The Assiniboine Memorial Curling Club (AMCC) was the host to our community’s 21st Manitoba Japanese Canadian Curling Bonspiel on April 11th. This was our second year at the AMCC with a full roster of 18 teams, including several new teams. It was a marathon of curling with many games played, a lot of sweeping, post-day sore muscles, but must most of all, a lot of shared laughs and memories created.
After the bonspiel, the 115 curlers and guests attended the Cultural Center to celebrate the day with a Japanese meal. The Japanese cuisine meal always provides a special ending to our day and we are so thankful to the JCAM volunteers.
Congratulations to all curlers (18 teams) and especially the winning teams for 2026:
- Toru Suzuki Champions: Glenn & Joyce Matsumoto, Greg & Debra Holowka
- A side runner up: Markus & Narumi Stein, Randy Hirose, Dianne Ohori, Morgan, Kass
- B side winners: Shibata family: Gary, Kara, Steve, Sandra, Mia and Hudson
- C side winners: Chad Okumura, Adam Oye, Jason Kressock, Jordan Glesmann
- D side winners: Sasha Gervais, Bonnie Moore, Candace Ikeda-Douglas, Shawn Moore
This bonspiel would be impossible to execute without our generous bonspiel donations.
- JCAM Donation: Ken Matsukubo
- Prize Donations: JCAM, Don MacDonald, Shibata and Sands families, Jim & Margaret Suzuki, Naomi Krasovec, Terumi Kuwada, all 18 curling teams
In honour of Doug Shibata who passed away in 2024, and who was our Draw Master since our bonspiel’s inception, the Shibata family awarded the “Doug Shibata Sportsmanship Award” to Don Teranshi, a long-time participant in the bonspiel, for his ongoing sportsmanship and involvement in our curling bonspiel over the years. Don is a kind, considerate person and an ultimate gentleman. We also recognized that Don designed our Manitoba Japanese Canadian Curling Bonspiel logo back in 2003. Don and his family have won the bonspiel 4 times! Family is important to Don and we are pleased that he was able to curl with 3 generations of Teranishi’s over the years. He was also recognized for his work with JCAM including Folklorama and as JCAM’s in-house designer. As Pam says, “Don is our in-house designer – our “go-to” guy for everhting creative and artistic in JCAM. Basically, he makes JCAM look beautiful!”. Congratulations, Don!
Thank you to our community’s volunteers, for without them the banquet would not be possible. A huge thank you to Hazel Saito and Caroline Yamashita for their leadership of the banquet. The Japanese meal was absolutely delicious! Many thanks to the shoppers, cooks, sushi-rollers, set-up, servers, clean-up crew, bartenders, and many others. The volunteers deserve a big thank you from all the curlers and their guests, so domo arigato.
They say a picture paints a thousand words, and we hope to have the event pictures posted to the JCAM website in the near future.
2027 will be the bonspiel’s 22nd anniversary, so we hope to see you there.
Sandra Shibata
