There’s a long-standing tradition of collecting and trading pins at curling bonspiels, and volunteers and fans have been avidly chasing sponsor pins this week at the Home Hardware Canada Cup. For Dave and Halga Phillips, a retired couple from Red Deer, pin collecting is a hobby that brought them to Grande Prairie for the first time this week.
“We’ve been to the Brier for the last 35 years and we’ve gone to all the other little competitions like the Scotties, and we go to the Worlds when it’s in Canada,” says Dave Phillips. “We go to the Canada Cup and we go to the Continental Cup; we go to five events a year.”
Through their travels, they’ve collected almost 11,000Â pins, which they’ve been proudly showing off at Revolution Place.
“There’s sort of a group of people across Canada who collect pins,” explains Phillips. “When you go to the Scotties you’ll meet different ones, you go to the Brier you meet different ones, you go to the Worlds you meet different ones, so it’s always meeting up. It’s like a reunion every year and it’s a challenge.”
The oldest pins the Phillips have are a set of seven pins from the 1909 Strathcona Cup, when a group of curlers from Canada toured Scotland, which they bought off a Scottish man last year.