Bones

When we arrived in Macklin on Friday July 18th, we unloaded all of our gear and settled down in our rental house.  At one point I glanced out front window and noticed a group of young people gathered outside on the street.  I didn't really think much of it originally, but when I looked a little closer, I realized they were playing Bunnock.  The locals commonly refer to it as Bones.  The street in front of the house was under construction, with the curbs and gravel base in, but no pavement yet.  There was a group of about a dozen young people.  They dragged a fire pit out into the middle of the street, had the tunes blasting, were enjoying a few beverages, and were playing the game.

Excuse the poor image quality of my snap shot below.  I quickly shot this through the window of the house just to satisfy myself that they were really playing Bunnock, and not bocce or something else.  Later we went out and chatted with them and they explained the way the game works.  It is played with horse's ankle bones.  Two lines of bones are stood up, and teams take turns throwing bones at them in an attempt to knock them down.  There is a certain order in which the bones need to be taken down.  It is kind of like a cross between horseshoes, lawn bowling and bocce.  We probably would have hung around outside a little longer, but the mosquitos were really voracious.

It seems the game is really popular in the immediate area.  When we visited the Denzil Hotel just down the highway, they spoke of the game and the World Championships that happen every year in Macklin on the August long weekend.  Macklin is the site of the world's largest Bunnock, adjacent to a prominent intersection at the edge of town.  It once housed an information center, but that has since been closed.  The locals at the Denzil bar joked that the sculpture looks like a female torso, and it was quite telling when the door was originally painted black.  They said that as a prank they had once schemed to paint it pink.

Outside of the immediate area very few people are aware of the game.  When we mentioned it during our travels, at other hotel bars, almost no one knew what we were talking about.  I was really surprised when I returned to Edmonton a few days later and learned that the son of one of Margarit's friends was planning to travel to Macklin on the long weekend to play in the tournament.  He had never played the game before, but was recruited by a friend that had entered the past couple of years.  I understand that the prize pool for 2025 is over $40,000 and they expect about 250 teams.