Alfie Phillips Jr. has been inducted into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame
A champion of the ice and true builder of the sport was announced today as the latest inductee into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame.
Alfie Phillips Jr. was officially welcomed into the Hall as a curler/builder during a special event earlier this month in his hometown of Toronto.
“A great honor for a game I've played for 66 years,” Phillips said. “Thanks to Dad. He's watching from the Canada Sports Hall of Fame. Thanks to the Brier team of Keith Reilly, Ron Manning and John Ross. Thanks to our curling paper, Ontario Curling Report, Pete Birchard, Ken Thompson and Bob Weeks. Thanks to Art Lobel because I know he was involved in My nomination.
A competitive footballer who followed in the footsteps of his father (a member of the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame who skipped Ontario for a silver medal in the 1956 Brier and also won two Commonwealth Games gold medals in diving in 1930), Phillips outlasted his team of Ross, Manning and Riley to win the 1967 MacDonald Brier in Hull, Que., and followed this up with a third-place finish in the 1967 Scotch Cup Men's World Championship in Scotland.
Phillips' team has had great success on the ice, and has led a pioneering effort off the ice to give Ontario teams the opportunity to compete for money and prizes, such as the four snowmobiles it won at 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 considered “professional” and ineligible to compete in the Brier qualifiers. Adding more drama was Phillips' appointment as manager of the Toronto Curling Club, which also made him a “professional” under the rules of the Ontario Curling Association.
Phillips' team was banned from competing by the Olympic Council of Asia, but thanks to efforts organized by Phillips to motivate his peers and the media to speak out against the old rule, the ban was lifted a year later.
Phillips also contributed to journalism, co-founding the influential and highly read Ontario Curling Report and contributing columns over the next four decades. He was a pillar of Toronto's curling community, helping to 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 the teams skipped by Ed Werenich and Marlyn Bodogh.
“Few people can match the contributions that Alfie Phillips Jr. 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 advocacy of curlers that won major awards and to his work with the Ontario Curling Report, he has been a leading light for more than 60 years.”
More inductees into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame will be announced later this season.
