Alfie Phillips Jr. inducted into Canadian Curling Hall of Fame

A champion off the ice and a builder of the sport in every sense of the word is the latest inductee into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame, it was announced today.

Alfie Phillips Jr. was formally welcomed into the Hall as a curler/builder during a private event earlier this month in his hometown of Toronto.

“A great honour from a game that I played for 66 years,” said Phillips. “Thanks to my Dad. He is watching from Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. Thanks to the Brier team of Keith Reilly, Ron Manning and John Ross. Thanks to our curling paper, the Ontario Curling Report and Pete Birchard, Ken Thompson and Bob Weeks. Thanks to Art Lobel as I know he was involved in my nomination.”

A competitive curler who followed in the footsteps of his father (a member of Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame who skipped Ontario to a silver medal at the 1956 Brier and also won two Commonwealth Games gold medals in diving in 1930), Phillips skipped his team of Ross, Manning and Reilly to victory in the 1967 Macdonald Brier at Hull, Que., and followed up with a third-place finish at the 1967 Scotch Cup World Men’s Championship in Scotland.

The Phillips team was highly successful on the ice, and led trailblazing efforts off the ice to give Ontario teams the opportunity to compete for cash and prizes, such as the four snowmobiles it won in the CBC Curling Classic. Unlike other provinces, Ontario teams at the time could not accept prizes or cash for winning events as they would be deemed “professional” and ineligible to compete in Brier playdowns. Adding further drama was that Phillips was named manager of a Toronto curling club, which also made him “professional” by Ontario Curling Association rules.

Phillips’s team was banned from competing by the OCA, but thanks to efforts organized by Phillips to galvanize his peers and media to speak out against the archaic rule, the ban was lifted a year later.

Phillips also contributed in the area of journalism, as he co-founded the influential and highly read Ontario Curling Report and contributed columns for the next four decades. He was a pillar of the Toronto curling community, helping organize the highly successful 1986 Air Canada Silver Broom world men’s championship in his hometown, along with the legendary Battle of the Sexes match between teams skipped by Ed Werenich and Marilyn Bodogh.

“Few people can match the contributions Alfie Phillips Jr. has made to the sport of curling,” said Weeks, a fellow member of the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame. “From his successes and creativity on the ice, to his defence of curlers winning big prizes and on to his work with the Ontario Curling Report, he has been a leading light for more than 60 years.”

More inductees to the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame will be announced later this season.