It isn’t uncommon for guys and gals to pop in to watch a Jets game, she says, only to commence playing crib and, for the next several hours, neglect to glance up from their hands to catch the score. Susan Dokken rings the bell to get a recent crib night started at the Transcona Legion. She can also tell you that weathered wooden crib boards and multiple decks of cards have been kept behind the bar seemingly forever, available to anyone in the mood for a quick pickup game. While she isn’t certain how long the game, which was immortalized in the Charles Dickens novel The Old Curiosity Shop, has been a part of the furniture at her home branch, she can state for a fact her late parents started playing cribbage there on a weekly basis over 50 years ago. Susan Dokken has been running Tuesday night cribbage get-togethers at the Transcona Legion since 2005. Here in Winnipeg, so-called crib nights are staged at one branch or another Monday through Friday, and routinely draw crowds of people well versed in terminology such as dime, muggins and stink hole.

Over time, cribbage, a two-, three- or four-person game that combines a standard deck of playing cards, coloured pegs and a distinctive scorekeeping board, has become as synonymous with this country’s veterans’ halls as affordable suds and meat draws. Royal Canadian Legion branches from coast to coast will host Remembrance Day services on Saturday, and once all the speeches, prayers and moments of silence are through, members and guests will likely commiserate over a cold one, and a round or three of what’s been called the “greatest pastime.” Free Press 101: How we practise journalism.

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