1971_Macdonald_Brier
The 1971 Macdonald Brier, Canada's national men's curling championship was held March 1–6 at the 2,800 seat Pavilion de la Jeunesse in Quebec City, Quebec.
A blizzard hit the city late in the week, and was blamed for low attendance. One draw had to be cancelled due to the blizzard, and curlers had to be shuttled from the rink to their hotels on snowmobiles.[1]
Manitoba, Northern Ontario, and Saskatchewan all finished round robin play with 8-2 records, necessitating a tiebreaker playoff between the three teams to determine the Brier championship. Despite Saskatchewan defeating both Manitoba and Northern Ontario in round robin play, lots were drawn to determine the seeds. Team Manitoba won the draw and were given a bye into the final.[2]
Team Manitoba, who was skipped by Don Duguid ended up capturing the Brier Tankard by beating Northern Ontario in the final 11-6 as Northern Ontario skip Bill Tetley conceded in the final end.[3] Northern Ontario earlier advanced to the final with a 10-9 victory over Saskatchewan. This was the fourth time in Brier history in which a three-way tiebreaker determined the championship with the other instances being in 1928, 1946, and 1962. This was also the last tiebreaker playoff to determine a champion prior to the institution of the playoffs in 1980.
This was Manitoba's eighteenth Brier championship overall. Duguid became only the fifth skip to ever win back-to-back Briers joining Gordon Hudson, Matt Baldwin, Ernie Richardson (twice), and Ron Northcott to ever accomplish that feat. Duguid's team (Rod Hunter, Jim Pettapiece, and Bryan Wood) joined Richardson's 1959 and 1960 teams as they only rinks to have won back-to-back Briers with the same four team members.
Duguid's rink would represent Canada in the 1971 Air Canada Silver Broom, which was the men's world curling championship in which they also defended their title from the previous year.
After winning the 1971 World Championship, Duguid retired from competitive curling, and joined the CBC in 1972 as a curling commentator.[4]
