About
April 02, 2012Fifty-seven episodes of the Pause + Play podcast can be found on our website, as well as through the Trivia Club Network of podcasts that can be subscribed to on iTunes, as well as SoundCloud. Pause + Play was featured on the CBC's Podcast Playlist on March 10th, 2017, as part of their "Games people play" episode, with Russel Harder asking Lindsey Michael and award-winning Toronto news personality Matt Galloway trivia questions.
An alumni of the Atlantic Theatre Company Acting School in New York City and hailing from the small Saskatchewan town of Asquith, Russel Harder began Trivia Club in April of 2012 at Cardinal Rule and has watched it grow from a once a month event to an event that can be found in multiple locations a week, across Ontario. Trivia Club hosted nine events in its first year of operation and has grown to four hundred and fifty events by Trivia Club's fifth anniversary in 2017, and over seven hundred events since then. Trivia Club has also produced events for Deloitte, the National Ballet of Canada, the Canadian Opera Company, Simon & Schuster Canada, and others. Companies that have partnered with Trivia Club for prize giveaways include motion picture distributors such as Searchlight, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and others, independent Canadian brewing companies such as Steam Whistle Brewery, and Beau's, as well as local Toronto businesses like The Candy Bar, Ed's Real Scoop, Crywolf Clothing, and North Standard. During the COVID-19 pandemic we were also lucky to put together trivia packages to entertain those at Etobicoke General Hospital.
Author Eric Nusbaum wrote this about sports, and it's how we view Trivia Club as well, why we pay so much attention to team stats, to landmark events, and achievements:
"[It's] a way of marking time. But they are also a way of filling time: the familiar rhythms. It offers us the simple gift of something to do: as participants and spectators. It offers us a habit. We are a species that craves ritual, that requires it. And in [Trivia Club], ritual can create meaning where there otherwise isn’t any. We wrap our games up in fancy clothes and they become important. But they aren’t actually important. That is a big part of their appeal, even at their least serious."
a short radio doc courtesy of Arman Aghbali, who stopped by Trivia Club @ Cardinal Rule. 01/29/14
Trivia Club was also featured on CP24 on 02/09/20 in promotion of Red Carpet Oscar Trivia at The Rec Room Roundhouse.
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