A Morinville man has been honoured for his role in promoting and developing curling as a modern sport in Japan.
Wally Ursuliak, 89, has been named as one of the foreign recipients of the 2017 Spring Imperial Decorations. Ursuliak has been awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays.
“You do a lot of things, but you never expect this,” Ursuliak said about receiving the award. “I did spend a lot of time in Hokkaido teaching curling there, and I would have students at my home and teach them here, I had quite a relationship with them, but I never expected to get something like this.”
Ursuliak, a Canadian Curling Hall of Famer, was a notable curler who won a World Championship in Scotland in 1961. In 1979, through an exchange program, Ursuliak was able to take the then governor of Hokkaido, Naohiro Dogakinai, to see curling for the first time.
“He wanted to see curling, and I took him to the St. Albert Curling Club. There was a ladies afternoon league playing, and they (the Japanese) were quite impressed with the game.”
Dogakinai ended up asking the Alberta government if Ursuliak could go and teach curling in Japan and in 1980 he did just that. Ursuliak found himself teaching classes of 50 or more students there. Ursuliak taught curling in more than a dozen cities and towns in Hokkaido, which is Japan’s second largest island.
Ursuliak’s influence was so great in Hokkaido; the annual curling championship is called the “Alberta Cup.” The 2016 championship featured a special trophy that was presented as a gift from the Province of Alberta.
Since the 1998 Nagano Olympics, curling has seen a rise of popularity in Japan. The Japanese women’s team has qualified for every winter Olympics since then, but has yet to medal. The men’s team recently qualified for the 2018 games in PyeongChang, South Korea after finishing seventh in the 2017 World Championships held in Edmonton last month.
“They’ll be in the middle of the pack,” Ursuliak says of the men’s chances in PyeongChang. “They don’t have the experience that the Canadians, Americans, and Swedish have. The Japanese team is much younger. They’re doing quite well, for the amount of years that they have curled.”
Ursuliak will travel to Calgary on June 15th to receive his award, presented by the Consul General of Japan Kunihiko Tanabe.
