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15 Facts About Matt Baldwin

1.

Matt Baldwin was a three-time Brier champion skip in the 1950s, and his success, coupled with his colourful charisma is credited with leading to a boom in curling in Edmonton.

2.

Matt Baldwin popularized the "long slide" delivery, used nearly exclusively by curlers today.

3.

Matt Baldwin began curling at the age of 14 or 15 in Bradwell, Saskatchewan.

4.

Matt Baldwin was a three-time Brier champion, having skipped his rink to the Canadian men's championship in 1954,1957 and 1958.

5.

At age 27, Matt Baldwin was then the youngest skip to win a Brier, in an era when teams were generally led by men decades older.

6.

Matt Baldwin is remembered for pleasing a cheering Edmonton hometown crowd by sliding halfway down the sheet of ice when throwing his final rock of the event, a move that was legal under the curling rules of the time.

7.

Matt Baldwin won the Alberta Curling Association Bonspiel Grand Aggregate, and the Edmonton ACT car bonspiel the same season.

8.

In 1956, Matt Baldwin returned to the Brier, but his team of Gord Haynes.

9.

In 1973 Matt Baldwin became one of the original inductees into the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame.

10.

Matt Baldwin served as a director of the Edmonton Eskimos football team for five years and is recognized on the University of Alberta's Wall of Honour.

11.

Matt Baldwin was named to the Order of Canada in December 2019.

12.

Matt Baldwin was a petroleum engineer, one of the early graduates from the University of Alberta's Petroleum Engineering program that launched in 1948 after the Leduc No 1 discovery ignited the postwar oil boom in Alberta.

13.

Matt Baldwin was a founding director of Alberta Energy Company, serving for 25 years, and in 2000 named a member of the Canadian Petroleum Hall of Fame.

14.

Matt Baldwin went to elementary school in Blucher, and went to High School in Bradwell, and Nutana Collegiate.

15.

Matt Baldwin was married to Betty-Jean, and had three children.