Nolan Thiessen sees opportunity to think about future of curling in Canada

Curling Canada chief executive officer Nolan Thiessen wants people thinking big thoughts and asking new questions about the sport.

The start of an Olympic quadrennial, the federal government’s investment of an additional $755 million into high-performance sport over the next five years and the release of the Future of Sport in Canada Commission report this year all created food for thought about curling’s future, he said.

“Everybody wants more people playing our game and everyone wants us to win medals and everything in between,” Thiessen said. “There’s an opportunity to do that if we all kind of think about things in a systems way as opposed to an outcome-oriented way.

“It’s going to be about the conversations that we have. Progress is more people curling, more people curling better, using our facilities more often with experiences that are memorable. That’s progress.”

Curling Canada has launched a “Future of Canadian Curling” campaign that includes a seven-point infographic of goals and actions for curlers, clubs, athletes, coaches, provincial and territorial associations, government, sponsors and Curling Canada itself.

The CEO will write this winter about shifts curling can make on the organization’s website.

“There’s just an opportunity to kind of get together behind a bit of a shared purpose, a shared reason for being. I think it’s time,” he said. “You saw the Future of Sport Commission report where they talked about fragmentation and lack of direction.

“We had some conversations with our member associations this spring and we worked together on a bit of a ‘what is success?’ From that, it turned into there’s a few small tweaks in how we think and people will be able to kind of share the same success, the same North Star.”

He points out that when people say “I’m a curler” as opposed to “I play curling,” they identify strongly with a sport community.

That’s a card that clubs, and the people in them, can play in recruiting and retaining people in the sport.

“The experience that somebody has is what retains them, is what keeps them coming back,” Thiessen said. “There’s that first experience when they walk through the door that you want to be memorable and you want them to say ‘I really enjoyed myself,’ but returning and having the same experience or a better experience.

“Facilities really matter. Someone would say,’ Well, what is Curling Canada doing for facilities?’ Even with the investment from the Government of Canada, we don’t have the investment to go out and upgrade 850 facilities, but we can coach up the people in the system to go to those places and treat those clubs more as businesses to start to be future-focused, to stop just solving the problems of today or yesterday and start making plans.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2026.

Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press