Compared to some of our neighbouring clubs, Boreland is very young. Boreland Curling Club was founded in 1979. However .....
Club History
Founded: 1979
Founder Members:
Derek Arnott
Bill Linton
Eric Low (no longer an active playing member)
Robin Park (no longer an active Boreland playing member)
Bill Rennie
Bob Tait
Alistair Bell (no longer an active playing member)
Tommy Wallace (died 2007)
The original members were all neighbours and friends living in the Boreland Estate in Inverkeithing. To avoid spending every Friday evening in the pub they decided to play some curling.
It was mistakenly believed that this would avoid them being involved in taking strong drink! In the beginning they simply took some ice at Kinross and played amongst themselves.
After a couple of seasons, they formed Boreland Curling Club and decided to formally apply for membership of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. They were admitted in 1981, sponsored by Fossoway Curling Club.
Early Annual General Meetings
In the early years the club was run on an extremely informal basis and unfortunately the minutes from the early meetings were lost from the boot of a past secretary’s car when his car broke down on the Forth Road Bridge and the wind blew the papers out of the boot!!!
This has set a long tradition of members losing trophies etc belonging to the club (at least for a month or two!). In these early days, Annual General Meetings were held either in a member’s house or in a local pub. These tended to be rather lengthy affairs.
For example, one of the first AGM’s held at Bill Rennie’s house was convened at 7pm and closed at 5am! A few years later, an AGM was held in the Bruce Arms in Limekilns. It was convened at 7pm but, by closing time, the members were still on item 2 of the agenda and had to adjourn to Derek Arnott’s house where it is still uncertain if the final items on the agenda were ever discussed!
In 1984 the AGM moved to the Coaledge Tavern, near Crossgates, where the usual debates took place. Unfortunately, on that occasion proceedings were interrupted when a brawl broke out between two of the locals. No members were involved or hurt but it did add a bit of excitement to the evening!
The club was becoming slightly larger with membership increasing from the original 8 to 12 then 16 and by 1988 20 members. In keeping with this new-found status, the AGM that year was held in the Board Room of the City Hotel in Dunfermline. At that meeting two momentous decisions were taken:
The meeting agreed that the club should have a formal Constitution and this was drafted and adopted the following year; and
It was agreed that a Dinner and Court should be held the following year (1989) to mark the 10th Anniversary of the founding of the Club.
Each year discussion took place on opening up the club to women and, each year, it was recorded that by a narrow margin the decision was to remain an all-male club.
