Canada watched with admiration and pride when the Brad Jacobs rink from Sault Ste. Marie earned a gold medal in curling at the 2014 Winter Olympics. Now the city that birthed the championship team is betting on the resulting excitement to land Canada’s biggest curling event in 2017.
In February, the city launched its official bid to host the Brier Canadian Men’s Curling Championships in two years’ time, an ambitious goal within a long-term tourism strategy to attract sports events to the city.
“We have not hosted it since 1990, and we just think there’s an opportunity to bring it to a really curling-enthusiastic community,” said Ian McMillan, executive director of Tourism Sault Ste. Marie. “Because the next Olympics isn’t until 2018, Jacobs’ team remains the Olympic goal medallists, and so they would be great spokespeople for the Brier to be hosted in Sault Ste. Marie.”
(Following the conclusion of the 2015 Brier in Calgary in March, Team Jacobs can also claim the title of Brier silver medallists.)
A marketing campaign designed to generate buzz is asking citizens to put down a $50 deposit to secure their tickets for the event should the bid be accepted.
“(Curling Canada) is aware that the city is very supportive in terms of hosting major sporting events and volunteering to pull them off,” McMillan said. “What we really wanted to show them was that there was a commitment from citizens and businesses to come out and support the event should we be successful in bidding on it.”
For curling-mad Sault Ste. Marie, hosting the Brier would join a long list of successes attracting provincial, national and international sporting events. According to the Sault Ste. Marie Economic Development Corp., between 2011 and 2014, the city secured 116 events, which drew 22,632 delegates and led to $13.5 million of direct visitor spending into the local economy.
That list includes the 2015 Central Regionals Synchronized Skating Championships, the 2014 Grand Slam of Curling National, the 2014 U-12 Provincial Ringette Championships, the 2013 Telus Cup National Midget AAA Championships, the 2013 Ontario Basketball Association Provincial Championships, the 2012 CARHA Hockey World Cup, the 2012 All-Ontario Midget AAA Championships, the 2011 Hap Ki Do Canadian Open, and the 2011 Ontario Colleges Athletics Association Men’s Basketball Championships.
But the city isn’t putting all its curling rocks in one end. Based on a business report generated a few years ago, the city has developed an itinerary that plays on the area’s connection to the Group of Seven painters and their proclivity for working in the Algoma region; in particular, along the Algoma Central Rail (ACR) line.
The new itinerary brings Group of Seven enthusiasts into the Art Gallery of Algoma where they are invited to a wine and cheese to listen to the curator speak about the group’s work and view the originals in the gallery’s collection. From there, visitors enjoy a sit-down meal, complete with staff in period costumes, at the newly built Ermatinger Clergue National Historic Site across the street.
The next day, visitors board the tour train, accompanied by an artist guide who accompanies them to the various painting sites favoured by Group of Seven members, speaking about their inspiration behind the work. On the return trip, guests get to paint their own versions of the famous canvases, keeping their paintings as mementos of the trip.
“We’ve really noticed, this year, a significant uptake from group tours wanting to purchase that itinerary and take the train and stay a little longer in Sault Ste. Marie,” McMillan said.
Enhancing the package is a refurbished ACR boxcar, used during the filming of a Group of Seven-themed movie last year, which the city plans to display outside the gallery as an added attraction.
McMillan said the city will continue to build on Group of Seven attractions, since they’re already generating so much interest, in addition to developing new, homegrown sporting events.
And, after watching the numbers of U.S. visitors dwindle in the last decade, McMillan is confident that market may be on an upswing, as conditions have improved from a slump that dates back more than a decade.
“Their economy’s a bit better, the exchange rate is coming into their favour, more and more of them have passports — which was the biggest impediment to travel — and so we’ve started to see over the last year, year and a half, the U.S. market coming back.
