Jim Hunt

Jim "Shaky" Hunt (9 November 1926 – 9 March 2006) was a Canadian sports columnist who spent over 50 years as a journalist and covered the biggest events in sports including the Stanley Cup, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, all of golf's majors and the 1972 Canada-Russia Summit Series. Hunt was known as "Shaky" thanks to his intramural goaltending career at the University of Western Ontario, where he was part of the school's first journalism graduating class, in 1948. Jim Hunt was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 2004.

Hunt died aged 79 after suffering a heart attack. Hunt left Caroline, his wife of 54 years, daughters Kathryn, and Cally, and sons Rod and Andrew.

His book also described what it was like covering the hockey riots in 1955 in Montreal. The incident occurred after the NHL suspended Canadiens great Maurice Richard for attacking a Boston Bruins player with his stick, and later going after a linesman who tried to stop him. Hunt said it was a day he'd never forget, "one of the blackest in the history of hockey." The first notable incident with Ballard took place as a rebuttal towards Hunt's comments about the Toronto Maple Leafs. Ballard went on the air after the next Maple Leafs game and called Hunt a bastard. He then told TV host Dave Hodge that his comments were about someone whose last name starts with one of the first three letters of the alphabet. Hodge responded by saying Jim Bunt. Ballard responded by saying the name started with the letter C.

Grey Cup Jim attended every Grey Cup game between 1949 and 1999. This became an annual tradition. When he couldn't attend the last few Grey Cups, another journalist stood up to pose the question in his absence. One year at The Masters, we were walking past the clubhouse and Arnold Palmer walked past, stopped and said: "Hi Jim." Hunt looked at him and said: "Do I know you?" There was another year when Hunt took Masters chairman Jack Stephens to task. At the annual press conference with the heads of Augusta, Shaky said: "You invite Japanese, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Australians but you never invite Canadians. Why is that?" Stephens conferred for a moment with a couple of others and then said: "We consider them North Americans."

Retirement In 2001, Hunt was honoured by Sports Media Canada, the Canadian arm of the international sportswriters' association, with an achievement award. He also authored the autobiography All Work and All Play: A Life in the Outrageous World of Sports with Steve Simmons a fellow Canadian journalist writing the foreword. Published by Wiley and Sons, it was released on 30 September 2005. It was a collection of stories from his time as a reporter. Long after he'd retired from full-time work he continued writing a Tuesday column for the Sun, his last one running 28 February 2006.