The final of the Rotary World Curling Championships came down to the last rock. Collin Georget, the skip of the team playing out of Airdrie, curled his team of Southern Alberta Rotarians to a championship finish against a team from Grand Prairie, claiming the championship title for the first time in ten years.
“We had a great final with [Grand Prairie],” Georget said. “Certainly an experience [we]'ll remember for the rest of our lives."
Georget’s team was rounded out by fellow Rotarians Darren Grierson, Gary Gaudette, and Andy Sweetman.
The 27th Rotary World Curling Championships are held on a biannual basis. The 2024 rendition was held in Peterborough, Ontario from April 6-12. The 21 teams from Canada, Scotland, England and the United States competed in two divisions over the six day period.
While the curling served as a competitive reason to assemble in Peterborough, Rotarians from around the world descended on Southeastern Ontario to meet and share ideas about community improvement with other Rotarians.
"The beauty is when we're done, we all sit down and talk about community ideas and friendships and how we can move forward from a Rotary perspective,” said Georget, who is an active member of the Rotary Club of Airdrie. “We’re Rotarians first, curlers second.”
Georget described the curling championship like a sort of family reunion. Friends and Rotarians meeting once again after years apart, not only battle it out on the curling rink, but share ideas for how to fix some problems that are within their power as Rotarians to fix. Georget said that the value of going to an event like this is worth the week away from work and family.
“It's inevitable that you share or receive ideas from other people saying 'that's a creative way to raise money in my local community or that's a great way to give back'. It becomes a lot about how to improve Rotary, how to use Rotary, and how to improve our communities,” said Georget.
During some downtime in Peterborough, Georget and his team learned about a method that Peterborough has implemented to alleviate homelessness in parts of the city. The Rotary Club in Peterborough has built single-bedroom houses out of repurposed sea cans to house people who formerly lived on the street.
"Those [ideas] are life changing to the people involved,” Gerget said. “That's what I believe really makes this different, you come for curling but you're there for Rotary…you have the opportunity to challenge each other on ideas. [You can ask] 'we're struggling with this in our community, here is how we're trying to fix it, what have you guys done?'"
The sea can solution left an impression on Georget, who came away from the curling championship in Peterborough with new fundraising ideas that Rotary could implement to help improve their communities.
Georget admits that the free flow of ideas and helpful solutions to some community problems is largely why the curling championship is organized in the first place.
"[Rotary] is a bunch of community leaders that want to get together to make a difference in the community and you have diverse ideas that can help the organization as a whole,” he said. “We all bring skills to the table that can benefit the projects that we're working on and that's certainly the value of Rotary."
