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Footbag/AKI/Hackeysack
1984-85
I learned to play footbag from Yves Archambault, the remarkable
bass player in my band Nom Provisoire.
Yves had met a guy from Oregon who played and so he sewed
himself a bag. We played endlessly in parks at toking breaks
during our furious rehearsals in Cartierville. Yves founded
AKI in Montreal as
a company in about 1981
and it quickly grew to be the sole seller of footbags in
the province during the very first Quebecois footbag craze
in the early 80s. He sold many many thousands of bags as
he and I traveled 14,000 kilometres around the vastness
of Quebec, showing off our updated version of this ancient
game and new product. This was in the summer of '83. I wrote
about it Brian Topp's Open City Magazine, in many ways the
precursor to the Montreal Mirror. Yves and I in kicked the
bag around in stores and malls in 45 Quebecois communities,
hopping around to Duran Duranfor curous crowds. All in my
parent's car. A fabulous trip. And the following summer,
after returning from an extraordinary 9-month trip around
much of Asia, I promoted AKI again, but in Ontario this
time. Mostly Toronto. And all that summer I lived in Jane
Jacobs' treehouse as part of her wonderful family. And my
footbag partner that summer was Jeff Hall, who was a frisbee
pro and a dancer who has since performed for years with
Pierre-Paul Savoie and with Carbon 14.
left: Yves Archambault, 2001 World Doubles
Champion
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