A theory on hoodie history

Re: Why only Saskatchewan calls hooded sweatshirts Bunny Hugs, June 28

Dave Deibert references a 2007 interview with U of Saskatchewan researcher Tyler Cottenie, who suggested that the term “Bunny Hug” first appeared in the 1960s around Melfort and Prince Albert, in north central Saskatchewan. That is where I first heard it. I went to high school in Melfort in the mid-’60s and remember the name fondly. However, it wasn’t the name of a hooded fleecy sweatshirt with a front pocket — that was called a “kangaroo jacket” — it was the name of the very warm and soft winter hats that some of the girls wore.

I have a theory about how the name came to be applied to a hooded sweatshirt. There used to be a small rural factory that made cold-weather clothing somewhere northeast of Melfort. This little factory might have made the original Bunny Hugs. It seems likely that one very cold winter in the ’60s or ’70s, a store in Regina ordered a big box of Bunny Hugs and got “kangaroo jackets” by mistake. Instead of sending them back, they sold them as “Bunny Hugs.” The southerners who bought them didn’t know they were wrongly named, and they liked them. The rest is history.

I still have a northern Saskatchewan “kangaroo jacket” from the Seventies, green of course, but it is so worn and threadbare now that I wear it only for special occasions. My wife would rather I didn’t. Randall Osczevski, Newmarket, Ont.