LITTLE CURRENT—For 99 years and counting, Little Current and Espanola have engaged in a curling rivalry, one of the longest friendly sports rivalries going, and the competitive spirit hurries on. This coming Monday, January 22 teams from the two municipalities will meet in Little Current on the rinks prepared for the Northern Ontario playdowns in the NEMI Recreation Centre.
Little Current will be looking to recapture the Baxter Cup this year, as Espanola took the bragging rights for 2023.
“It would have been great if it could have been our 100th,” admitted Joe Cooper on the pro-level rinks. Mr. Cooper has been the local point man on the Northern Ontario Curling Association (NOCA) competitions on behalf of the Little Current Curling Club which is hosting the playdowns. To qualify for the honour of hosting the playdowns, the rinks must be prepared at least a week beforehand, explained Mr. Cooper. “They want to play in an arena, not a curling club,” he explained of the NOCA requirements for hosting the event.
This is the second time the Little Current Curling Club has secured the honour, but it comes at a cost. “Those two weeks, the week before the playdowns and the week they are played, the arena can’t be booked,” explained Mr. Cooper. Yes, that means no hockey and no figure skating during those two weeks—but the silver lining goes to the Baxter Cup tournament, which will be able to play on the professionally prepared pebbling.
There will be 10 rinks competing for the Baxter Cup honours this year, five from Little Current and five from Espanola and, thanks to the preparations for the NOCA playdowns, there is plenty of room to sit and watch the games in the arena stands. Unlike the NOCA playdowns, there won’t be any alcohol allowed in the stands for the Baxter Cup, but there is also no admission fee.
The Baxter Cup predates the highway onto the Island, so the first teams had to travel back and forth by rail. The cup was established by George Baxter, a salesman who arrived in Little Current back in 1910. Fifteen years later he founded the competition.
The Baxter Cup started out with 12-end games played on natural ice (in February), a few years later it dropped to 10 ends, with the number of teams increasing from eight to 10. These days the games are eight ends (allowing for a break in the middle) and the total score of the five games played at each club decides who takes the cup.
The Baxter Cup is a men’s competition (including the evening dinner), noted Mr. Cooper, but the women have their go with the Jacklin Cup held a month later in the season.
A possibly apocryphal tale relates the inspiration for the original competition as having occurred late at night in the hallways of the Mansion House (now the Anchor Inn) with a suggestion that chamber pots were employed. It’s probably best that the games were moved to proper curling rinks, especially given that chamber pots are no longer a standard hotel feature.
