Chris Haney was a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 journalist and co-creator of the Trivial Pursuit

Trivial Pursuit

Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which progress is determined by a player's ability to answer general knowledge and popular culture questions. The game was created in 1979 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, by Canadian Chris Haney, a photo editor for Montreal's The Gazette and Scott Abbott, a sports...

board game with Scott Abbott

Scott Abbott

Charles Scott Abbott is the co-inventor of Trivial Pursuit along with Chris Haney.Known as "Scott," he was the owner of the Brampton Battalion hockey team, of the Ontario Hockey League...

.

Early Life

Haney was born in Welland, Ontario

Welland, Ontario

Welland is a city in the Regional Municipality of Niagara in Southern Ontario, Canada.The city has been traditionally known as the place where rails and water meet, referring to the railways from Buffalo to Toronto and Southwestern Ontario, and the waterways of Welland Canal and Welland River,...

. He was a high school dropout at age 17, a decision he later regretted, saying he should have dropped out earlier. His father worked for The Canadian Press news agency and helped him get a job as a copy boy with the company. He was hired by The Montreal Gazette

The Gazette (Montreal)

The Gazette, often called the Montreal Gazette to avoid ambiguity, is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with three other daily English newspapers all having shut down at different times during the second half of the 20th century.-History:In 1778,...

after working at photo desks in Montreal and Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

.

Career

While working at the Montreal Gazette as a photo editor and met Abbott in December 1975 after being assigned to support coverage of the 1976 Summer Olympics

1976 Summer Olympics

The 1976 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event celebrated in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in 1976. Montreal was awarded the rights to the 1976 Games on May 12, 1970, at the 69th IOC Session in Amsterdam, over the bids of Moscow and...

 held in Montreal. The two developed the game on December 15, 1979, after a game of Scrabble

Scrabble

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...

got them thinking of ideas for a new alternative, with Haney coming up with the idea for a trivia game over a round of beers. Within an hour, Haney and Scott had mapped out the game with its six-spoked circular board and multiple categories on a few sheets of paper. Posing as reporters, they attended a toy fair in Montreal and came back with invaluable information they had obtained from game experts attending the show. Haney hoped the game would allow him to earn enough extra money to be able to travel to Spain and throughout Europe. After adding Haney's brother and a friend to their development team, The group needed investors and they raised $40,000 from 32 people. Haney talked his mother out of investing in the game for fear that he would cause her to lose her investment. Haney traveled to Spain, where he spent long days developing the trivia to be included in the game.

The Trivial Pursuit game that they developed was trademarked on November 10, 1981, and 1,100 copies of the game were released later that month for sale by retailers for $15. The company they formed to market the game, Horn Abbot, lost money on each of these initial sets, which cost $75 each to manufacture. The game's sales started slowly and Abbott and Haney didn't receive any interest from buyers at trade shows in Canada and the U.S. The game started developing sales by word of mouth and exploded by 1984, reaching sales of $800 million.

Selchow and Righter

Selchow and Righter

Selchow and Righter was a 19th century Bay Shore, New York game manufacturer best known for the games Parcheesi and Scrabble.It dates back to 1867when it was founded as E.G. Selchow & Co...

 licensed the rights to the game in 1988. The rights to the game were purchased by Hasbro

Hasbro

Hasbro is a multinational toy and boardgame company from the United States of America. It is one of the largest toy makers in the world. The corporate headquarters is located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States...

 in 2008 for US$80 million. Haney would eventually have enough money to travel, taking cruise ships across the Atlantic to Europe because he was afraid of flying.

In 1984 alone, 20 million copies of the game were sold, and by the time of his death, global sales of the game had reached 100 million copies in 26 countries and 17 languages, with cumulative sales estimated to be well in excess of $1 billion since its creation.

Haney died in Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

at age 59 on May 31, 2010, following a long illness. Haney was survived by his second wife, Hiam, his first wife, Sarah, and their three children

External links

ABC's "This Week" "In Memoriam"

The Guardian's Chris Haney obituary