic pace of his job, Pallister tries to get in three or four practice sessions a week.

"I slip over at noon once in a while," Pallister said. "I've been on the spares list the list the last few weeks. I've gotten on that way."

Pallister's small-town upbringing led him naturally to curling. He learned the sport playing in a two-sheet Quonset hut near his farm. He curled only sporadically through university, preferring instead to focus on basketball.

It was only when he entered public life that he got competitive. Pallister, a Conservative MP who once ran for the leadership of the old federal Progressive Conservatives, was first elected to office in 1992 when he won a seat in the Manitoba provincial legislature. (He would later serve in Premier Gary Filmon's cabinet.) While an MLA, he would frequent Winnipeg's Granite Curling Club, located just a few hundred yards from the Manitoba legislature. It was a nice escape from the daily grind.

"When I was in the legislature in Manitoba I didn't curl the first two years after I was elected, and then I just decided a guy needs a diversion," he said. "You need some kind of way to unwind. There are lots of unhealthy ways to unwind and curling is a good way to do it. I've really enjoyed making some new friends outside the political world at the curling club."

Pallister played men's competitive curling, making it all the way to the Manitoba provincial men's finals -- no small feat -- in the mid-90s playing third for Brian White, himself a former federal Conservative MP in the Mulroney years.

But the highlight of his curling career came in 2000 when, as skip, Pallister won the Manitoba mixed championship with third Chris Scalena, second Dale Michie and Rose Neufeld. The team didn't do so well at the nationals.

"My excuse was that we qualified in the spring, but we didn't play all that year because there was a federal election," in November, just before the Canadians were taking place, he said.

Odds are that the Prime Minister will hold off a while on the election call, meaning Pallister should be safe this week. And if he plays well, he just might be hauling a provincial championship trophy back to Parliament Hill.