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Character Profiles > Kyle Canning Chris Milligan

After moving to Erinsborough with his family, Kyle Canning found himself hanging out with Erinsborough High's resident idiots Justin Hunter and Shane Gregory. The three of them were then joined by Zeke Kinski, who was feeling excluded from his group of friends and had been writing essays for Justin and his mates to earn money. The four of them skipped school together on uni info day and went to a disused building, where they played a prank on Zeke, removing some crates so he was stuck at the top of a wall. After they helped him down, in return for Zeke giving Justin his phone, Justin went to grab it but fell down a gap in the floor. Zeke managed to help him up, winning the respect of Kyle in the process, and before long, Zeke was turning against his old friends to hang out with Kyle.

The following week at school, Principal Andrew Simpson banned any pranks on muck-up day, insisting that lessons would continue as normal. But Kyle, Zeke, Shane and Justin had ideas of their own, and ran through the school wearing balaclavas, with cans of silly string and stink gas. Hearing the screams of students and seeing what looked like terrorists running through the school, Andrew contacted the police, but when the real culprits were revealed, Zeke took the blame for everything, and earned all four of them a suspension on the first week back at school.

The following week, the year 11s went on a rafting camp to mark the end of the year, and Kyle was soon causing trouble, taunting Declan Napier about his mum's relationship with Andrew Simpson, and making suggestive comments to Declan's pregnant girlfriend, Bridget. As the two boys started fighting, Andrew suggested that a raft race would be a better way to settle their differences. Unfortunately, with Zeke, Kyle, Justin and Bridget in a raft captained by teacher Libby Kennedy, things went drastically wrong, as they plotted to win and ended up pulling out in front of the second raft, just as they were all reaching the rapids. The stunt backfired badly, as the first raft capsized, and Justin and Kyle made it to the riverbank, but there was no sign of Libby, Zeke or Bridget. As the search continued and both Libby and Bridget were found, Kyle was left traumatised by what had happened, with the possibility that his stupid prank had been responsible for Zeke's death.

As everyone returned to school, they were surprised to be joined by a sombre Kyle, whose suspension had been revoked in light of events over the holidays. Declan, in particular, was furious to see Kyle, blaming him and grabbing him by the shirt, while Kyle stood still, asking to be punched. As Declan stepped away, everyone realised how deeply Kyle had been affected by Zeke's death.

Some weeks later, Kyle was back to his old self, when 14-year-old Tegan Freedman came to school in a short skirt, encouraged by her tarty mum, Cassandra. As self-conscious Tegan found herself mocked by Kyle and his mates, her older brother Simon stepped in to defend her and soon a fight broke out. A few days later, Tegan turned up in her short dress again, but this time, when Simon tried to defend her from Kyle, she stood up for herself, telling him that picking on a 14-year-old girl was nothing to be proud of. The following week, Zeke was back at school, and Kyle ran into him for the first time, cautiously wondering if they were still mates after everything that had happened. Zeke assured him that everything was fine between them, and the pair then helped Tegan when her chemistry project was ruined, though Kyle got uncomfortable when Tegan's cougar of a mum Cass attempted to flirt with him.

Meanwhile, Zeke found himself a new interest as the anonymous underground DJ Lost Boy, but things got complicated as new Korean exchange student Sunny Lee became determined to find out the DJ's real identity after she called into his show and revealed all of her insecurities live on air. Desperate not to be found out, Zeke pushed her in Kyle's direction and Kyle, though a little confused, was only too happy to claim to be Lost Boy, earning himself a torrent of abuse from Sunny. When journalist Elle decided to try and find out the identity of Lost Boy, Kyle was delighted to hear that he'd be paid for an exclusive interview, and decided to continue going along with the lie, but, after comparing Kyle's voice to Lost Boy's, she concluded that she'd been conned and cancelled the cheque, making her more determined to get to the truth.

A couple of weeks later, the kids were taken to a camp to rehearse for the school play, but it soon turned into an even bigger drama as relationship problems came to the fore. Donna, trying to show Sunny that her first kiss with Zeke wasn't a big deal, walked over and nonchalantly kissed Kyle, leaving Ringo - Donna's ex - seathing with jealousy. When the boys later had an argument about it, and Ringo claimed that Donna was easy, Didge overheard and Ringo begged her not to say anything. But when Kyle asked Donna out and she insisted that the kiss meant nothing, Kyle fired back that Ringo had said something similar, and Donna learnt what her ex had been saying about her, causing a huge rift in their already fragile friendship.

Kyle was causing more trouble a few weeks later when he started laying into new student Harry Ramsay about not having a school uniform. Harry's mum, Jill had just died, leaving him and his two sisters on their own and Harry blurted this out, causing Kyle to back off. Later, however, Kyle deliberately told Harry that Paul Robinson, the man suspected of killing Jill, was in a relationship with Declan's mum, Rebecca. The tension between the boys then led to them having a fight and ruining the debut of the play.

A few weeks later at school, the kids were given the task of making their own anti-smoking ads, each group given an allotted amount of time to use a 'cigarette suit' as part of the project. When Zeke and Sunny's group almost messed up because of a terrible idea, they decided to re-film the ad, but realised that they no longer had the suit, so Zeke managed to steal it away from Kyle's group. At the end of the day, Dan demanded to know who was responsible for the theft and, wanting to protect Zeke, Sunny took the blame, followed by the rest of the gang, and they were all forced to go to Lassiter's and hand out anti-smoking leaflets as punishment.

Meanwhile, with the year 12 Deb Ball approaching, Kyle started encouraging Harry to try and score himself a date with a girl in year 12, so he'd be allowed to come. Intrigued by Kyle's promise of 'guaranteed action', Harry agreed to let Kyle try and find a girl for him to go with. But just as Kyle was about to hand over the list, he included a condition - that Harry try and encourage his older sister Kate to be his date for the ball. But Kate overheard their conversation, and told Kyle that she wouldn't go with him if he was the last guy on Earth. She also encouraged Harry to stay away from Kyle, but Harry refused to listen. Kate then took a different approach and asked Kyle to keep away from Harry - Kyle agreed, as long as Kate went to the Deb with him. Harry then overheard Kyle talking to his mates about how much Kate wanted him and had asked him to the Deb, and he was furious, believing his sister had gone behind his back to undermine him.

Relations got worse between Harry and Kate when Amanda Fowler, desperate to get one over on Kate for being voted to chair the Deb committee, started to get close to Harry, asking him to go to the Deb with her. Knowing that Amanda was using Harry, Kate did her best to get them out of each other's lives, with Amanda eventually telling Harry that Kate had ruined things for them, and she'd be going with Kyle instead. Not actually wanting to go with Kyle, Amanda quickly palmed him off onto her friend Sarah Aquino, who Harry was also desperate to go with. Realising that Sarah didn't like Kyle, and that he was only in it to score a quick grope after the event, Kate and Zeke plotted to split them up, creating a fake diary with Sarah professing her love, hoping it would scare Kyle away. The plan backfired as Kyle only thought his chances with her had increased, but with all the arguing and partner-swapping reaching ridiculous levels, the teachers decided to simply put everyone's names into a hat and pick partners at random - with Kyle chosen to attend with Donna. Kyle was thrilled, but Donna was appalled and warned him that they would only be together for the presentation dance - otherwise she had no interest in spending any time with him.

A couple of weeks later, when teacher Libby suspected that Kyle hadn't been writing his own English essays for the final assessment, it was suspected that Zeke had been doing them for him, since he had previous form. But everyone was surprised when Sunny confessed to writing them, explaining that Kyle had overheard her talking at the school, about how her parents didn't know that she was still living under the same roof as Zeke. Kyle had blackmailed her into helping him and she'd gone along with it, leaving her in serious trouble.

Trivia Notes
• Kyle's middle name Eugene was first given in episode 6554 in 2013 and his name was given as Kyle Eugene Canning until his departure in 2016. Since he returned in 2019, his middle names have been changed to Eugene Xavier in episode 8086, before reverting back to Eugene in episode 8120 and finally changing to Eugene Francis from episode 8225.

Episodes Featured
5593, 5594, 5598, 5604, 5605, 5606, 5620, 5645, 5649, 5654, 5669, 5673, 5675, 5685, 5686, 5687, 5701, 5711, 5767, 5778, 5797, 5800, 5801, 5803, 5813, 5849, 5850, 5903, 5908, 5909, 5916, 5973, 5974, 5979, 5980, 5981, 5985, 6008, 6009, 6012, 6089, 6093, 6129, 6131-7340, 7454-7457, 8072-

Biography by Steve