People & Culture
Canada became a hotbed of gaming in the 1980s, for better or for worse
Late in 1979, two journalists sat around a Scrabble board in Montreal, beers in hand, wondering whether they could create a game as good. Two years later, their own board game baby was introduced to the public: Trivial Pursuit. Its seemingly overnight success was called “the biggest phenomenon in game history” by Time magazine.
Perhaps Trivial Pursuit’s quirkiest legacy is the gold rush of Canadian board game creation it spawned in the ’80s. Some titles went on to become successful; many more were quickly forgotten.
“There’s no question that we went from having very few completely original games made in Canada prior to 1980 to having dozens of them,” says Jenny Ellison, a historian at the Canadian Museum of History and a specialist in the subject.
Here are a few of the Canadian board game winners and losers you might have played during the ’80s.
Not content to rest on their laurels, Trivial Pursuit’s creators followed up with The World According to Ubi (1986), a geography-based trivia game described by critics as overly complicated — some questions didn’t actually have answers — and lacking the fun of their original creation. The game was packed with traps, tricks and turnarounds. It flopped. About the only thing anyone remembers about Ubi is the eerily Masonic triangular box it came in, complete with an Illuminati-esque eye on its cover.
Another hit Canadian game from the 1980s that drew inspiration from an existing idea was Balderdash (1985). Created by Toronto inventors Laura Robinson and Paul Toyne, the game took its cues from the parlour game Dictionary, where players choose a word, make up fake definitions for it and have everyone guess which is real. The board game was a hit, selling millions of copies and earning a spot in many board game cupboards.
Jim Deacove, a prolific Canadian game designer who started his career in 1971 and is still dreaming up new ideas 125 games later, admits Trivial Pursuit inspired one of his games. Deacove insists all his creations be cooperative games without winners or losers, however. His solution was Untrivia (1985), where players work together to come up with consensus answers to some serious life questions. Impressively, it’s still in print.
The French-language edition of Trivial Pursuit was created with all-new questions and sold under the title “Quelques Arpents de Pièges,” a punny twist on the famous Voltaire description of French Canada as “quelques arpents de neige” (a few acres of snow). It was surpassed, however, by another punny Quebec trivia game, Le Docte Rat (1988). In this game, players answer questions to advance through their academic careers to be the first to collect a doctorate. Le Docte Rat was a huge success in Quebec, spawning two extensions and a kids’ version: L’apprenti Docte Rat.
After playing Trivial Pursuit while teaching in Papua New Guinea, Cliff Brown was convinced a similar game about his home province, Newfoundland, would be a hit. Why? Newfoundlanders are everywhere, and all Newfoundlanders love home. The result was the eponymously named Newfoundlandia (1986). The game was picked up by the CBC soon after its release, and “five minutes after the newscast across Canada, my phone started to ring from everywhere,” says Brown. The game sold 7,000 copies in three weeks, and a second printing was rushed out in time for Christmas. A Canadian bestseller in ’86 and ’87, the game is now out of print.
Where many games during Canada’s board game boom tried to be educational, some were designed to push a political agenda. In True Dough Mania (1982), a satirical economic game invented by an Alberta real estate developer that poked fun at the “Trudeaumania” surrounding Pierre Trudeau’s 1968 election (and whose popularity had waned by the time of the game’s release), players own a resource-based business that has government red tape eat into its profits. Eventually, everyone in the game goes bankrupt. The winner is the biggest loser: that is, the first to lose all their assets to the government.
This story is from the September/October 2024 Issue
Mapping
Maps have long played a critical role in video games, whether as the main user interface, a reference guide, or both. As games become more sophisticated, so too does the cartography that underpins them.
History
Games were started in 1970 to give northern athletes more opportunities for training and competition
People & Culture
With the 100th Grey Cup set to kick off this November, the Canadian Football League and its rough-around-the-edges charm is winning converts
People & Culture
Despite being the originators of lacrosse, the Haudenosaunee people are facing hurdles to have their sovereignty recognized on the international sports stage