About Us

The sport, called bowls in England, is quite old, deriving from a game first developed in Egypt 5000 years ago.  The objective of the game is simply for your ball to get closer to the “jack”, another white little ball, than your opponent’s.  There are many variations in different cultures on this theme: bocce (Italian), bolla (Saxon), bolle (Danish), boules (French) and ula miaka (Polynesian).  The bowls, originally made of wood, were round and rolled as straight as the ground allowed.  It’s believed that the “bias” was accidentally introduced in 1522 by the Duke of Suffolk.  His bowl had split after striking other bowls and he took a knob off of a stairway banister post for a replacement.  The flat side of the knob caused it to roll with an arc (bias) and he experimented by curving his bowl around the bowls of his opponents.  Word spread, and biased bowls gradually came into use.  Biased bowls now support many different curves or biases as well as having sizes and weights to accommodate hands of all sizes and players having varying abilities and preference.  Lawn bowling was brought to Canada by British garrison officers; the first bowling green in Canada was constructed on the garrison grounds at Annapolis Royal, NS.  The Canadian Lawn Bowling Council was formed in 1931 with 93 affiliated clubs and nearly 3,000 members.  It now embraces six provincial Associations – Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, and Quebec.  Now there are 320 men’s clubs with 16,725 members