Westman product Thiessen named Curling Canada CEO

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This article was published 04/01/2024 (727 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nolan Thiessen grew up living across the tracks from the Wheat City Curling Club in Brandon.

He’d walk over there after school to throw rocks and would travel around small Manitoba towns playing in bonspiels.

“That formed my love for the game,” Thiessen said Wednesday, during a video call with reporters.

That love took Thiessen, who was born in Pilot Mound but moved to Brandon when he was four, to the top of the sport as he won the Brier three times (2010, 2014, 2015), and a gold medal at the 2010 World Curling Championship as a lead for Alberta’s Kevin Koe.

Now 43, Thiessen has reached similar heights off the ice as Curling Canada appointed him as its new CEO on Wednesday. He replaces Katherine Henderson, who departed the organization in August to take the position of CEO and president at Hockey Canada.

Thiessen spent the past four years as Curling Canada’s executive director, marketing and fan experience.

“When I stopped playing seven and a half years ago, I wanted to work in this sport and I wanted to make it better,” said Thiessen, a University of Manitoba Bachelor of Commerce graduate, and a member of the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada.

“So, when Kathy called me and said she was taking on the Hockey Canada role, I was like ‘OK, is now the time?’ because I’ve obviously thought about it, and she was a great mentor. She was always encouraging me to take on more than what maybe my role allowed for to try to get that experience. It’s been a very interesting process over the last six months and I’m just very excited.”

Thiessen played juniors with fellow Brandon product Mike McEwen — highlighted by winning gold at the 2003 World University Games — and broke into the men’s ranks as a lead for Winnipeg’s Sean Grassie before taking his talents to Alberta.

“I took some time, and I was going through some of my old stuff, looking at old photos, newspaper articles, and all that stuff. It’s been fun to sort of reflect on the last 30 years from when I first kind of started playing the game until now,” said Thiessen, who now lives in Edmonton.

“I think for me as well, that also helps when some of the days are hard. That’s when you can look back on something and say ‘This will be OK tomorrow, you genuinely love this sport and want it to be better. It’ll be OK, you can get through these hard days.’”

He can expect some hard days as the sport faces a list of challenges. Getting younger people involved is near the top.

“We’ve created a new youth engagement program and we plan on expanding it this year. And we’ve actually got a community sport for all grant from the government of Canada for the Scotties, Brier, and women’s worlds this year where we’re taking more and more curling into the schools,” said Thiessen.

“My priorities are youth engagement, club development and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). There’s a lot that we need to do there and we’re increasing our investments there.”

Another hot topic for discussion is Canada’s recent struggles at international events. Canadian women haven’t won gold at worlds since 2018 (Jennifer Jones) and the men haven’t finished on top of the podium since 2017 (Brad Gushue).

Thiessen doesn’t believe any drastic changes need to be made for that to change.

“You’re not going to find anybody who wants to beat everybody more at the world championships than I do,” he said.

“I think for us, last summer, especially with (David Murdoch being named Curling Canada’s new high-performance director last year), we really sat back and said ‘OK, what do we have to do to win more medals?’ We can debate residency, the Brier and Scotties format, and all those different types of things to death, and those are big pieces of the high-performance program. But you win medals in July, August, September, and October with work that nobody ever sees. And that’s really what our athletes and high performance have really gotten into.”

Thiessen will take over full-time duties this week.

“We said at the beginning of this process that we would leave no stone unturned, and that we would take the time to make sure we do this right, and I firmly we believe we did with Nolan Thiessen,” said Michael Szajewski, Chair of Curling Canada’s Board of Governors, in a release.

“He has played an integral role in helping our organization move forward over the past few years, and his vision is completely in line with the board’s on what needs to happen to continue this forward progress.”

» Winnipeg Free Press