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The skinny on shinny

Broadcast Date: Jan. 2, 2002

If hockey is our national sport, shinny is what spawned it, CBC Radio host Ralph Benmergui says in this clip. He rhapsodizes about hockey in its purest, original form with sport historian Paul Kitchen and Gerry Flahive, producer of the National Film Board's Shinny: The Hockey in All of Us. Kitchen, a past president of the Society for International Hockey Research, says the simple recipe for shinny is ice, sticks and a puck.

"No rules — just plain fun," declares Kitchen, a shinny player for 55 of his 60 years. Flahive's favourite shinny enthusiast is an Australian woman he chanced upon in Banff. We hear Margaret Mitchell skating down the Bow River, doing her own imaginary play-by-play, just as countless Canadian kids have done. The Australian has, however, her own version of "He shoots, he scores!"

The skinny on shinny

• The Canadian Oxford Dictionary describes shinny as "informal pickup hockey usually played without nets, referees or equipment except for skates, sticks, and a ball or puck or an object serving as a puck." The word comes from shinty, a field hockey-type game from Scotland. See the clip The language of hockey for more on the game's lingo.

• While seemingly endless outdoor games of shinny are firmly planted in the Canadian psyche, its future is not so certain. A 2002 Canadian Press news story suggested the popularity of pickup hockey on both ice and road is on the wane. Hockey historian Paul Kitchen, who appears in this clip, told the wire service he had noticed a dramatic drop in the number of games in his city of Ottawa.

• In the Canadian Press story, Kitchen also said: "Today, there is more for kids to do — watching television and playing with computers," he says. "There is also more organized hockey now at the indoor community centres, so kids who want to play the game go through all that." Former NHL great Bobby Orr has also bemoaned the drop-off. "Take your street or a field with kids, without adults ... when was the last time you saw that?"

• To harken back to the days of outdoor hockey, the NHL in November 2003 staged the Heritage Classic in Edmonton — a two-game event that some nicknamed Shinny Night in Canada. Played outside in –20C chill, the games — one between current members of the Edmonton Oilers and Montreal Canadiens and another between past stars of the two teams — drew a record crowd of 57,167. The first outdoor NHL game, it was watched by another 2.7 million on TV.

• The National Film Board documentary Shinny: The Hockey in All of Us was broadcast on CBC. It later won the prestigious Rockie Award for best sports program at the 2002 Banff Television Festival, beating programs from around the world.

The skinny on shinny

Medium: Radio

Program: This Morning

Broadcast Date: Jan. 2, 2002

Guest(s): Gerry Flahive, Paul Kitchen

Host: Ralph Benmergui

Duration: 8:31

Last updated:
Nov. 14, 2006