Discover Irma: Sports and History

Irma offers hands-on experiences of sport alongside a surprisingly layered local history. Baseball, curling and golf sit alongside a museum where you can discover Jean Paré’s childhood home, a church dating from 1934 and a collection of antique lamps. This gives you a choice between active sporting pursuits and cultural history when deciding what to focus on during your trip, rather than reducing Irma to a single attraction.

Baseball, Curling and Golf

The ball diamonds at the Irma Recreation Area feature shale infields, player shelters and fenced playing fields. One of the fields has lighting for evening games, and the facility also includes plenty of spectator seating. The amenities give a clear picture of the site as a sports venue: playing fields, areas for teams and space for spectators are all taken into account. Its sporting history also extends beyond the community. Teams that play on Irma’s baseball diamonds have competed at provincial and national levels.

The Irma Curling Club represents another sport, with four artificial-ice sheets. Together with the baseball fields, they show the range of organized sports facilities here, without limiting Irma to a single sport. Golf enthusiasts will find another distinct attraction: the Irma Golf Club has a nine-hole course with grass greens and a driving range. A round on the course and time at the driving range represent two different sides of golf—the game on the course and practice on the range.

Jean Paré and Irma’s Museum

Irma is the hometown of Jean Paré, founder of Company’s Coming. The Irma Museum gives visitors the opportunity to tour her childhood home. This gives the community’s history a personal connection: the focus is not just on a name, but on the home where Paré grew up. For travellers interested in biographies and local history, it offers a tangible point of connection.

The museum visit also includes a tour of the Anglican church dating from 1934. Another notable feature is the newest museum building, where more than 400 antique lamps from Irvin and Doreen Bell’s collection are on display. The home, church and lamp collection present cultural history in different forms—from a place connected to Paré’s life, to a dated church building and a substantial private collection. This shift between personal history, architecture and collection pieces is what gives Irma much of its cultural appeal.

The Irma Aces Hockey Club is also part of the community’s sporting history: it has represented the Village of Irma since 1962. This adds a long-standing club history to today’s sporting attractions without taking attention away from the baseball, curling and golf facilities themselves.

Choose the Right Focus for Your Trip

There is also a campground for overnight stays in the community. It has 51 sites, including 30 full-service sites, as well as an overflow area. If you’re looking for a vacation rental in Irma, these interests can help you get started with planning your trip: would you like to focus on sports, or spend most of your time exploring local history and the museum?

Discover more destinations: Wainwright, Coronation, White Sands, Provost, Stettler, Red Willow, Lougheed.

Go to the main travel overview: Division No. 7.