The Journal · The Brantford Club

Brant Curling Club vs The Brantford Club: After the Last End

The Brant Curling Club is a curling club at 34 Morrell Street, Brantford, on ice it built in 1950 by its own history. The Brantford Club is the private club Brantford keeps for its business and its company in a house at 98 George Street, since 1898. One is organized around a game and its season; the other around a table and the whole year.

If it was the curling club you wanted, its own site gives the address and the rest: 34 Morrell Street, Brantford, Ontario N3T 4J2, telephone 519-752-3639, administration@brantcurlingclub.ca, or the form on its contact page. It publishes no club hours; leagues run by the day of the week and the draw time, and members register through its membership page, by its own listing. What follows is for the reader who typed both names with a “vs” between them, and for the curler wondering where the company goes on the nights without a draw.

The last end is scored, the stones are put up, and the teams go upstairs. The lounge is the room people keep coming back for; the Brant Curling Club says as much on its own pages, where the social side of the game gets its own heading. The building at 34 Morrell Street has been that pair of rooms since 1950, an ice house and a club house with a bar and a lounge, by the founder’s account on its About page.

The Brantford Club is the other kind of club, organized around a table. It is Brantford’s private business and social club, kept since 1898 in an Italianate house of about 1855 at 98 George Street, with the Court House across the way. People come in off the street to a dining room under executive chef Eric Wasylenky, private rooms held for a meeting or a dinner, and Cocktail Fridays in the 98 George Room. Of the roll, its membership page says, “Membership is open to all.” The two clubs have never competed for the same evening. One fills a Tuesday night in January. The other fills a Tuesday lunch in any month.

Can you belong to the Brant Curling Club and The Brantford Club at the same time?

Nothing either club publishes prevents it. The Brant Curling Club registers new and returning members through the links on its membership page, as its own listing has it, and its pages say nothing about other clubs. The Club’s membership page says membership is open to all and names what a member gets: the dining room and private rooms at 98 George Street, and reciprocal privileges at more than 150 private clubs. This page says only what each publishes about who may join; the rest of the conversation happens with a person, at 519-752-3639 on Morrell Street and at manager@thebrantfordclub.com on George Street. The same name has often stood on the two rolls. The Journal’s older piece on the city club and the country club put the same question to the golf course, and the answer it found holds for the ice.

Morrell Street, for Anyone Who Wants to Throw a Stone

If what you want is the game, the Brant Curling Club is the right club, and this page says so plainly. Its leagues page runs the week: a Monday day league for men fifty and over, a Monday night open league for any age and ability, day draws on Tuesday with an eight-week Learn to Curl program by night, mixed leagues midweek, two club championships, a Friday mixed draw it calls its most social league, and youth curling on Sundays from age six. And as of this year the ice does not close for the summer: its site announces a summer league from the week of August 24 to the week of October 7, 2026, the first year-round curling in Brantford by its own account. The house on George Street has no ice and never will. A person who wants to throw belongs on Morrell Street.

George Street, for the Nights Without a Draw

The Brantford Club answers the evenings and the noon hours that no draw covers. Since 1898 it has kept one house at 98 George Street, the Bown property, bought for $4,500.00 per its centennial history: lunch on a working day, a client at dinner, a meeting in a private room with the door shut, and Cocktail Fridays in the 98 George Room. The kitchen is Eric Wasylenky’s, with the Churchill Pork Chops on the cards, named for the guest who signed the Visitors’ Register on January 3, 1901. A curler in the lounge on a Thursday night and a member at the Club’s table on Thursday noon may be the same person. The Journal’s entry on social clubs for adults sets out what the published research says a standing table does for the people who keep one.

Brant Curling Club vs The Brantford Club on One Page

Every row is taken from each club’s own site.

Twice Burned on the Ice, Never Moved on George Street

The two histories have different shapes. The Brant Curling Club’s About page tells its own: a club at Albion and Waterloo Streets before 1913, lost to fire, and thirty years before it was re-formed; ice under it again by the fall of 1945, on borrowed stones and rented arena ice; a clubhouse under the arena seating, and a second fire that took it with the records and the trophies; then land at 34 Morrell Street and a building of its own, finished in the fall of 1950. The Club’s history has one address. Five men met in May 1898, Letters Patent followed on July 16, 1898, and the door at 98 George Street opened on December 31, 1898. The curling club moved three times to keep its ice. The Club bought a house and stayed; the Journal’s entry on the third place says what that is worth.

The questions behind the search

Sources: the Brant Curling Club’s own home, About, Membership, Leagues, Rentals, Summer League, and Contact pages; the Club’s membership page and its centennial history (privately printed, ca. 1998). The other entries in this series are gathered on one register, lane by lane.