Oh Canada, this doesn't quite add up

With Sunday night's win, Jennifer Jones and Jill Officer have won their fourth national crowns together. However, what's interesting here is that next month's world women's championship in Gangneung, South Korea will only be the third world championship appearance for the duo. On the flip side, when they return to defend the crown in Sault Ste. Marie next year, it will be the fourth appearance for the pair as members of Team Canada in a Canadian championship.

How did these oddities come to pass?

Well, the initial blame falls on the shoulders of former Brier runner-up Shawn Adams of Nova Scotia, his teammates from 1993 and some alcohol.

From the time the world boys' juniors started in 1975, Canada always sent the previous year's champion to represent Canada at the worlds. Thus, for example, Paul Gowsell won the national titles in 1975 and 1977 and the world junior titles in 1976 and 1978. The rational for sending the previous year's winner, at least according to the CCA's website, is because of a scheduling conflict between the two events.
The website goes on to say that it was changed in 1994 with the current year's junior champions being sent to the world's just a month later because of a change in the CCA's scheduling of its championships that year.
However, this doesn't hold water as the only reason when you consider the fact that in 1984, Saskatchewan's Jamie Schneider played in the world's and defended, unsuccessfully, his 1983 Canadian junior crown by playing in the 1984 Pepsi Juniors.

That brings us back to Adams. It's not clear how much of a factor Adams and his team had on the decision to change when the national champions were sent to the world's but there is a connection.
In 1993, Kim Gellard of Ontario won the junior women's while Adams and Nova Scotia won the boys' title. After the championship, Adams' rink was caught drinking by officials (although some, if not all of them were of age in Quebec, where the championships were held). Adams rink was promptly suspended by the CCA, thus eliminating them from representing Canada in 1994.
To solve this, the 1994 junior men's champ Colin Davison went to the world's that year in Sofia, Bulgaria and that has been practiced ever since.
But there was still a problem on the women's side of the equation since Gellard's team had done nothing wrong.
So, Gellard & Co. headed to Bulgaria in 1994. There was, however, a need to harmonize the women's side with the men and that brings us back to Jennifer Jones.
While Davison was winning the pass to Bulgaria in 1994 over Kevin Koe, Jones' team, which included Officer, simply won the national title — no trip to Bulgaria. Instead, they got a trip to Regina.
Regina was the host of the 1995 Canadian Junior Championships where Jones & Co. would be Team Canada. If they won then they would get to go to the worlds. If they lost, then no world championships for them.
The problem was they were not part of the entire tournament. They were automatically ranked first and given a direct pass to the semifinals without playing one round-robin game. That year Team Canada would play the third-place team from the round-robin in one semifinal while first and second played in the other semi.
Brought in completely cold, Jones' rink were demolished by the third place squad also from Manitoba skipped by a diminutive Kelly MacKenzie (now Kelly Scott).
Interesting footnote to that playoff, which MacKenzie won in the final, is that all four skips in that playoff were at the 2008 Scotties in ... wait for it ... Regina!
Jones was skipping Manitoba, Scott (MacKenzie) was skipping Team Canada, Marie France Larouche, the Quebec skip in 1995 was skipping Quebec last year and Kirsten Harmark, the Ontario skip in 1995, is now Kirsten Wall and was playing third last year for Ontario's Sherry Middaugh.

So, no world championship for Jones and Officer in 1995 and next year in the Sault will mark their fourth appearance at a Canadian championship as Team Canada — 1995 juniors and 2006, 2009 and 2010 Scotties.