OTTAWA, ON – On Wednesday, May 27th at Lansdowne Park’s Horticulture Building, the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame will induct the Class of 2026 into our local sports shrine. Each week leading up to the ceremony, the Sport Hall will share an article on our upcoming inductees. Today’s feature is a profile on Rachel Homan and Emma Miskew.
2026 SPORT HALL INDUCTEES – RACHEL HOMAN AND EMMA MISKEW:
The curling journeys of Rachel Homan and Emma Miskew have been inseparably intertwined since they first began their Hall of Fame careers on the very same day in a Little Rocks program at the Rideau Curling Club.
On that day, Homan immediately began her tradition of making the biggest shots in the biggest moments. At age four-and-a-half, Homan desperately wanted to follow her older brother Mark onto the ice, but the program was meant to start at age seven.
Luckily, the program director did take special note of the young girl’s eagerness while talking to her mom.
“She said, ‘Well, does (Rachel) want to curl?’ And I said, ‘Oh ya, she’s dying to get out there,’” Rachel’s mother Cathy recounted in an Ottawa Sports Pages story by Dan Plouffe. “So she said, ‘Well, if she can throw the rock to the end, she can curl.’”
So, with her season and her career on the line, “Sure enough, Rachel went out there and hit the house,” smiles Cathy. “And that was that.”
On that fateful day, there happened to be another particularly keen underager there in Emma Miskew, ready to throw her first stones.
“I was in a purple snowsuit and I think Emma was probably in some splash pants,” Homan recalled in a National Post story by Ted Wyman. “We could barely hit the rings and we were just out there having some fun, having some hot chocolate.”
Both immediately became enthralled by the roaring game. Within a few years, Homan begged her way to more practice time at Navan Curling Club, while Miskew had joined the Granite Curling Club so she could play on both Saturday and Sunday.
When they were 12, Homan and Miskew officially joined forces for the first time out of the Ottawa Curling Club. At his daughter’s behest, Miskew’s father Art made the monumental phone call to Craig Homan to propose they pair up.
“Rachel’s so good. It would be awesome to play with her,” Miskew told her dad, as relayed in a Sportsnet story by Kristina Rutherford.
He asked if they wanted to put together a team for the local Junior SuperSpiel qualifier, an event that draws many of the best under-20 teams from around the world.
“It was just for fun, and we thought they were going to get killed,” recalled Craig Homan, who kept Art – away at a coaching course – updated on the team’s progress. “I remember calling Art, and I said, ‘They lost the first game pretty badly, but I think they can win an end in the next game.’”
The makeshift group of preteens wound up doing much more, instead winning their match outright and eventually qualifying for the big tourney. But having the young girls play in the SuperSpiel posed a pair of parental concerns.
“A), the games were past their bedtime. And B), it was Halloween and they weren’t able to go out trick-or-treating,” noted Craig, later “shocked” once again to see the girls play a close game against the Swiss junior national team at the SuperSpiel. “But that was probably my favourite memory from when they were kids – just realizing they weren’t bad.”
The new mates began thriving very quickly as they collected four consecutive Ontario Bantam titles from 2003 to 2006, followed by a 2007 Canada Winter Games gold medal.
The Homan-skipped crew showcased their potential the following season when they knocked off future rival/coach Jennifer Jones for a first World Curling Tour event title in London, Ont. – before they were even allowed to enjoy the traditional post-match drinks afforded to the victors.
“At 12 years old, they beat all the 20-year-olds. And then at 18, they beat the top team in the world twice in two days,” signalled Craig, who got the hint that stardom may well await.
Their coach, Ottawa Sport Hall of Famer Earle Morris, had already been fully convinced when Homan led her rink to an undefeated record at the 2010 Canadian junior championships en route to a world junior silver medal.
“I’ve been saying to people for a couple years that Rachel is the best shot-making female skip on the planet,” Morris said in an Orléans Star article by Plouffe in 2010.
“I believed that last year, I believe that today, and I know I’ll believe it next year – she’s really something.”
Come 2013, Homan and Miskew captured their first of five Scotties Tournament of Hearts Canadian women’s titles, downing Jones in the final. They were representing the host province at that event in Kingston, which made the groundbreaking victory all that more special.
“It’s so cool to do it with the girls I’ve been with forever,” Homan, a University of Ottawa human kinetics grad, told the Ottawa Sports Pages at the K-Rock Centre. “And it’s unbelievable to do it in front of everybody. I love my family and my friends and it means a lot to me to have them here. I’m just so proud that we played so well for everybody.”
Likewise, Miskew thought back just over a decade to when she and Homan paired up as preteens.
“We were good then, and it was always this goal that we wanted to go to the worlds and the Olympics, but it was so far-fetched then, and now we’ve accomplished Goal #1,” added Miskew, a Carleton University engineering grad. “It’s hard to describe how that feels, but it’s just amazing. It’s really surreal right now. I’m choked up just talking about it. It’s so many emotions, and I’m so proud of my team.”
Team Homan went on to win a bronze medal at their first World Women’s Curling Championship that season. They then repeated as Canadian champions in 2014 and improved to world silver.
The pair was victorious again at the 2017 Scotties and made history as the first team to ever go through the entire World Women’s Curling Championship undefeated, with 10 of their 13 opponents conceding before the end of their matches.
“We didn’t know that was a record we were breaking until after the game,” Miskew recounted at the Ottawa airport after returning from Beijing. “It’s pretty amazing. No one can ever take that away from us now. We’ve officially won all the medals at the worlds.”
And they were only just getting started. Later in 2017, Homan and Miskew made their childhood Olympic dreams come true, in a fairytale setting no less, as they won the Roar of the Rings Canadian team trials at the Canadian Tire Centre.
When their spot was confirmed, the skip and vice-skip locked arms around each other, their faces clenched in each other’s shoulders.
“We just needed to take that time for the two of us,” Miskew said to the Ottawa Sports Pages’ Plouffe of the moment she shared with her “sister”. “You can always imagine, but you never really think it’s going to be a reality and I think that’s why we were both just in utter shock and happiness.”
They finished sixth at their debut Olympics at PyeongChang 2018, and Homan placed fifth at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games after she was appointed to play mixed doubles alongside John Morris following the cancellation of the trials during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Olympic podium proved elusive, but the quest for an Olympic medal perhaps pushed them to even greater heights in recent years.
With two new players in their lineup, Homan and Miskew were part of the first team to go through the full Scotties tournament undefeated when they won the 2024 national women’s curling title.
They repeated that perfect record in 2025 and won their 35th straight match overall when skip Homan curled a perfect 100% on both hits and draws – the first time that occurred in championship game history.
The Ottawa curlers then went on to become first Canadian rink in 30+ years to win back-to-back women’s curling world titles as they concluded a dominant run of 142 match wins and just 15 losses over those two seasons.
“This is unbelievable,” Homan, who is now a mother of three, commented via World Curling.
Team Homan also became the winningest Grand Slam of Curling team in either the men’s or women’s divisions when they broke the record with their 19th tournament triumph in Fall 2025.
After winning the Canadian trials this past November, it was time for Homan and Miskew to hook their Olympic hardware at Milano Cortina 2026. It most definitely wasn’t a simple task as they endured a rollercoaster ride, but ultimately rose from a 1-3 start to the tournament with five consecutive wins to reach the playoff round.
Their 10-7 victory over Team USA in the bronze medal match secured Canada’s first Olympic women’s curling medal since 2014.
“I’m just so proud to be Canadian,” Homan said in a Curling Canada news story. “To have the fight that we did this week, and our story of how we got here and how we got an Olympic medal – I’ll forever be proud of that.”
Miskew, meanwhile, underlined in an Ottawa Sports Pages story by Keiran Gorsky that “I couldn’t have asked for a better person to go through this journey with.”
The pair’s storied career continues – including this week when they will be opponents for the first time ever in the new Rock League – but Homan and Miskew have already cemented themselves as two of the greatest in their sport’s history.
The childhood friends will soon be enshrined in the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2026 on May 27 at Lansdowne Park’s Horticulture Building.
“That’s so nice,” Miskew said of their upcoming induction. “I’ve spent my whole life here, and we always feel all the love and support from Ottawa. To get into the Hall of Fame is a very big honour, so we’re really happy.”
MAY 27 OTTAWA SPORT HALL OF FAME INDUCTION EVENING
The Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame will be welcoming four new athletes, a builder and a team as part of its Class of 2026, plus eight more historic honourees in the Legacy Category.
Tickets for the Wednesday, May 27th Induction Ceremony at Lansdowne Park’s Horticulture Building are available at https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2026-ottawa-sport-hall-of-fame-induction-evening-tickets-1980458186749.
More details and full features on all the upcoming inductees and Legacy members will be shared in the weeks leading up to the 2026 banquet on the Hall’s website at OttawaSportHall.ca and through the Ottawa Sports Pages.
Sponsorship opportunities are available. See OttawaSportHall.ca/Sponsorship for more details.
About the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame:
The Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame is a non-profit organization, which documents, curates and celebrates outstanding achievement in local sport heritage. The Sport Hall is overseen by a volunteer Board of Directors to maintain and preserve our rich sporting legacies. Each year, the Hall of Fame Board receives nominations from the public and selects new inductees to be honoured in the Hall.