It came out of the blue - the way the best calls do.

The caller wished to know if anyone here had any use for an old crokinole board.

It had, she said, once been in a cabin in New Brunswick, later in a small cottage in the Ontario bush, but now there was no more cottage and she did not know what to do with the old board.

Her husband had died, much too young, and the rustic place in the country had been sold. She was on the verge, she said, of tossing the game out when she thought she'd take a chance and just see if it might have one more life left in it.

"You've got kids," she said. "And you sometimes write about being at the lake -- would you like to have it?"

She was offering it free. She did not even know us. She merely hoped that another generation might pick up something that she and her husband had always enjoyed on those quiet evenings when the television reception is particularly bad for the very good reason that there is neither reception nor television.

The game is not complicated and takes up very few bytes of the human brain. Players in turn take shots, using their fingers to flick the men -- or discs, as the aficionado prefers -- into scoring position or else to take out the opposition. It is played on a round board surrounded by an octagonal frame with a slightly raised brim to keep in the stray shots. The board is often homemade, usually of plywood and lots of varnish, and there are annoying pegs protecting the inner circle where, if one of your discs happens to land by design or fluke, you are then granted permission to yell and scream and gloat and drive younger brothers and sisters to tears.

There is also something wonderfully Canadian about this simple board game. It came out of rural Canada around the time of Confederation -- the World Championship is held each year in Tavistock, Ont. -- which would give it an earlier claim on the national psyche than hockey.

Perhaps it's just as well, though, that it never became the national game. Otherwise we'd be seeing television ads aimed at boorish parental behaviour at crokinole tournaments.

There is, however, a connection between the two games in that "crokinole finger" is a condition caused, medical experts believe, by the Canadian tendency to believe it is possible to take a slapshot by violently flicking the middle finger into one of the small wooden discs which, admittedly, do slightly resemble hockey pucks.

It was the wooden discs, in fact, that ultimately led me to Toys "R" Us.

I had picked up the crokinole board -- homemade, highly varnished, in perfect shape -- and was on my way home when I realized this board had all its wooden discs in perfect order (12 black, 12 pale) and was, therefore, far superior to the old board at the lake, with its misfit collection of red and white "checkers."

If we had two sets of proper discs, we could have tournaments, two games running simultaneously -- the Wimbledon of crokinole.

The Toys "R" Us -- a massive toy store a friend once called "Disney World for poor people" and would, on a slow Sunday afternoon, unleash his two toddlers like puppies in a park until they were tired enough to pass out -- and I figured if anyone would have the discs it would be there.

It is a strange experience to go into a large toy store once you have fallen out of touch with Christmas wish-lists. Many of the new toys are simply ludicrous -- the kid's "automatic golf cart" at $19.99, the remote-control car worth more than the vehicle I had just left in the parking lot -- but some of them are unexpectedly old.

This is, according to the marketing experts, the second Christmas in a row where the theme has been "retro" -- a return to the past highlighted by the likes of Lego. Everything old is suddenly new again.

One whole wall contains G. I. Joe -- the No. 1 wish of my younger brother nearly 40 years ago. Joe has, of course, been repackaged to suit the times. One attack package is called "Sites on Baghdad."

There is a touch of retro in the massive games section, as well, once you work your way past the PlayStation 2 stacks and find the shelf containing tiddlywinks, pick-up sticks and checkers. I was getting close.

"Can I help you?"

I turned. The woman in charge of games was smiling.

"Crokinole," I said.

"What?"

"Crokinole," I repeated. "The board game. I need some discs."

"Croke?"

"Crokinole," I repeated one more time.

"I've never heard of it -- is it a game?"