MONTREAL — Chris Haney, co-creator of the popular Trivial Pursuit board game, died Monday in a Toronto hospital after a long illness. He was 59.
Haney worked for The Canadian Press and the Montreal Gazette newspaper as a photo editor before going into the board-game business.
He teamed up with Scott Abbott, a Canadian Press sports reporter, in 1979 to invent Trivial Pursuit.
“He was one of the most knowledgeable, widely read people I’ve encountered,” Abbott said of his friend, who was a voracious newspaper reader.
Abbott said he and Haney always had a “blind faith” that their game would be successful if it got to market, but they had no idea just how wildly successful it would become.
Released in 1982, it took off after a slow start, and the duo sold the rights to toy giant Hasbro in 2008 for $80 million.
“We didn’t realize it would transcend games players and become, with the Cabbage Patch Kids, what Time magazine in 1984 called an American social phenomenon,” said Abbott.
The game made the pair millionaires, and Haney sunk his profits into building two of Canada’s top golf courses, the Devil’s Pulpit and the Devil’s Paintbrush in Ontario.
He is survived by his wife and three grown children.
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