diff --git a/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/command/commands/shell.py b/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/command/commands/shell.py
index c01bb8618..de4fcd7f5 100644
--- a/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/command/commands/shell.py
+++ b/scrapy/trunk/scrapy/command/commands/shell.py
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
             #print _failure
 
         print "Downloading URL...           ",
-        url = canonicalize_url(url.strip())
+        url = url.strip()
         r = Request(url)
         spider = get_or_create_spider(url)
         try: