It took volunteers two years to rebuild Kronau’s curling rink after destructive plough winds devastated a town in love with the sport.
In 1974, Kronau’s original curling rink was destroyed by those winds. Conveniently, the Regina Highlands curling club was moving on from its facility.
Volunteers from Kronau dismantled the Highlands old rink piece by piece, loaded up the boards and beams, and brought them back to Kronau.
“About 30 farmers made the trip with their grain trucks, back and forth from the city,” said Larry Schneider, whose family helped with the construction.
By 1976, the rink was finished and the club was operating again. It’s the same one sitting on the east side of Kronau today, with three sheets of artificial ice for the club to host bonspiels and league matches.
The Schneider family has lived in Kronau since 1896 and has produced many great curlers. Larry and his brothers Rick, Mike and Jamie were some of the first.
After finishing construction of the rink, Jamie won the Canadian Junior Men’s title in 1983 and all four brothers won the 1990 Saskatchewan Men’s Curling Championship.
Larry doesn’t curl much anymore, but he still spends most of his time at Kronau rink maintaining the ice. “It’s all volunteer labour,” said Schneider. “Through my curling career I learned from, you know, going to the big events and talking to ice-makers.” He uses water with unique minerals shipped from Ontario that freeze it as hard and smooth as possible.
“I volunteer all my time,” said Schneider. “I’m retired now from SaskTel, so I have all day to do things and get ready, then at nights the rest of my volunteer people, after work and supper, they come here and help out. We do this all volunteer and it’s just a lot of fun and just a way to give back to the sport.”
In 2010, the town and the club decided their lobby needed an upgrade. It was important to give the community a building that matched their passion for curling.
After demolishing the old lobby, the plans were jeopardized. The old building’s front side and foundation violated modern safety codes. The cost of the build tripled.
Through community fundraising, provincial and federal funding and a donation from Vale Potash, they were able to raise the $430,000 needed to make repairs and complete the rebuild.
The result was a beautiful new lounge and lobby. The upstairs lounge still smells new and has a large modern bar behind the birds-eye spectator area. It is an spectacular venue for socializing, entertainment, sport and dining.
Just inside the front doors is a large kitchen. The Come Around Café, a play on the curling term “come around,” has operated there the past four years. It caters and cooks for dine-in and take-out. They incorporated Larry Schneider’s old business, Schneider’s Ice Cream shop, nearly three years ago.
“Oh yeah, this is the heart of Kronau, especially since we moved the ice cream shop over here,”said Bob Machnaik, owner of the café. “They didn’t want that to disappear out of Kronau. That’s part of the place.”
Machnaik and his wife Colleen run the café, which is the town’s only restaurant. They greet curlers and spectators with the smell of burgers and deep-fry the moment they walk in the door.
Prior to COVID-19, the café was a great success. “Friday night Curling we’d make enough money in this kitchen to pay our rent for the month,” said Machnaik. The 2019 curling club year-end bonspiel earned the café $4000.
Since the pandemic shut down curling events the past two years, the business has struggled.
Machnaik said he’s “lucky to get one customer” on Saturdays, so he’s more than ready for the curling season to restart.
The rink will finally reopen to curlers with a season opening bonspiel in November, ending the two-year hiatus. The president of the curling club, Lona Gervais, said they plan to host multiple events and programs throughout the year, including a “kids lunch curl program” and their annual year-end bonspiel.
“We have a really big wind-up spiel at the end of the season, where we usually end up getting like 24 teams, so it gets pretty big,”said Gervais.“It’s a lot of fun and it helps us with our fundraising throughout the year.”
Similar to the volunteers who trucked the buildings’ bits and pieces from the city, it’s volunteers who keep the rink operating today. The board of directors, caretakers and icemakers like Schneider all dedicate their personal time to maintain and care for the rink.
“We just make it work because we’re committed, and the curling rink is a huge part of our community,” said Gervais. “I would say it’s the heart of the community.”
Schneider agreed the rink was the heart, but expressed worry about its future. “We lost our school eight or nine years ago,” said Schneider. “Our school kids now go to Balgonie and Emerald Park, which was a devastation for our community spirit.”
