Hello to All Chester Curling Club Members…

I am pleased to be able to announce several significant milestones in the opening of the Club for the 2021-22 season.

First, our new Board of Directors held its first meeting in person on Wednesday night and confirmed the acclamation of Adam Cocks as Director and First Vice-President of the club.  I am happy to welcome Adam to the Board and look forward to him bringing the voice of the younger generation of curlers to our discussions.

Second, the ice plant was started up Wednesday and, as we were meeting, we were able to watch our new Ice Technician, Randy Cocks, begin the process of putting in the ice for the year.  It’s great to see the club coming out of hibernation once again!

Third, registration is now open for the 2021-22 season.  Login to complete the registration form.  Our newsletter will be out soon with more information about other options for registering in person or by mail.  Please note that the Waiver and COVID-19 Compliance forms are still being revised to include information about the latest Public Health regulations and will be made available prior to the first curling activities of the season.

Welcome back to Curling in Chester!

Barb Fraughton

President

The 2020/21 season has been a challenging one in more ways than one.  Not only did the ever-changing COVID-19 restrictions create an extraordinary workload in operating the club this season, but the abrupt closure of the club in the Spring of 2020 made it more difficult for us to recruit new volunteers to take on some of this work.  That means that the same small group of folks that have dedicated their time to managing the club over the last number of years had to step up once again to allow us all to enjoy the game of curling for another year.  Now that we are into the final month of the season, it is time for the nominating committee to search out new talent to take up the torch for the 2021/22 season.

Over the last few years, the management practices of the club have deviated from the official bylaws and regulations, mostly because there were not enough volunteers to fill all of the positions that were officially required to manage the club.  Typically, members of the Board of Directors ended up taking on multiple roles and we muddled through for another year. 

Last year, we rationalized the bylaws and the Board has identified 7 positions that are essential to the operation of the club.  These are:

• President
• Secretary
• Treasurer
• Director, Junior Program
• Director, Ice Management
• Director, Match/Events
• Director, Bar Management

Previously, the latter four positions were “chair” positions, but we have not always had members willing to sit in these chairs and communications with those who were doing the work that were not on the Board has been inconsistent.  Board members just ended up doing many of these extra duties anyways, so it was thought that these chairs should be consolidated into Board positions to improve coordination and communication between the functions.

In a larger club, many of these functions would be done by a paid manager but smaller clubs like ours do not have the financial resources to hire anyone.  Instead, we depend on our members to take a turn in volunteering their time to operate the club.  If you enjoy the time that you spend on the ice and in the lounge at the club, and you have not previously stepped up to fill one of these essential roles, then now is the time to do so.  No experience is required; just a willingness to learn from those who have done these jobs in the past and an interest in supporting our wonderful winter recreation opportunity.

I am willing to remain on the Board for a 4^th year but we will need at least six other people to join me in this endeavour for the upcoming season.  If you are interested in helping out or if you know someone else who just needs some encouragement, please contact Carla Rafuse, the chair of the nominating committee or any other member of the current Board.

Yours, in Curling,

Jeff Lamb

President

Chester Curling Club

Given low COVID-19 cases, the province is lifting or altering restrictions currently in place for Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) and its neighbouring communities, so all members of the club can now freely travel to the rink to take part in all regular league and practice activities.

Check out the club calendar on the website and your specific league schedule to see when you can get back on the ice.  Hurry hard!

Dear Members,

The Board of the Chester Curling Club has been carefully considering the ramifications of the restrictions announced on Friday afternoon by Premier Rankin and Dr Strang and have come to the conclusion that the current circumstances are virtually identical to those that we were faced with on November 26, 2020.

The measure which impacts our club most is the requirement to avoid all non-essential travel into and out of HRM.  Since a significant number of our members reside within the HRM boundaries identified by Dr Strang, they are directly impacted as they are forbidden from travelling to the club.  Furthermore, some members of the club (as well as coaches) travel into HRM regularly for essential purposes but live outside the HRM boundaries, so although the text of the restrictions may not apply to them, they do pose an increased risk of exposure to other members of the club. 

The expedient response to this uncertainty would be to close down all club operations for at least a few weeks, as if we were within the boundaries of the latest restrictions.  That approach, however, does not take into account the positive benefits to the physical and mental health of those members of the club who do have the good fortune to both live outside of the formal boundaries and to not be required to travel into HRM regularly for work or other essential activities.

In order to address these factors, we have agreed to make the following changes to club operations until such time as further changes are made to public health regulations.

• Members of the club that live within the boundaries of HRM as designated in the latest restrictions, are forbidden by public health regulation to travel to the club. If you live outside the boundaries, but you, or a household member, travel regularly to HRM for essential activities, we would strongly recommend that you not participate in any club activities. Equally, that recommendation would also apply to juniors who have parents that frequently travel to HRM.

• It is difficult to ascertain exactly how many members will be impacted by item #1, but we do know that it will be significant enough to disrupt the make-up of most teams in the organized leagues on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights and the Junior League on Sunday afternoons. As a result, we will be cancelling the regular schedules of those leagues until new public health regulations are released. In place of those leagues, we already have volunteers to run drop-in leagues on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights and will release details soon of any arrangements that can be made for Sunday afternoons.
• The format of our current drop-in leagues is flexible enough to deal with lower attendance and the Day, Stick and Tuesday Night leagues will continue, with some minor adjustments, to safely address our community’s need for healthy recreation activities. The current gathering limits that are applicable to the ice shed of the club is a maximum of 60 people, so play can still take place on all four sheets of ice within all of the drop-in leagues.

While these restrictions to our operations may seem overreactive, the Club’s location at the edge of HRM puts us in unique circumstances and, in our view, obliges us to follow both the letter and the spirit of the latest public health restrictions.  The best thing we can do in the next few weeks to keep the club up and running for the remainder of the season is to do our part to help contain COVID-19 in the HRM area and not have it spread to surrounding communities.

Having said that, your Board members are not public health officials and we have neither the ability nor the power to rule on individual circumstances, especially those in the grey area between those specifically forbidden to travel to the club by provincial regulation and those whose individual circumstances clearly present negligible risk of spreading the COVID-19 virus to other club members.

As with many public health directives that have been issued during this pandemic, it is up to you as a responsible member of society in general, and the curling club in particular, to assess your own compliance with the public health regulations and the direction given by the curling club.  Please make your decision to come to the club responsibly and, if you do come to the club, remember to follow all of the protocols in place to safeguard your health and the health of your fellow curlers.

February 27, 2021

Team practices will be conducted under the following guidelines:

• Avoid non-essential travel to and from Halifax, Hants and Lunenburg County locations that have additional restrictions and protective measures in place. See Halifax County restriction alerts, Hants County restriction alerts, and Lunenburg County restriction alerts.
  
  
• Access will be limited to teams that regularly curl together and who have a coach or other volunteer who has been issued a key and is willing to act as the designated individual as defined in our Facilities Operation Plan  The designated individual is responsible to ensure that the ice shed is used safely and responsibly, and to ensure that all COVID-19 precautions are followed. If your team is unable to make arrangements with an authorized keyholder, please contact Dale Rafuse at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. so arrangements can be made.
  
  
• Bookings are to be made online and bookings must not exceed the public health limit of participants. 

• The ice will be shaved regularly during the period of the restrictions and will not be available for practice at those times, which will be indicated in the ice book. It is up to the teams using the facility to prepare the ice for their own use, if they wish to do so. If you do pebble, nip, etc, please make the appropriate entry in the ice maintenance log, so others will know what the status/usage of the ice has been.

• All COVID-19 precautions are to be followed when entering the club and when preparing to go out on the ice. This includes hand sanitizing, signing in in the book at the entrance, wearing masks and maintaining physical distancing. Once all participants have arrived, the outer door will be locked to maintain club security while teams are on the ice.

• In preparation for leaving the club, please ensure that all tables, chairs and other surfaces that have been contacted by your group are sanitized and that chairs are leaned up against the tables to assure subsequent users that they have been sanitized. As usual, all lights in the club are to be turned off and the entrance doors are to be locked upon departure from the club.

February 26, 2021

Based on the announcement of increased public health restrictions that was made today, we will once again have to restrict operations at the club for the next four weeks.  We will have to confirm some details for how our leagues can continue to operate (for members that live outside HRM), but the principal element of the restrictions that were announced today is that non-essential travel is to be avoided within the province, especially to and from the defined area which includes HRM and Hubbards. 

In November, similar direction was interpreted by the Chester Curling Club Board as follows:

Members of the club that live within the boundaries of HRM as designated in the latest restrictions, are forbidden by public health regulation to travel to the club.  If you live outside the HRM boundaries, but you, or a household member, travel regularly to HRM for essential activities, we would strongly recommend that you not participate in any club activities.  Equally, that recommendation would also apply to juniors who have parents that frequently travel to HRM.

We will continue to determine if this interpretation is appropriate to the current direction, but since the new restrictions take effect at 8:00 AM tomorrow, February 27, we are imposing this restriction on club operations until further notice.

February 5, 2021

Team practices will be conducted under the following guidelines:

• Access will be limited to teams that regularly curl together and who have a coach or other volunteer who has been issued a key and is willing to act as the designated individual as defined in our Facilities Operation Plan  The designated individual is responsible to ensure that the ice shed is used safely and responsibly, and to ensure that all COVID-19 precautions are followed. If your team is unable to make arrangements with an authorized keyholder, please contact Dale Rafuse at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. so arrangements can be made.

• For now, bookings are to be made in the ice book at the club and bookings must include the number of people in your group, in order to ensure that ice usage is coordinated and that the total number of participants does not exceed the public health limit of 100 participants.The club is actively exploring the feasibility of an online booking system for all ice usage which is actually part of our Curling Club Manager software. We are optimistic that one can be implemented in the very near future.  Updates will be provided as progress is made.

• The ice will be shaved regularly during the period of the restrictions and will not be available for practice at those times, which will be indicated in the ice book. It is up to the teams using the facility to prepare the ice for their own use, if they wish to do so. If you do pebble, nip, etc, please make the appropriate entry in the ice maintenance log, so others will know what the status/usage of the ice has been.

• All COVID-19 precautions are to be followed when entering the club and when preparing to go out on the ice. This includes hand sanitizing, signing in in the book at the entrance, wearing masks and maintaining physical distancing. Once all participants have arrived, the outer door will be locked to maintain club security while teams are on the ice.

• In preparation for leaving the club, please ensure that all tables, chairs and other surfaces that have been contacted by your group are sanitized and that chairs are leaned up against the tables to assure subsequent users that they have been sanitized. As usual, all lights in the club are to be turned off and the entrance doors are to be locked upon departure from the club.

Great news!  Beginning tomorrow, Monday January 25, we will be able to resume game play at the club for at least the next two weeks. 

We have reviewed the revised COVID-19 Facility Operation Plan that we issued on October 1 and it establishes standards that will allow us to operate in accordance with almost all of the current Public Health restrictions and offer all of our normal league play as well as to reinstate our bar service.  The only change from our previous policy is that we are not currently allowed to have any spectators in the facility for any practice or game situations.

The COVID Plan can be found at CCC COVID Plan Oct1. and we would recommend that all members give it another read in order to refresh their understanding of all of the procedures associated with curling safely at the club during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Wednesday and Thursday Night leagues plan to take up where they left off in the schedule before the holidays, but the Friday Night league will release a new schedule shortly.  The other leagues will operate as they were before the latest restrictions were imposed.  Members are welcome to take part in more than one league as there is not currently any requirement to stick with one exclusive group. 

The calendar and leagues schedules will be updated on the club website shortly, so be sure to check them out to confirm timings of all of your games.

Good Curling And Stay Safe!

Last Wednesday, we announced some new opportunities for members to join exclusive curling groups which would allow them to take part in recreational scrimmages that were understood, at that time, to be permissible under current public health restrictions.  Since that time, there has been considerable further investigation and discussion about this interpretation and the Board of Directors of the club has determined that scrimmages are not currently permitted after all.  Curling activities at the club will therefore be limited to practice only, pending revised government direction expected later this week.  We apologize for any confusion and disappointment that this may cause for our members.

In the meantime, we would like to maximize practice opportunities for our recreational members who may not be familiar or comfortable with booking ice time on their own for team practices.  To that end, we have asked the coordinators who had agreed to supervise our scrimmage arrangements to oversee practice activities during the regularly scheduled league times.

If there are 16 or less members who have expressed interest in taking part in a scheduled practice, then they will be able to go on the ice as existing teams or as teams formed by the coordinators for the purpose of practising and practice for the normal period of league play.  Each sheet will be limited to one group of four players and they must maintain physical distancing from the teams on adjacent sheets of ice.  If there are more than 16 people who wish to take part, then practice may be limited to one hour periods so that the additional players can get their turn to practice in a second session, as long as there are no more than 25 people in the facility at one time. 

Separate direction will be sent out for junior teams and their coaches.  Any non-junior teams that have been booking their own practice times may continue to do so outside of the scheduled practice groups and are requested to maintain physical distancing from any other teams that have booked at the same time.

Any members who would like to take part in the scheduled practice sessions, including those that are already taking part in independent practice sessions, should contact the coordinator on the list below for the session corresponding to the league in which they normally participate.  If you normally play in more than one league, please pick one so that everyone has a chance to get in some practice time.  If you have already expressed an interest in a time slot based on our direction of last week, then coordinators will assume that you plan to take part in these practice sessions this week. 

On Wednesday, we announced some new opportunities for members to join curling “bubbles” which will allow them to take part in recreational scrimmages that are permissible under current health restrictions.  There were some formatting issues with our email and the specific direction to members was difficult for some to find as it was only in the second last paragraph of a relatively long email.  We are therefore issuing this clarification.

Any member of the curling club that would like to take part in curling starting next week is to choose one (and only one) of the curling “bubbles” listed below and contact the coordinator to express interest in participating.  Requests can be made on an individual or team basis, as capacity allows and priority will be given to people who normally participated in the corresponding league that was in place prior to the introduction of health restrictions.

The size of the bubbles is limited by public health restrictions to 25 people.  As the bubbles approach the maximum capacity, we may have to look at more than one draw on a popular night, asking folks to move to another bubble that is not yet at capacity or creating an additional bubble on Monday nights.  Once the bubbles have been set, coordinators will provide instructions to bubble members about final timing and other logistical arrangements.

Because this is a temporary arrangement, we ask for the patience and understanding of all members as we sort things out. 

For more details on the background for this decision and these arrangements, please refer to the Chester Curling Club email sent at 4:43 PM on January 13.