1979 Macdonald Brier

1979 Macdonald Brier
Host city	Ottawa, Ontario
Arena	Ottawa Civic Centre
Dates	March 4–10[1]
Attendance	89,081
Winner	Manitoba
Curling club	Deer Lodge CC, Winnipeg
Skip	Barry Fry
Third	Bill Carey
Second	Gordon Sparkes
Lead	Bryan Wood
« 1978 1980 »

The 1979 Macdonald Brier, the Canadian men's curling championship was held from March 4 to 10, 1979 at the Ottawa Civic Centre in Ottawa, Ontario. For the second straight year, the total attendance for the week set a then-record where 89,081 attended the event.^[2] This was the last Brier where the round robin would determine the champion without a playoff.

Team Manitoba, who was skipped by Barry Fry captured the Brier tankard as they finished round robin play with a 10–1 record as they clinched the title with after the Friday night draw. This was Manitoba's twentieth title and the only Brier won by Fry. The Fry rink would go onto represent Canada at the 1979 Air Canada Silver Broom, the men's world curling championship in Bern, Switzerland where they lost in the semifinal to eventual champion Norway.

It would be the last Brier under the sponsorship of Macdonald Tobacco. This marked an end of an era, as Macdonald Tobacco had sponsored the event since the first Brier in 1927. Following the final draw, the head of Macdonald Tobacco, David Macdonald Stewart declared "[f]or half a century, Macdonald Tobacco has followed an idea ... a dream to ... bring together Canadians, from all parts of the country and all walks of life, in a national sporting event. Curling was the ideal sport. It's been a wonderful experience. We've now seen the final chapter in 50 years of Canadian history". To commemorate the end of the Macdonald era, every living Brier champion skip at the time were invited to attend the Brier, and had their picture taken together. The lone surviving curler from the 1927 Brier, Emmet Smith (Northern Ontario) was also invited.^[3] The group of skips gathered before the final draw of the event for a special ceremony.^[4]

The event was marred with slow ice conditions and bad rocks,^[5] which were borrowed from a local curling club. The rocks were mismatched and pitted which "reduced shotmaking to a guessing game."^[6] Part way through the week, organizers asked for the teams to vote on changing the rocks. The teams that favoured hitting, including the leading Manitoba rink opposed changing the rocks, as the mismatched rocks made draw shots more difficult than hit shots.^[7]