My kids’ first day at their new school was fast approaching. And like any other parent in Canada prepping for back-to-school, I was at the office supply store with a list in hand. My finger slides down the list, and I read the expected: exercise books, HB pencils, erasers, markers, lined loose-leaf paper. Those all go into the cart.

Then I see ‘duotangs’. Duotangs?

I scan the sheet for clues. But all I have is one cryptic line: ‘rainbow colours, r, o, y, g, b, and p’.

The processing wheel is spinning, but nothing is computing. Something that comes in twos, a duo? And, apparently, is rainbow-y? But, what’s a ‘tang’? Am I even pronouncing it correctly? No one around me seemed to think it was strange. Eventually, a helpful store assistant handed me a bunch of folders, like it was no big deal.

On that day, I found out that a duotang is a thin report folder made from brightly coloured cardstock. Inside each folder are two metal fasteners to hold loose sheets of paper. These fasteners, called tangs, are pushed through the holes in the paper and then folded down to hold them in place.

I later learned that the brand “Duo-Tang” is actually American and was manufactured in Chicago. The brand was bought over in 2004 and later discontinued. But somehow the Duo-Tang brand name made its way into Canadian school supply lists and remains to this day. Duotangs are so quintessentially Canadian that they even have their own entry in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

So, the next time you see ‘duotang,’ you now know it’s a report folder, originally American but uniquely Canadian. And yes, available in ‘rainbow colours, r, o, y, g, b, and p’.

But wait. What’s a pencil crayon?