REMEMBERING WHEN: A uniquely Canadian fun game

By Keith Schell

When we were growing up in the country in the 1970’s, we had to figure out things to do to keep ourselves occupied and to bring everybody together as a family, especially in the evenings in the winter. One of the things we liked to do as a family on a winter night was to play different games.

And one of the favourite family fun games we liked to play back then was: CROKINOLE!

(A Canadian invented game, the word ‘crokinole’ can trace its roots back to the French word 'croquignole' which means 'flick' or 'small biscuit'.

The earliest known crokinole board is on record as being created in the 1870’s by Eckhardt Wettlaufer of the township of Sebastopol, Ontario, Canada. In his honour, Tavistock, Ontario (the closest town to Sebastopol) has been designated as the host of the World Crokinole Championships (worldcrokinole.com) on the first Saturday in June since 1999. It regularly draws contestants from all across Canada, the USA, Germany, Australia, Spain and the UK.)

Once it was decided that we were all going to play crokinole, someone went in the bedroom, dug out our crokinole board, and brought it out to the kitchen. Somebody else rummaged around our junk drawer and found the box of red and black multi-purpose wooden checkers. We would then set the board up on the kitchen table and divide into two teams.

Our crokinole board was old and well-worn, even back then! It was dark brown and the outside border of the board was octagonal, kind of like a big brown stop sign. And there was always a little screw in our board that replaced one of the pegs that had gone missing from the inner circle.

We knew the basic rules and abided by them with one exception: Because crokinole was designed for two to four players and there were five of us, Mom would usually sit our youngest brother on her lap and let him have her turn. But when she wanted to play herself we made sure that everyone got an equal number of checkers and everyone got an equal number of turns. Always a fun time playing, sometimes we kept score in those games and sometimes we didn’t.    

In a way, crokinole was kind of like a circular version of shuffleboard or curling. The crokinole board was divided into four rings: the outside ring was worth five points, the middle ring was worth ten points, the inner ring was worth fifteen points, and the center hole was worth twenty points. The closer your checkers were to the center of the board at the end of the round the more points you got. An equal number of checkers of different colours in the same ring would cancel each other out, and whatever was left over would result in your points totals. At the end of the round, if your checker was on a line dividing two different rings on the board, whichever ring contained most of your checker was the ring your checker was ruled to be in when counting up points.   

Dad was the best crokinole player in the house. He could hit your checker and knock it into the ditch every time! So he would team up with my middle brother and I would team up with Mom and my youngest brother to try to make things as even as possible. 

Much to the consternation of myself who was the oldest child and was always trying to beat Dad, Mom usually gave my little brothers a do-over if they didn’t flick their checker very far! And if they didn’t flick it very far again they always got to pull it back and have another do-over! Their turn usually ended when their shot finally went far enough to make contact with any other checker anyplace on the board.

When a player started a new round, they always got a free first shot at trying to flick their checker into the center hole. Dad was a pretty good shot and could flick the checker right into the center hole on a pretty consistent basis.

When it was Dad’s turn to go first, sometimes his free shot wouldn’t quite go in the center hole and the checker would hang on the outside lip, half in and half out of the hole.  

 When that happened, with a mischievous little grin on his face and looking at all of us to see what we would do, Dad would say “DAMMIT!” and take his fist and pound the table so the vibration would make his checker fall completely into the hole! All us kids would get mad and say, “HEY, YOU CAN’T DO THAT! THAT’S CHEATIN’!” And chuckling over the rise he got out of his kids, he would then take his checker and move it back on the lip of the hole where it originally was and the game would resume.

Of course, after seeing what Dad did, every time a shooter got a checker almost in the center hole the shooter would start pounding on the table to use the vibrations to make the checker fall completely into the hole. The poor old kitchen table took quite a beating on some nights! As the self-appointed referee, Mom would always tell us to stop doing that so we usually did. She was probably afraid her kitchen table might collapse one night under all that pounding!  

Our games were fast, furious and always fun. Sometimes my fingernails would hurt because I flicked my shot so hard! Sometimes your shot would knock one checker off the board and into the ditch, sometimes you would knock two checkers off the board and into the ditch, and other times you would accidentally knock your own checker into the ditch or miss all the other checkers altogether!

At the end of the round we would usually add up our totals. It never really mattered who won. Crokinole was just a fun way to spend a winter night together as a family and I smile at the memories.

Hope you had fun playing crokinole as well!