Barr looks back at provincial win

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This article was published 20/07/2023 (989 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Don Barr’s had some time to reflect on his curling accomplishments lately.

The Glenboro product was inducted into Manitoba’s Curling Hall of Fame on May 7 as part of Doug Armour’s rink that won the Canadian masters men’s championship at the Riverview Curling Club in 2005.

It’s also coming up on the 50th anniversary of his appearance at the 1974 Macdonald Brier in London, Ont., where he skipped Manitoba to a 6-4 record and a tie for third place.

“It doesn’t quite feel like yesterday,” Barr said with a laugh. “But it was certainly an honour to be able to do those things and to be able to curl for all these years.

“I’ve curled with a lot of great people and met a lot of great people over all these years. It’s been a great winter pastime, that’s for sure.”

Barr, who was 33 at the time of his provincial win in 1974, wasn’t originally supposed to skip the squad.

He was the third for Dan Hyrich but moved into fourth stone duties after Hyrich suffered a hand injury during the season.

Barr, Hyrich and second Jack Fraser had been together for a couple of years at that point and reached the semifinal at the 1972 British Consoles in Virden with lead Harv Stinson, but lost to eventual champion Danny Fink.

The rink had a new addition for the 1974 event as Jim Thornborough came in at lead.

“I think what impressed us the most with Jim right away was his ability to judge weight,” Barr said.

“We had some good results at bonspiels going into the provincials and Dan was always a real competitor no matter what the event was. We definitely felt like we could make some noise in Winnipeg … but I’m not sure we thought we could win the whole thing.”

The team certainly wasn’t among the big favourites when play began at the Winnipeg Arena, especially among those who had some skin in the game.

“I know the people that bought us in the Calcutta didn’t think we had much of a chance,” Barr said with a laugh.

According to an article in the Feb. 18, 1974 edition of the Brandon Sun, the Barr rink was purchased for $250 and then sold to someone else for $275.

The undefined person tried to sell the rink to anyone who would take it, but there were no takers.

As it turned out, the winning ticket apparently paid nearly $3,000.

Barr started off the week with an 11-3 rout of Snow Lake’s Larry Kirby and then came away with a steal in the 12th end (which was the length for games at major events at the time) to pick up an 8-7 win over Rod Hunter’s Granite squad.

The Glenboro group followed that up with a 9-6 victory over Errol Kinick of the Assiniboine, an 8-5 triumph over Fry’s Deer Lodge squad and a 10-7 win over Clare De Blonde of the Heather to reach the best-of-three final against Gary Ross’ Granite quartet.

“I actually thought we played better the year before and lost out early (to Fry) than we did in 1974,” Barr said.

Ross — who had lost out on his chance to win the Purple Heart on three previous occasions at that point — won the opening game on Feb. 15 by a score of 8-7 after stealing single points in the 12th and 13th ends.

Barr had a chance to win the game on two occasions, but missed a double takeout in the 12th and wrecked on a draw attempt in the extra frame.

The following afternoon, Barr stole two points in the final end for a 9-8 win to set up a winner-take-all affair that night.

Down 10-9 in the 12th, Barr was sitting two and forced Ross to a throw takeout on his last, which ended up rolling out of the rings and resulted in a teal of one for the Glenboro rink.

In the extra end, Ross just needed to draw to the eight-foot to win the game, but his shot had a little too much weight after being swept by a guard and ended up stopping in the back 12-foot next to Barr’s stone.

After both teams took a look to determine who was closer, the Glenboro squad celebrated as they punched their ticket to the Brier, while Ross was left in disbelief as he suffered the fourth of his eventual six men’s provincial final defeats.

“We had played 38 ends in our last three games, so it was kind of a relief that the curling was over at that point, but it was pretty unbelievable for me to know that we had won,” Barr said. “The other guys were jumping up and down, but I don’t think it really hit me that way.

“We had won two games that they should have won and they won the game that we should have won. It was all kind of bass-ackwards when you think about it.”

The following evening, Barr and his teammates returned home and were greeted by a reported crowd of 600 at the Glenboro Curling Club after receiving a police escort into town.

A few weeks later, the Manitoba champions headed to London, Ont., and it started to set in for Barr that he was competing with Canada’s best.

“When you are sitting there with all the provincial winners at the dinner before the event and then you see all of the fans that came with us to cheer us on … it was kind of hard to believe.”

Manitoba came out of the gates strong in the old round-robin format as they were 3-0 after two days and in a tie for first place with Quebec’s Jim Ursel.

Then they dropped four straight games — including to eventual first- and second-place finished Hec Gervais of Alberta and Larry McGrath of Saskatchewan — before ending the week with three straight wins.

That put them in a tie for third in the final standings with Ursel, Ontario’s Paul Savage and British Columbia’s Jim Armstrong.

“It was a pretty close field from top to bottom and the week could have gone either way,” Barr said. “As a whole though, the week was how we imagined a Brier would be like.”

One of the things that Barr remembers about the 1974 event nearly 50 years later was how everyone told him that the ice was going to present some challenges.

“They didn’t make it nowhere near as good as they have it now,” Barr said.

“I remember it being really tough in that first game, but after that, it was so darn keen and we didn’t adjust to it very well.”

There was also an extra bonus that came with the strong Brier result for the Barr rink. They ended up getting the chance to take part in the CBC Curling Classic, which is a made-for-TV event that was filmed at the St. James Civic Centre in November 1974.

“I was pretty nervous going into that one,” said Barr, who went up against Larry McGrath in a contest that aired the following year.

In addition to being saluted at clubs throughout the province over the next few months, the Barr rink also became the first recipient of the Brandon Sun’s Western Manitoba Team of the Year award (now known as the Mike Jones Award) in 1974.

They beat out the Brandon Bobcats men’s hockey team, the Deloraine Royals senior hockey squad, the Neelin Spartans football team, the Riverside Canucks senior baseball squad and the Pizza Place ladies’ fastball team to earn that honour.

When the rink returned to the British Consoles in 1975 at the Keystone Centre, Barr was back in the third position as Hyrich resumed his skipping duties.

Their run at the provincials ended after only four games, however, as Ross got a measure of revenge and ended their chances at a repeat.

Barr would have to wait until 2003 to wear the Buffalo again, as he was part of Armour’s silver-medal winning side at the senior men’s nationals.

“It was quite a thrill to get to the final there, but Alberta was a little too strong for us,” Barr said.

“I remember that final being on TSN so I got to be on TV again. There weren’t as many nerves then as there was back in the ‘70s.”

Barr’s last national appearance was his best as he, Armour, Frank Gudz and Ken Sabad stole a point to beat British Columbia’s Dale McKenzie in the national masters men’s final on April 9, 2005.

“That whole week at the Riverview was an amazing experience,” Barr said. “We were curling against a lot of people that we had never faced before and all of them were great people.

“Doug, Ken and I had curled together for about a decade by that point, so to win at home with them was special.”

While Barr doesn’t curl as much as he used to, he still plays in Glenboro and competes in the odd bonspiel if time allows.

The passion for the game is still as strong as ever, which was evident in a speech he gave at the Hall of Fame ceremony in May.

“It’s been such an honour to curl and to be inducted with those guys … it was a great feeling.”

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