Host city Ottawa Dates March 4–10 Winner Manitoba | Arena Ottawa Civic Centre Attendance 89,081 | |
Curling club Deer Lodge CC, Winnipeg | ||
The 1979 Macdonald Brier, Canada's national men's curling championship was held from March 4 to 10 at the Ottawa Civic Centre in Ottawa.
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Manitoba's Barry Fry won his only Brier title of his career. He clinched the Brier title following the Friday night (March 9) draw. The rink which also included Bill Carey, Gordon Sparkes and Bryan Wood would go on to represent Canada at the 1979 Air Canada Silver Broom, the World Curling Championships.
It Would be the last Brier under the sponsorship of Macdonald Tobacco. This marked an end of an era, as Macdonald Tobacco had sponsored the event since the first Brier in 1927. Following the final draw, the head of Macdonald Tobacco, David Macdonald Stewart declared "[f]or half a century, Macdonald Tobacoo has followed an idea ... a dream to ... bring together Canadians, from all parts of the country and all walks of life, in a national sporting event. Curling was the ideal sport. It's been a wonderful experience. We've now seen the final chapter in 50 years of Canadian history". To commemorate the end of the Macdonald era, every living Brier champion skip at the time were invited to attend the Brier, and had their picture taken together. The lone surviving curler from the 1927 Brier, Emmet Smith (Northern Ontario) was also invited. The group of skips gathered before the final draw of the event for a special ceremony.
The event was also the last Brier without a playoff following the round robin. The final attendance of the event was 89,081 which was a Brier record at the time. 7000 people witnessed the final draw on March 10, despite the matches being meaningless to the outcome of the event.
The event was marred with slow ice conditions and bad rocks, which were borrowed from a local curling club. The rocks were mismatched and pitted which "reduced shotmaking to a guessing game." Part way through the week, organizers asked for the teams to vote on changing the rocks. The teams that favoured hitting, including the leading Manitoba rink opposed changing the rocks, as the mismatched rocks made draw shots more difficult than hit shots.