OTTAWA — If you look closely at Mike McEwen's one-of-a-kind corn broom, you can just barely see the bristles between the layers of tape. 

The Manitoba skip has modified it to his personal liking since finding it in the family garage over 15 years ago.

"It's been chopped off, it's been shortened, it's been drilled, it's almost fallen apart, the tape is part of its structure," he said.

McEwen essentially uses the broom for balance as he leaves the hack. He holds it with his left hand and throws stones with his right.

"We used to sweep the snow off cars with it," he said with a laugh. "I took it and then I modified it and my Dad got mad at me because he probably thought he was going to use it at some point."

McEwen, who's making his Tim Hortons Brier debut this week at TD Place, uses a modern broom when he's calling the game from the house.

When it's time to throw, he grabs his vintage corn broom. It comes complete with a piece of leather glued into the tip to help keep it compact.

"It's cool to have something unique all to myself," he said.

McEwen, 35, added that corn brooms are still quite prevalent in Manitoba and throughout the Prairies.

"It just seems like it's not going away," he said. "Everybody's got corn brooms stashed away in their basement. I've seen lots of juniors coming up that are doing the same thing, just emulating us and we emulated guys before us.

"I don't know, I guess it's the cool thing to do in Manitoba."

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Gregory Strong, The Canadian Press