The unofficial sport of the Games

KIRSTEN MURPHY

Denise Hutchings frowns when questioned about the size of her pin collection.

“I’ve lost count. They seem to multiply,” she says with a quick smile.

From her desk at Iqaluit city hall, the finance officer proudly displays 300 colourful pins fastened to two pieces of red fabric.

With the exception of a Tim Hortons coffee pot, her dotted display represents sporting events and Canadian territories and provinces.

At home, hundreds — perhaps thousands — of the intricate metal badges are stored in bowls and in drawers.

The attraction is simple, Hutchings said. Collecting pins allows her to meet people and refine her bartering skills. The hobby is affordable, environmentally friendly and open to new members.

“I started in the early ‘80s, when Terry Young gave me a polar bear pin back in Newfoundland,” she said.

Coincidentally, Young is now the principal at Inuksuk high school in Iqaluit.

A former stamp collector, Hutchings keeps pin gathering simple.

She never goes online to trade and she doesn’t belong to any specialized clubs. However, that’s not to say pin traders do not have extreme tendencies. Some traders have exchanged the shirt off their back to get a pin they’ve searched for.

Pin trading is an unofficial sport at the Arctic Winter Games. This month, more than a dozen pins are being introduced at the Games, including nine pins representing each official sport. A five-piece pin set will be available but only one pin per day will be released.

“We’ve had lots of calls already,” said Tamara Macpherson, AWG external relations officer. “A man in Alberta called and wants 10 of each.”

Hutchings is also an amateur curler and coach. Her favourite pin is of Canadian curler Sandra Schmirler, who died in 2000.

“That one is special. I won’t be trading it,” Hutchings said.

Money is rarely exchanged when trading pins. Even so, the stakes can be high. At the 2001 Canada Summer Games last year, Hutchings traded 13 limited edition Nunavut pins for one “O” shaped pin. The “O” pin completed the word “SPORT.”

“He made me pay,” she said with a laugh. “Usually you trade pin for pin but I wanted the “O” so badly.”

Pin collectors share similar characteristics, Hutchings said: an eye for detail, an appreciation for all things different and refusal to accept no for an answer.

“I like it because sometimes you have to fight for what you want. You need the drive to get something you want,” she said.