John Morris grew up as a curler and got the last laugh on his hockey-playing friends when he made it to the Olympics with the Kevin Martin team. (QMI Agency file)
John Morris grew up as an army brat.
“More like a curling rink rat,” laughed the guy they call Johnny Mo, the two-time Brier-winning Olympic gold medal third on Kevin Martin’s Alberta team.
“One of my first memories was as a four-year-old, when my dad put me on top of a rock at the Navy Curling Club in Ottawa and threw it down the ice.”
His dad Earle owns a record representing three different provinces as a skip at the Brier — Manitoba in 1980, Quebec in 1982 and Ontario in 1985 — when the Canadian Armed Forces kept moving him around.
“I was born in Winnipeg but he got posted to Quebec that year. We moved to Ottawa after that. I loved growing up in Ottawa. Dad left the military for a while so we could keep the kids in school there and then ended up, to end his career in the military, staying in Ottawa. As far as I’m concerned I grew up in one of the best cities in Canada. I grew up in sports. Hockey. Baseball. Curling. Everything.”
