Whitehorse Curling Club remembers coach and volunteer

Photo by Whitehorse Star

The Whitehorse Curling Club was saddened last week by the sudden passing of one of their own.

Suzanne Bertrand, an incredible volunteer and former coach of the year passed away last Monday.

“She was a very short person, but she was a giant,” said Trevor Sellars, president of the Whitehorse Curling Club.

Bertrand had the ability to attract volunteers and fill in any place that she was needed.

“She was a massive organizer,” Sellars said.

Bertrand spent much of the past 12 years contributing in an enormous way to curling in the community, especially to youth.

“She was just so committed to kids,” Sellars said. “She took curling into the schools.”

Bertrand helped bring Olympic medalists into Whitehorse schools, including Team Kevin Martin, who visited last fall during the Skookum Cash Spiel.

During times of change for the curling club, Bertrand stepped in to work as management while the proper candidate was sought, and anytime someone at the club needed help, she was there.

“She was always the memory bank, the resource person,” Sellars said.

Whitehorse Curling Club manager Jon Solberg said Bertrand provided support to everyone at the club.

“She was a huge support mechanism,” Solberg said.

The manager worked with Bertrand for the past two and a half years.

Solberg said she was one of the major forces behind the club’s bingo fund-raisers and worked on youth programming.

“A great deal of the little things around the club that otherwise wouldn’t get done, Suzanne was there doing them,” Solberg said. 

Besides her commitment at the curling club, Bertrand served as a technical specialist to the Yukon Curling Association for at least a decade, Sellars said.

In 1988, she was honoured with the coach of the year award by Sport Yukon for her time spent with children teaching them to curl.

Bertrand received an excellence in education award for teaching and the Volunteer of the Year award from the City of Whitehorse.

Arguably her greatest honour was the Canadian Curling Association Volunteer of the Year award for Canada in 2005.

“This happens to someone in Toronto or Vancouver,” Sellars said. “It’s massive.”

During her time at the club, Bertrand coached womens, juniors and mens teams, including teams headed for the Brier.

“The skill that she brought to that is going to be missed for a very long time,” Sellars said.

The amount of work that Bertrand contributed to the community was so great, that some even wondered if one person was capable of all of it, Sellars said.

“The thing about Suzanne is that you wondered if she was doing all the work herself over the years,” he said.

One of her greatest skills was her ability to bring others in to help out.

“She engaged people,” Sellars said. “She did bring a lot of volunteers with her.

“I’ve really never met a person as committed to volunteerism as Suzanne.”

With her passing, the Whitehorse Curling Club now has the incredible task of finding volunteers to make up the incredible spaces she filled around the club.

At this point, Sellars is unsure how the club will even begin to fill in the gaps Bertrand’s passing has left.

“It’ll be quite a chore,” he said. “(They are) small, tiny little shoes to fill, but they were giant shoes.”

Sellars hopes the many people Bertrand drew in over the years will step up to the plate to honour her memory.

“We hope that those people will step forward,” he said.

Besides her volunteerism, Bertrand was known for her fancy footwork off the ice.

“She was a great dancer, and she will surely be missed,” Sellars said. “She was really quite amazing.”

To remember Bertrand, Solberg said they will continue with what she worked so hard on.

“To honour Suzanne’s name and work, we continue on with her programming,” Solberg said. “We’ll find other ways of honouring her lifetime achievement as well.”