I've attached a message from Brock Stephenson, who's in charge of
BC/Ontario Bowl. So far I've only heard from one Toronto player who's
interested in writing questions. It's not hard, and you don't have to
write a complete packet. Packet-writing guidelines are at
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qb-canada/message/801>.

Eric


Hello,

To begin, thank you to Ottawa, McGill and Queen's for submitting packs
as Provincial Bowl is a packet submission tournament.

Provincial Bowl being a packet submission tournament is problematic.
At the moment I believe the following teams are expected:
- B.C. Bowl (2): SFU A, UBC A
- Ontario Bowl (9-11): Carleton A, Carleton B, McGill A, McGill B,
McGill C, McMaster A, McMaster B, McMaster C, McMaster D(?), Ottawa A,
Queen's A(?)

The reason I created Provincial Bowl as an early fall tournament was
initially to include first year quiz bowl club members at various
campuses in a tournament before they lost interest in attending
practices back in the days when there were no Canadian quiz bowl
tournaments until November or possibly February. As such, I created a
tournament that was free and in the first few years wrote the
tournament set for a small field in B.C.

After the eastern tournaments were added and provided a large field of
teams, I saw the need to change the format to packet submission. As
such, the tournaments could still be free to all teams. With a larger,
more active quiz bowl community in Canada than in the past I was
expecting the pack to team ratio to be 1:1. As you can see with five
submitted packs and up to 13 teams so far between the two venues,
there is clearly a shortage of packs for Ontario Bowl.

As a result, I'm in the process of finding the best way to remedy this
situation as I still expect everything to fall into place by the end of
this weekend through some help from other quiz bowlers. If a fee is
required for the tournaments, I will notify this board as soon as
possible. It would be on a cost recovery basis only, and teams that
submitted their packs would play for free.

I'm glad there is a strong interest in teams playing an early season
tournament in Canada. The increased participation at several campuses is
a good sign. On the other hand, Provincial Bowl is designed specifically
as a packet submission tournament that caters submission requirements to
teams' experience at quiz bowl, allowing newer teams to learn how to write
tournament questions without having to produce a complete pack.

In conclusion, please remember that submitting a pack to a packet
submission tournament is among the more important elements of the
tournament process. (Yes, your packs are still welcome up to Wednesday
night.)

Brock Stephenson
Editor-in-Chief, Provincial Bowl