The phrase "trick or treat" was first printed in Canada.

The story you've heard

Most people assume trick or treat is as American as apple pie. Halloween in the United States, with its glowing porches and giant sweet bowls, is famous around the world, so it seems natural that the phrase was born there too.

But the dictionary detectives tell a different story. When researchers went hunting through old newspapers for the earliest printed examples of the chant, the trail led north of the border, to Ontario and then to the Canadian Prairies.

What the old newspapers say

The Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, a scholarly dictionary produced at the University of British Columbia, lists trick or treat as a Canadian expression. Its reason is simple: the earliest recorded versions of the chant come from Ontario in 1917.

That year, the Sault Star in Sault Ste. Marie, a town on the border with Michigan, described young people calling out tricks or treats. A householder who handed over something good was left in peace, at least until the next gang arrived. In the same year, the Sun in Owen Sound reported children in false faces greeting a writer at the door with the words treat or trick.

The Prairie provinces offer the next clues. In 1924 the Edmonton Bulletin mentioned the familiar demand treat up, or tricks. Then, in 1927, a report from the small town of Blackie, Alberta, described children at back and front doors calling trick or treat, in the words we still use today. The etymologist Barry Popik, a researcher who traces the history of words, is credited with spotting that Blackie report.

When the tricks were real

The phrase made sense because the threat was real. Long before sweets dominated the night, Halloween in North America was a festival of mischief. According to Heritage Park, a history museum in Calgary, pranksters broke windows, lifted front gates off fences and threw flour at passers-by. Cabbage stalks were hurled so often that some places called it Cabbage Night.

Treats were the bargain grown-ups struck to protect their property. Early treats were usually homemade: cakes, biscuits and apples. Some families even sent postcards warning loved ones to be careful in October. Dressing up and calling at doors was older than the phrase, too. A Vancouver newspaper described disguised children making friendly visits on Halloween as early as 1898.

War, sugar and a fresh start

The Second World War nearly put a stop to it. From 1942, sugar was strictly rationed, which made hunting for sweets almost pointless. In the United States, many towns cancelled Halloween or brought in curfews, and newspapers even compared young pranksters to saboteurs. Instead, communities organised parties and dances to keep children off the streets.

When the war ended and sugar rationing was lifted, things changed quickly. Companies began mass-producing Halloween sweets, new suburbs offered safe streets lined with houses, and trick-or-treating took off across North America in the 1950s. By 1960, one Canadian writer was even asking well-off children to spare some of their haul for a UNICEF collecting tin.

So tonight, when children knock and call out those three famous words, they are repeating a chant first written down in small Canadian towns more than a century ago. The difference is that today, almost nobody expects a trick.

Timeline

1. 1898A Vancouver newspaper describes children in disguise making Halloween visits, without using the phrase.
2. 1917Ontario papers in Sault Ste. Marie and Owen Sound print tricks or treats and treat or trick.
3. 1924The Edmonton Bulletin mentions the familiar demand treat up, or tricks.
4. 1927A report from Blackie, Alberta uses the exact words trick or treat.
5. 1942Wartime sugar rationing begins; many communities cancel Halloween or hold parties instead.
6. 1950sAfter rationing ends, trick-or-treating spreads across North American suburbs.