Jim Hunt (columnist)

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. and is remembered as a "character who had a loud and distinctive voice and loved telling good stories". Hunt left Caroline, his wife of 54 years, daughters Kathryn, and Cally, and sons Rod and Andrew. He also left two brothers, Don and Jack, and six grandchildren, Ben, Billy, Cally, Katie, Aiden and Ella.

Born and raised in Sarnia, Ontario, Hunt began his 50-plus years in journalism when he joined the Toronto Daily Star in 1948, working first as a city news reporter. He was working in the Queen's Park bureau before moving to sports in 1952.

At the Star's sports department, he worked under Milt Dunnell in 1953 and later the Star's former weekly magazine as sports editor. While with the Star, one challenging assignment saw him smuggling a gun — he opted for a fake one made of wood — in a gun case into Maple Leaf Gardens in 1956 during a Toronto Maple Leafs playoff game against the Detroit Red Wings. The objective for Hunt was to test the Gardens' security. He was able to get past the ticket-takers and the Star ran the picture of him and the gun case on the front page the next day.

Along the way he interviewed a long list of well-known figures in the sports world and outside it. He wrote a biography in the mid-1960s on hockey legend Bobby Hull. It was titled, Bobby Hull: The first million dollar hockey player. He had lunch with Marilyn Monroe and took notes while chatting with Yankee great Mickey Mantle. He also interviewed legendary boxers, Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali. As well as sharing drinks with Queen Elizabeth II on her private yacht during the Montreal Olympics.

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