Maxwell, Douglas D.

Year Inducted / Année Intronisé:

1996

Category / Catégorie:

Builder

Biography / Biographie:

Maxwell’s career as Canada’s self-proclaimed guru of curling took him to the very top of the heap — and to the depths of despair.

But one thing was constant, Maxwell earned the envy of his peers and the wide-ranging respect of confederates in the curling establishment. Like him or not, they admit that Maxwell served the curling community as no one else has. His keen knowledge of the game is undisputed and the results of his imaginative pursuits and promotional genius, which often curried initial disfavour among the sport’s traditionalists, eventually became accepted worldwide.

Maxwell has been at the forefront of almost every curling venue at one time or another during the past 30 years, including the creatively successful Air Canada Silver Broom and the controversial Hexagon group.

Among his most satisfying achievements, he says, was the introduction of time clocks — unveiled at the first combined men’s and women’s world championships at Milwaukee in 1989. That marked a satisfying conclusion to the years of Maxwell’s research into the subject.

It was the ebullient Maxwell who incurred the envy of Western Canada colleagues by convincing CBC Radio to broadcast a weekly curling show in the 50s. He spearheaded CBC television’s three year involvement with the moderately successful Tournament of Champions event at Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens in the mid-60s.