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Broomgate: A Curling Scandal, Episode 5: Sweeping Summit

Host: John Cullen

JOHN CULLEN: It's two weeks after the fiasco in High Park between the Black Magic and Ice Pad super brooms. I'm at home when my phone pings. It's a Facebook DM sent to my account. It's from someone who I've never met but have been Facebook friends with for about two years. He starts out by telling me that he hardly ever looks at Facebook, nor does he comment, but something I have done has pushed him to write to me directly. Let's cue up the re-enactment, shall we?

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I have strong feelings about these broom heads, and I feel like anyone bragging about using them should be put in their place.

JOHN CULLEN: He seems to be aware that I use the Ice Pad.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I take blatant cheating in the game seriously. I don't want to see that product anywhere near a curling rink.

JOHN CULLEN: Blatant cheating? To be honest, my stomach lurched. That's a heavy accusation. High Park might have been over, but the anger and the frustration of that event continued to ripple across the whole curling community. Because there was no direction from Curling Canada or the World Curling Federation, individual curling event organizers were left to decide on their own how they wanted to handle things. So rules about brooms would change from event to event.

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FIRST SPEAKER: I'm going to go and I'm going to say this brush thing is getting silly.

SECOND SPEAKER: I'm with it. I really am.

JOHN CULLEN: The elite curling world was descending into chaos. One of the most intense confrontations happened during a tournament in Truro, Nova Scotia, between Rich Hart of BalancePlus and a top curler sponsored by Hardline.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: There was a yelling match in the hotel bar at the Quality Hotel in Truro. Like curlers all around, other hotel guests. And, you know, you know, Rich is fiery, right? He’s a competitor, and he kind of lost his control a little bit.

JOHN CULLEN: The atmosphere in a hotel bar during a curling tournament is usually jovial, full of laughs. So for a confrontation like this to take place, I can only imagine how uncomfortable it must have been. But this tension was not limited to the men's side. Things were getting tense on the women's side too.

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CHELSEA CAREY: You'd be in the locker room and there would be people saying stuff like, oh, well, it's hard for them to lose because they cheat.

JOHN CULLEN: Chelsea Carey is a two time Canadian champion who actually won her first national title during the Broomgate season, but it was using a Hardline broom, which some people felt tainted the win.

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CHELSEA CAREY: It felt super personal because it was being called a cheater. And so yeah, it was very, very adversarial. Like I've never… it was awful. It was so unpleasant to be at curling events, which is usually, I just said it's my favourite part of the game, to be around the people and hang out and all that stuff. And like you don't love everybody necessarily, but like everybody generally gets along and it's good and it's whatever. But it was horrible that year. There was teams crying, like people crying on the ice. Like it was awful. Awful.

JOHN CULLEN: Archie and Harach, the brothers behind the Hardline Ice Pad, claim that this friction in the community led to other broom companies conspiring against them.

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HARACH MANAVIAN: They called every retailer and said, either you not sell our products or we're going to take our product off of your shelves. So they started bullying us with retailers.

ARCHIE MANAVIAN: That's exactly it. They started calling pro shops to say that if you carry Hardline, we're going to pull our stock off the shelf. Another competitor at the time also threatened me to say that, you know, you got to stop selling your brooms. And I said, well, that's not going to happen.

JOHN CULLEN: We asked an owner of a pro shop and they denied ever getting any calls, but it was clear that this chaos was unsustainable. Someone needed to, once and for all, make a decision about these performance enhancing brooms, a clear, firm rule.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It's a big divisor now, and that's kind of sad for the sport, to be frank. So until the rules get established from the WCF, though, I see no issue with what any of these teams are doing out there.

JOHN CULLEN: Little did everyone know that in order to make a ruling, they'd need the help of some lasers, a sewing machine and a curling robot. This is Broomgate, the story of how a broom almost killed curling.

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GERRY PECKHAM: We had a significant issue on our hands. Every event in Canada, every provincial territorial association, you know, looming on the horizon was our Olympic qualification process. The Brier, the Scotties, the worlds, all of that Canadian team ranking system, it's all sitting in the background. So it had the potential to be a nightmare.

JOHN CULLEN: This is Gerry Peckham. During Broomgate, he worked for Curling Canada. Gerry was the high performance director, so usually, his main focus would be training up the next Olympic national team. But in 2015, his focus was being pulled elsewhere. Curling Canada is used to putting out fires, but Broomgate, it was an inferno.

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GERRY PECKHAM: I was getting lots of calls from curlers, you know, who I had high regard for. And, you know, so there seemed to be an ever expanding consensus that there was, in fact, a broom based issue here.

JOHN CULLEN: In addition to members being upset about unruly brooms, it became clear that curlers were also frustrated that there had been no direction or solutions offered up by any of the adults at the table. One of the factors contributing to Curling Canada's lack of direction was the curling rulebook. Compared to other sports, the rules portion of the curling rulebook is slight. At the time of Broomgate, it was only 42 pages long. To put that in context, the Major League Baseball rulebook is 192 pages, and nothing in curling’s rulebook was written to deal with an issue like Broomgate.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Curling is a game of skill and tradition. A shot well executed is a delight to see, and it is also a fine thing to observe the time honoured traditions of curling being applied in the true spirit of the game.

JOHN CULLEN: This is how the 2014 15 Rules to Curling and Competition booklet begins.

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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Curlers play to win, but never to humble their opponents. A true curler would prefer to lose rather than to win unfairly.

JOHN CULLEN: Prefer to lose? Spirit of the game? This sounds like something out of a movie for children. Everybody just be nice to each other and the sport will be in a better place. But shockingly, that's how it was. For years, the rules of curling worked because curlers were mostly just nice to each other.

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GRAHAM PROUSE: You know, we value the statement, the spirit of curling. It's in our rulebook. We go to the first page of our rulebook, actually, and it talks about not taking unfair advantage and what have you.

JOHN CULLEN: This is Graham Prouse, VP of the World Curling Federation, now known as World Curling. If there is a big boss organization for curling, this is it. And it's their rulebook that we're talking about here. The 2015 edition covers everything from the dimensions of the ice sheet to the makeup of a team to scoring. There is a section on sweeping, but it's only about a page long, and there really isn't anything about the type of broom one can use. And people took advantage of this. One guy invented a broom with two heads, like a kayak paddle, switching between an ice pad and an older broom head mid shot. It looked ridiculous, but no one could do anything about it.

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JOHN CULLEN: Why do you think that that didn't exist? Like it does seem a little bit crazy when you think about it that these teams were showing up to like Olympics and World Championships and they could kind of show up with anything they wanted.

GRAHAM PROUSE: Exactly. You know, we're a long way down our Olympic path here. And, you know, the margins are so fine. Everybody's looking for a way to get half a percent better. And so it should have been done long, long, long before now or before we did, you know, to at least create some sort of a process that would allow us to determine whether or not something should be on the ice.

JOHN CULLEN: So near the tail end of the season, with the Olympics fast approaching, Graham and Gerry agree that this broom thing can't get out of hand, especially on the world stage.

GERRY PECKHAM: Because the manufacturers were already lining up. They were lining up on one side of the equation or the other. So, you know, every time you turned around, someone was threatening a lawsuit about something, right? Or other manufacturers were threatening to produce a Frankenstein model of the brush.

JOHN CULLEN: They needed to make a rule to put in their tiny book, but they couldn't make one based on the complaints of curlers alone.

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GERRY PECKHAM: I couldn't ban them as a result of a phone call, right? So if there was going to be a process, the process was going to have to be multi-stakeholder. It was going to have to be incredibly scientific. It was going to have to produce irrefutable evidence.

JOHN CULLEN: That's when Graham Prouse of World Curling was struck with an idea that would forever change the course of professional curling. He wanted to gather pro curlers, broom makers, officials, community members, and hold something he called a sweeping summit, a chance to figure out what the heck these brooms were doing, understand their superpowers, and finally make a decision about which ones can stay and which ones got to go. Invitations to the sweeping summit went out to a select group. They were sent to top curlers like Brad Gushue and Swedish star Niklas Edin. But curiously, there was one big player who was omitted from the guest list, Mike McEwen.

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MIKE MCEWEN: Did I go to it?

JOHN CULLEN: Well, I know you didn't go to it, but just…

MIKE MCEWEN: I wasn't invited.

JOHN CULLEN: Yeah. Well, that wasn’t going to be my next question, but…

JOHN CULLEN: Invites also went out to brew manufacturers like Scott Taylor, inventor of the Black Magic, and of course, Archie and Harach at Hardline.

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HARACH MANAVIAN: I got to say, during that time, there was a lot of sleepless nights for us.

JOHN CULLEN: The real fear for Archie and Harach was that the sweeping summit would result in the downfall of their company. It was their belief that the whole curling community was ganging up to make an example out of Hardline.

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ARCHIE MANAVIAN: The one question that I want asked from every manufacturer is why did you pick on Hardline?

JOHN CULLEN: They were so worried that they even called their Dragon's Den investor, David Chilton, in a panic.

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DAVID CHILTON: Archie called me. He was such a nice person and he was so upset about all the attention, the negative attention it was getting about was it illegal. And of course, I'm on the other end of the line thrilled. Oh wait, the Dipper reaction we actually had to this was actually really, truly funny. Like he's almost in tears and I'm jumping up and down. I think this is the greatest thing ever. It's like I think, are you kidding me? Everybody's going to hear about our broom. And is there anything better than being told a broom is too good?

JOHN CULLEN: So with all of the invites in place, it was time for the curling elite to gather from across the world for three days of intense scientific broom research and once and for all, put an end to Broomgate.

JOHN CULLEN: Welcome to Kemptville, Ontario, home of the North Grenville Times, a bunch of sawmills, the century old Graham's Bakery, and in 2016, the arena where the most important people in curling gathered to try and save their sport. On May 24th, scientists, CEOs and curlers set up shop in Kemptville’s North Grenville Curling Club, and they weren't going to leave until they came up with an evidence based solution to Broomgate. They would test all the brooms used in professional play, including, of course, the Ice Pad and the Black Magic.

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GRAHAM PROUSE: Like, you know, a lot of people made some pretty serious contributions.

JOHN CULLEN: The hope was that by the end of it, World Curling would have enough data to determine which brooms and broom heads could be used in professional competition, and which ones should be banned.

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GRAHAM PROUSE: All the boxes you would have to check in the process of ensuring that the evidence was science based and irrefutable, so that when you came out of it, you would have in fact come out of it with a solution and not the perpetuation of a problem.

JOHN CULLEN: But when the broom manufacturers arrived at the summit, it was not exactly a warm welcome. Scott Taylor, president of BalancedPlus.

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SCOTT TAYLOR: The WCF kind of kept it a secret. Not really a secret, but the details weren't forthcoming, which was disappointing, I think, to most of the manufacturers. We didn't know what players or teams were being invited. Eventually, we were told where it was and told we could attend at our own expense and that we would have no participation. In fact, we couldn't even watch the testing. The players were bused off to a hotel for dinner. We weren't told where the hotel was. They wanted no interaction between the manufacturers and the sweepers.

JOHN CULLEN: Treating it like the G-7 or the Potsdam Conference, the officials of the sweeping summit were taking this very seriously. In no way did they want the manufacturers influencing the results of the test, so they hermetically sealed them far away from the ice.

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SCOTT TAYLOR: It was a nice facility.

JOHN CULLEN: Yeah.

SCOTT TAYLOR: Big curling club. So it had the nice lounge upstairs. That's where the manufacturers were kept with the drapes closed.

JOHN CULLEN: So with everyone securely in their places, the sweeping summit could begin. The Kemptville Curling Club is a cavernous building with a pitched roof ringed with bleachers. The sweeping summit was set up across three sheets of ice. Curling rocks were affixed with sensors, throwers and sweepers were standing at the ready, while officials and scientists sat on the sidelines typing into computers. Pro curler Marc Kennedy was in attendance, and describes how the place looked more like a science lab than a curling rink.

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MARC KENNEDY: They were ready for us. They were set up. And the National Research Council, like the group that was there, was very prepared and ready for what we were doing. Thank goodness, because a lot of us just kind of walked in like, hey, how are we making this work? You know, I do remember they had the ice set up and the building was all ours, but they were very careful on who they let in and who they actually let under the ice surface, very much in a manner of we got to get to business and we got to get this sorted out as quickly as possible, and this might be our only opportunity that we have to get this group together to get this done.

JOHN CULLEN: The organizers of the summit had pulled out all the stops to make sure they were getting the most accurate results. They even got their hands on a rock throwing robot, one that would throw the rock perfectly every time.

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GRAHAM PROUSE: I'm sure you heard the story, but we had some technology on site that was intended to look after rock throwing. And it worked pretty well, except it wasn't as good as Marc Kennedy.

JOHN CULLEN: As you might imagine, in 2015, rock throwing robot technology was not particularly advanced. It took them less than a day to figure out that this robot kind of sucked. Thankfully, Marc Kennedy did not suck.

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MARC KENNEDY: The original idea was to use the rock thrower mostly for that consistent speed. But at the time, the problem with the rock thrower is they just throw the rock straight. There's no, you know, outward trajectory like you would see on a normal curling rock. So it was evident that that wasn't going to work. In the end, I just kind of ended up being the guy.

GRAHAM PROUSE: So I lost count of the number of rocks that Marc threw at that time. He might never have recovered from it, I'm not sure, but his accuracy and consistency was machine-like. No other way to describe it.

JOHN CULLEN: Over and over again, Marc threw rocks exactly the same way.

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MARC KENNEDY: I probably threw a hundred rocks each day. It was just throw, throw, throw, throw, throw. We would start with having an idea of what the plan is. First of all, what the material was that we were testing, whether we were trying to keep it straight or make it curl or sweep it for distance, and then I would come out and I would throw. And once I threw it, as long as we felt like it was a very consistent and similar throw, then we would have the sweeper go about their business, you know, sweep it as hard as they could to get it to curl or as hard as they could to keep it straight. And once the rock came to a stop, the whole group kind of collaborated on what we thought we saw, and we would pass along that information to the National Research Council, and then we would just kind of move on to the next material. And my job was now to throw a lot of good rocks.

JOHN CULLEN: Stone after stone, they tested and tested and tested again. Lasers tracked the rock's movement, and putty was used to see how the brooms were scratching the ice. Marc figures by the end of the weekend, he must have thrown hundreds of rocks exactly the same way. Gradually, as the results came in, the testing began to tell a story. It wasn't just the Ice Pad or the Black Magic that were scary good. The testing revealed that almost all brooms on the market, even the hair, when used in the right way, had a directional effect on the rocks. This was not expected.

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MARC KENNEDY: I do remember getting mid-way through that last day being concerned.

JOHN CULLEN: It was the broom head fabric that was at issue here. They were all way too good.

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MARC KENNEDY: You know, a lot of the materials were gone instantly. All it took was one sweep from Mark Nichols and you're like, nope, that one's gone. Nope, that one's gone. Nope, that one's gone. I remember we had a couple where, you know, Mark, Mark and Ben would sweep to try to make it curl, and within six feet of sweeping it to curl, you could see it starting to move. And that alone just kind of red flags, no, this is not going to work for us. That material's gone.

JOHN CULLEN: To solve this and level the playing field, they needed to find a universal fabric that everyone deemed fair. Lucky for curling, sequestered far from the ice with the other broom manufacturers was BalancePlus president Scott Taylor.

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SCOTT TAYLOR: I'm not sure what they would have done if I hadn't gone. And it's not that I'm patting myself on the back. I just don't know what they would have done.

JOHN CULLEN: Scott is saying this because in the trunk of his car sat the one thing that everyone needed, his sewing machine.

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SCOTT TAYLOR: He literally got the sewing machine onto the table in the middle of the Kemptville viewing, you know, the viewing area downstairs surrounded by fabric, surrounded by other manufacturers with scissors and cutting the fabric and sewing it together and putting it over the Ice Pad or stapling it on to the other backing plates.

JOHN CULLEN: Different types of fabric were cut, sewed to a broom head and tested. When one failed, they tried again. Cut, sew, throw. Cut, sew, throw, eliminating fabrics as they went. And in the true spirit of curling, people came together to solve the problem.

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GERRY PECKHAM: You get that manufacturer group in the same room for long enough, you know, there's the competitive juices flowing, you know, and there's some scar tissue there. But I thought if anything, that was really symbolic, I thought, that, you know, here they are actually working for a solution.

GRAHAM PROUSE: I mean, in all honesty, the right decision was reached, arguably at the 11th hour.

JOHN CULLEN: No one remembers just how many different fabrics were tested, but they all remember when they discovered the right one.

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GERRY PECKHAM: The last day, we primarily focussed on trying to find something that would have less effect directionally than what we'd seen, but would still have a good impact from the standpoint of distance and from the standpoint of being able to stay useful through the whole game.

JOHN CULLEN: And so with hours left in the summit, a hero emerged.

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SCOTT TAYLOR: So late on Friday afternoon, this fabric that we see in front of us here, we decide to sew up some pieces and put it on some various broom heads.

JOHN CULLEN: They sewed it up, put it on the broom head, threw some rocks. Cut, sew, throw, cut, sew, throw. And after a year of battling against super brooms, they found what they were looking for, a fabric that was perfectly adequate, completely fair, and limited the effects of directional sweeping. There was absolutely nothing super about this broom.

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SCOTT TAYLOR: Out of a full week, this fabric was chosen in about less than two hours, Friday afternoon, just, you know, just before happy hour. So.

JOHN CULLEN: Wow.

SCOTT TAYLOR: Is it the best? Probably not, but it was the best that week.

JOHN CULLEN: It was decided in the tiny town of Kemptville, Ontario, that all brooms in elite competitive play would use one universal fabric, one fabric to rule them all, Nylon Oxford 420 D. This meant players and manufacturers could still develop better broom handles and broom heads, but the Ice Pad was banned. So was the Black Magic and the Goldline Norway. Even the trusty hair broom couldn't be used anymore. Everyone from here on out had to use this universal fabric.

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JOHN CULLEN: And you think that at the end of the day, the sweeping summit did its job and the right decision was reached.

GRAHAM PROUSE: At the end of the day, you know, I think we slew the dragon, you know, and we did it as a collective. There wasn't any one or any four or any eight of us that could have done that. But when we all armed up on the same side of the equation, which was to find a solution, lo and behold, there it was. And we haven't looked back since.

JOHN CULLEN: Players like Glenn Howard were content with the decision.

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GLENN HOWARD: Yes, I think that was brilliant in the fact that it made a level playing field with the material. Definitely a step in the right direction. I think that that was a good move. And then it was a matter of the manufacturers have to deal with this material and how else can you make your broom better, a little incremental. So yeah, I think they did the right thing.

JOHN CULLEN: Even Brad Gushue agreed that choosing a universal fabric was a step in the right direction.

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BRAD GUSHUE: We realized, you know, materials within the broom had an impact. So we learned a lot during that.

JOHN CULLEN: And for the Manavian brothers who had more at stake than anyone, they were okay with the end result as well. Maybe more than okay.

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HARACH MANAVIAN: And I remember to this day, me, I looked at Archie. That was the moment where I felt vindicated right there because we have been saying that for months, saying, guys, you're just banning us, but the other brooms are doing the same thing if you swept it that way. And they just wouldn't believe it. And that test finally proved it, and they had no choice.

JOHN CULLEN: For Mike McEwen, the guy who was on the outside looking in, he too agreed with the results of the summit.

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MIKE MCEWEN: We need rules. And now, like I actually look back on it in a weird way. There's that stressful period of time in my life where we got dragged through the mud to some extent unfairly. But I feel uniquely proud that curling actually evolved in the last seven years in part by us using the Hardline Ice Pads. And the game evolved in such a cool way where like that exploration, that imagination on what sweeping can be is like… like you don't even make your teams the same way now. Like even the players that you pick to be on your team, everything's changed.

JOHN CULLEN: What hasn't changed is that regardless of what broom he's using, Mike McEwen is still a damn good curler. In March of 2024, he made it to his first ever Brier final and went head to head with, you guessed it, Brad Gushue.

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Commentary: Good way back. What an opportunity with the roller.

JOHN CULLEN: It was a close game with both Titans trading shots and playing at the highest level.

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Commentary: Got it. One. Yes, it took two. Oh my goodness. Where did that come from?

JOHN CULLEN: In the end, Brad the chess master took home the win. But unlike when they played in 2015, the match wasn't tense. Sure, it was competitive, with both Mike and Brad exhibiting an intensity that only elite athletes do, but there wasn't an air of suspicion. It was just two great competitors going head to head using Hardline brooms.

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BRAD GUSHUE: You know, kudos to Mike and his team. Like they were… they had an incredible week, particularly Mike. He was awesome.

JOHN CULLEN: As for Archie and Harach, they welcome this new era of curling and are thrilled that Hardline has a place in it.

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HARACH MANAVIAN: No matter what they did during that year, no matter how much we were against what they did during that year, at the end, they got it right.

JOHN CULLEN: Hanging on the walls of their office are photos of teams from all over the world holding their Hardline brooms. What started as a postal workers side hustle has grown into one of the most predominant curling brands.

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HARACH MANAVIAN: Yeah, this is all the gold medal wins. So this is gold, silver, bronze for the men's. This is Sweden. This is Team Edin, Sweden. This is Scotland. Scotland again won gold for the women's.

ARCHIE MANAVIAN: Sweden here, Japan, Great Britain, Italy

HARACH MANAVIAN: So at the end, we got more business out of it. We got more attention out of it. So now, it's like people just know.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Did you imagine when you started this that you'd be getting gold medals with your brooms?

ARCHIE MANAVIAN: I was lucky to be going out to lunch with Jon Cullen, not about getting gold medals.

JOHN CULLEN: I've been super lucky to have found curling at the ripe old age of 12. It's on the ice that I've made some of my best friends. The game has been one of the most significant parts of my life.

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ANNOUNCER: Some of you might know John as a comedian. He's a funny man here in the curling world.

JOHN CULLEN: Which is why I wanted to tell the story of Broomgate in the first place. Not only to uncover the details of our sports only scandal, but my hope is that by talking about it, we can avoid something like this happening again.

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JOHN CULLEN: Okay, I just want to finish with some very basic questions for you.

JOHN CULLEN: Curling has changed since Broomgate, no doubt. But I now realize there is one intangible thing that permeates throughout every curling club in the country, one immeasurable part of the game that most players innately feel remains strong, the spirit of curling.

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JOHN CULLEN: What does the spirit of curling mean to you?

FIRST UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: The spirit of curling is is good sportsmanship, win or lose.

SECOND UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You know, shaking your opponent's hands before and after a game.

THIRD UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We're all fierce competitors on the ice. But as soon as we're off there, we're all great friends.

JOHN CULLEN: And even after all of this, everyone still loves the game.

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FIRST UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I love, I still love sliding on the ice, John.

SECOND UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: The competitiveness, the people.

THIRD UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I love sitting down with my mom and dad watching curling, you know, before I started to play and trying to figure out what shot was going to be called and what I would do.

FOURTH UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It just seemed like curling could deliver these moments of pure terror and tension and relief.

FIFTH UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: There's a lot of beer.

JOHN CULLEN: Good-Looking curling culture right here. Bags and bags of empties.

SIXTH UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It's a weird sport, I got to say.

SEVENTH UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No, I never looked at a curling broom without, man, that is very good looking.

JOHN CULLEN: What do you love most about curling?

EIGHTH UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Winning.

JOHN CULLEN: I'm not naive. I know that competition is fierce. But somehow, on the ice, with the brooms and the rocks among the yelling and the sliding, everyone still seems to have one goal, to have a good game.

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Commentary: Yes. Yes. Hard. Really hard.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I just wanted to curl and talk curling and, well, I guess I forgot just about everything else. It made me a better athlete after. A better person after.

JOHN CULLEN: I want to thank everybody who participated in Broomgate, and a big thanks to the entire curling community for letting me tell this story. Keep your ears peeled for a bonus episode coming soon.

JOHN CULLEN: Broomgate is a production of USG Audio, Pacific Electric, Kelley & Kelley and CBC, hosted by me, John Cullen, and concept devised by John Cullen and Kelley & Kelley. Showrunner is Kathleen Goldhar. Executive producers are Josh Bloch from USG Audio, Mike Falbo, Ed Helms and Brett Harris from Pacific Electric, Chris Kelley, Lauren Berkovich and Pat Kelley from Kelley & Kelley, Chris Oke and Cesil Fernandes from CBC, and John Cullen. Assistant editor is Max Collins. Production support from Joshua Lalongi at USG Audio. Editor is Mitchell Stewart. Veronica Simmons is our senior producer. Our theme song is by Chris Kelley. Legal counsel for Kelley & Kelley is Melissa Raymond and Remy Koopsin, fact checked by Alexis Green. Our podcast art was designed by Tara Paquette, with original photo by Anil Mongul. Our digital producer is Roshini Nair. Our cross-promote producer is Amanda Cox. Our YouTube producer is Jon Lee. Our video producer is Evan Aagaard. Special thanks to the National Film Board of Canada for the use of their excellent film, Gone Curling. Tanya Springer is CBC's senior manager, Arif Noorani is the director, and Leslie Merklinger is the executive director of CBC Podcasts.

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Transcript: Broomgate, Episode 5

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