The Stewart McGillivray Curling Trophy

The Stewart McGillivray Curling Trophy.

As President of the Glasgow & District Rotary Curling Club (2013/14) I had chaired our AGM in April 2014.

At present the winner of the Garside Trophy is decided at the end of the season by a play off between 1st in League A against 2nd in League B with the winner playing the winner of 2nd in League A against 1st in League B.

The Final this year was East Kilbride League A against Hamilton League B  - this shows that a team from either League can win the Garside Trophy.

My proposal at The AGM was that we have two additional Trophies - one for the winner of The A League and one for the winner of the B League.   My suggestion was that should Rotary Clubs have superfluous trophies, that they consider donating them for this purpose.

I had previously considered this as The Glasgow Club has a Curling Fellowship Trophy : "The Rotary Ramshead Glasgow Area Winners in memory of Stewart McGillivray"  A.R.I.B.A., M.R.T.P.I.  Stewart was our President for only  a few short months prior to his untimely death (1988/89).

By sheer coincidence an article was published in our April Club Bulletin referring to THIS Trophy.  This was "news" from 25 years ago.  More importantly the article stated " The Rotary Club of Renfrew presented a magnificent Trophy in Memory of Stewart McGillivray to be played for in The Glasgow District Stage of the Scottish Curling Championships.

I and indeed the other "older" Curlers were not aware of the association with the Renfrew Club and indeed "unfortunately" this is not recorded on the Trophy.

The trophy has not been competed for for many years as the Ramshead Competition now decides which Rotary Club qualifies for the Rotary World Championships and there is no longer a "Glasgow District Stage"

Wishing to investigate further I contacted out Club Archivist, Jack Steele and the full wording of the article in that Bulletin is:

"The Renfrew Club presented a magnificent Trophy in memory of Stewart McGillivray to be played for in the Glasgow District stage of the Scottish Championship and it was with pleasure that Alex Hamilton, Jim Primrose, Bert Battison and Douglas Fordyce won through to bring the Trophy to our Club in its first year. This was followed by a victory over the Ayrshire Rotarians in the inter District stage of the competition and our team travel to Perth on 5th April to play in the final stages."

Our Club were therefore "custodians" of this beautiful trophy and having sought the permission of our Club Council and The Rotary Club of Renfrew it was agreed to "rebadge" the trophy and present it to the Glasgow and District Curling Club to be presented to the winner of one of the leagues.

The Trophy is now inscribed:-

Donated by the Rotary Club of Renfrew to the Rotary Club of Glasgow In memory of their President Stewart McGillivray who died in his Presidential year (1988) who sought to promote curling In the Glasgow Area.

Bill Christie