In the summer of 2016, the team at of the Public City Architecture firm in Manitoba asked themselves a question that has likely occurred to many Canadians over the years: what would happen if we played crokinole, the classic cottage game of small wooden discs on an octagonal board, with curling stones? Where others have left that question in the realm of speculation the firm’s director, Liz Wreford, explained that Public City Architecture was not satisfied just to wonder.
“We just thought, wouldn’t it be fun to have it on a large scale, and combined with curling?” she said explaining that it wasn’t until later in the year in a meeting with representatives of the Forks market in Winnipeg that the team found the context in which to pull the idea out of their back pocket and bring it to life. “They invest a lot in unique outdoor recreation spaces and were very supportive.”
The result was Crokicurl; a giant version of crokinole played on an ice surface 15 metres in diameter in pairs or groups of four.
Crokicurl: a couple of Canadian classics, on the rocks
By Gordon Lambie
