PRESENTS Photegraph taken at Tam O'Shanter Country Club, Agincourt, Ontario So you're going to start Curling This winter thousands of Ontario men and women, many of them young couples, will take up curling; they'll join more than half-a-million Canadians who are already enjoying the country's fastest-growing game, In October 1954, Ontario had 125 men's clubs, 42 women's clubs, The latest figures for the province show an increase in these figures to 209 and 125 respectively, As an example: in 1955 there were only twenty sheets of ice in the whole Toronto area, Lastgsear there were seventy, This season at least two more clubs with sixteen sheets between them will be built, More new rinks are planned, One of the new clubs will offer the area its second pay-as-you-play facilities, If you are one of the converts you will be taking up a game rich in tradition, It was played in Scotland as far back as 1500, And in Canada, following the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, General Wolfe's Highland troops were reported to have melted down cannon balls for stones, I wh 9 ~ You will also become part of a game that has, for all he . its age, great vitality, for in recent years the accent has been on youth, Today's champions are likely to be in their thirties, and sixty thousand schoolboys curl amd even have their own national championships, Another significant development is the interest women, especially younger women, have taken in the game, Encouraged by the opportunity to play atstheir golf club or their own curling club, and given the further incentive to compete by entering bonspiels like the O'Keefe Mixed and the O'Keefe Ladies, they have broadened the scope of the game without changing its traditional appeal, Like the men, women now have their own national championship. So curling, all over Ontario, has become a family game with more and more young couples learning to play. Mixed competition, which was raré not too many years ago, is now as much a part of curling club life as the social gatherings in the lounge where players meet to relax and talk over a bottle of O'Keefe while watching the other games in progress on the ice beyond the glass,