My name is Ted Willing. I live in Owen Sound (Canada) and have been a friend of Jon Willis for years. I love playing darts and will play as long as I can. Over the years I have had lots of experiences involving darts and being an organizer or captain of a team or league. I thought you might be interested in hearing this story about darts in the North Country.

My wife and I moved to Tobermory, Ontario in the fall of 2002. We had winterized our cottage and I was recovering from an serious aneurysm surgery...In the spring, with the help of my son-in-law I built a well- insulated dart shed and started practicing again. In the fall I discovered that the Legion (Royal Canadian Legion which is dedicated to helping the veterans from the wars, and also sponsors youth programs and local charities) had a group that played darts on Thursday nights. I also discovered that when the Chichimaun ferry stopped running from Tobermory to Manitoulin Island and back everything else in the North country stopped too! Well I showed up for Thursday night darts and so did three other people! The dart group leader had a job out on the Great Lakes for two months so the rest of us had to make do. We drew names for teams each night and played away. Some nights we had up to six players. As the snow fell, it became more and more difficult to drive the ten miles into town to play darts, but my wife braved the weather to get me there. (I had suffered a small stroke that impaired my vision.) After several weeks of fighting snow banks, drifts and icy roads, a miracle happened!

His name was Greg, and he showed up at the Legion one Thursday night. He had been 'early retired' from the railroad in Windsor and had just moved into his winterized cottage just down the road from me. Greg loved to have a beer or two and was an excellent dart player (although he threw with the wrong hand, LOL). Greg took over driving me to darts and this started a long dart relationship. Greg had a dart shed and so did I, so we took turns hosting impromptu dart nights. As Greg was so much better than I, we decided he would "double-in" and I would go "straight-in". One night, Greg was mixing wine (which he made himself but that's another story) and beer. He came in from a trip outside in the snow, grabbed his darts and threw a 180. He was hooting when I tapped him on the shoulder and said "Did you double in yet?" Whoops! By January our dart group had its premier dart player Dan Mackie, back from the Great Lakes Shipping and along with me, and Greg, the league stood at about 8 regulars. While Dan had been away I had pretty much taken over handling the group using my experience in forming Legion and golf teams back in Chatham. We started putting a toonie into the pot each night to play for...

Note from the Editor: I had to ask Ted for clarification on what the heck a 'toonie' was! Ted explained that "The Government of Canada decided to get rid of dollar bills and replace them with coins. The coins had a bird called a loon stamped on them, so Canadians started calling the coin a loonie. Then, when the Government did the same with the two dollar bills, the people started calling them toonies. So, a toonie is a coin worth two bucks. Nobody says we're sane here, LOL."

I started to search for more players. One thing I learned in Chatham as a captain you have to be aggressive to get and maintain a team or league. The players don't come to you as maybe they should. You have to work at recruiting and you have to give them a reason to be coming out. I have heard from some who make statements like "If they don't want to play then the heck with them!" These guys are not successful and their teams or league soon fall apart.

One day a waitress at the hotel mentioned to me that she was bored and I asked her if she played darts...She said she had played a bit so I told her about our darts. She came out the next week with her girlfriend. About that time, I noticed a dart board in the garage at the gas station and asked about it, 'Bingo!' The owner used to be a player, so I had another one! Then, I overheard the owner of the local motel at the restaurant complain he was tired because he had been up late playing darts with his wife and daughter 'Bam'! I got three more! Most nights now we had sixteen players and as a bonus others started to show up to play pool and shuffleboard. Most had heard that the Legion was the place to go on Thursday nights as people like to go where there are other people.

Well, Zone darts came up in February and for the first time in Tobermory history we hit the Zone play downs with two teams and (you guessed it) we both qualified for District. On top of that two doubles teams made it through to District. As an aside, my partner Dan Mackie and I even won at district and went to Ontario finals.

Note from the Editor: I wanted to understand what the Zone meant, so once again Ted clarified this for me. "The Province of Ontario is divided into Zones or areas. Each year the Zone(s) hold dart tournaments to determine the Zone winners. The winners of each Zone get to play against other Zone winners and this is called District Play Downs. The winners from District then play each other to decide Provincial Champions."

I hope you find this short story interesting. Darts up north face challenges a little different than down where there are more people but like anywhere, if there is a desire to play darts there is a way!