Canada loves sports, however it’s important to remember that Canada also spends half the year in cold weather and a great deal of that, depending where you live, with snow on the ground. So Canada loves sports but our love of summer sports may not be as plentiful as our love of winter sports. As well, Canada’s most popular sport is not one countries who aren’t in the far north generally play.

Ice Hockey - By far the most popular sport in Canada, Ice Hockey has become one of two national sports in Canada. Ice Hockey in it’s current form was invented in Canada however it is based on many other stick and ball games played by the Native Americans, as well as a stick and ball game called culf, played by the Dutch. The first organized, indoor game of hockey was played in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on March 3, 1875. Nowadays when people think of Ice Hockey they tend to think of the National Hockey League (NHL) which is considered to be the highest level hockey league in the world. The NHL was started in Canada in 1919 with just four teams, two in Montreal, one in Ottawa and one in Toronto. 5 years later it expanded to the USA and the teams consisted of what are called the Original Six containing Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, Boston Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings and the New York Rangers. Today the league consists of 30 teams of which 7 are in Canada and 23 from the USA.

Hockey in Canada is something that can’t be missed growing up there, every Saturday night on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is Hockey Night in Canada, there are always two games shown on TV and it attracts millions of viewers all across the country. As Canada is very cold in the winter, the lakes and rivers usually freeze hard so in the winter it is not uncommon to see young people playing games of hockey outside across the country. In the summer people often play inside Ice Rinks or they take off their skates and instead play the game on the streets in their community.

Ice Hockey is probably one of the things Canada is most known for, especially as it’s one of the sports that Canadians tend to do very well in during international competitions like the Olympics. Ice Hockey also is something of a national passion and tempers will easily become hot when the topic comes up. Probably the best example to show just how insane some Canadians are about Hockey happened in 2011 when the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup finals against the Boston Bruins. After the game had ended the fans poured into the streets and started rioting, burning cars and fighting with police, all of this simply because their team came in second and not first. The worst thing is that this is the second time this has happened in Vancouver. So if you go to Canada be respectful of the local team’s hockey club as you never know just how crazy the team’s fans really are.

Lacrosse - Canada’s Summer National Sport, Lacrosse is another stick and ball game but this time it’s played on either grass or a hard indoor surface. The name is french for “The Stick” and it was originally created and played by the Native Americans in North America. The original game was played with hundreds of people on each side on a field sometimes more than 1 Kilometer in length. It was played as a religious festival and people viewed something similar to a ceremonial war to give honour to the master which lasted 2-3 days from sunrise to sunset.

Modern versions of the game are no longer so long or complex, once the game was made a more official sport in 1867, it was generally played outside on a grassy field. A group of people who owned indoor arenas decided to try and bring the sport inside to try to use it to make money during the summer and they created an indoor version called Box Lacrosse. Lacrosse is one of the fastest growing sports in Canada right now and is rapidly increasing in popularity all across the globe.

Baseball - Baseball is often thought of as America’s Past-time but it was actually created in England and was a variant of a British game called Rounders. As many Europeans immigrated to North America they brought the game with them and the modern version of what is known as Baseball was created in the USA. The first official game of modern baseball was played in Hoboken, New Jersey where the New York Nine beat the New York Knickerbockers 23-1 in 4 innings. The first official league for baseball was formed in 1867 with 16 clubs in the USA. Baseball has become very popular in North, South and Central America as well as in Japan and South Korea.

In modern times the Major League Baseball Association is the ruling body of professional baseball in North America, there are 30 clubs in total with 29 in the USA and only 1 in Canada. There used to be two Canadian teams but the Montreal Expos had money problems and the club was moved to the USA. I grew up loving the Toronto Blue Jays as I lived near the city and still remember 1992-93 for one important reason, the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series of Baseball two years in a row. The second year in 1993 I remember sitting in my room watching Joe Carter hit a game winning home run and being so excited that my mom came downstairs to see what I was yelling about. Unfortunately the Toronto Blue Jays have never made it to the post season since.

Curling – Another sport that not a lot of countries have gotten into except the Northern countries, curling is a game of sliding a “rock” – a large, polished, heavy stone – down the ice to try and knock the other team’s rocks off the playing area and scoring points at the same time. Curling was thought to have been invented in Scotland in the 1500′s and was brought to Canada by the Scottish immigrants when Canada was being formed. While Curling is played in many countries it is probably strongest in Canada and the first official world curling championship was won by a Canadian team in 1959.

Curling is a bit of a strange game with a lot more strategy involved than most people think from watching it. The rock is slid down the ice by one player, they must be careful to slide it at the proper speed as you don’t want it to slide to far. As well the rock will usually be twisted so it spins one way or the other to allow it to curve over the ice to get where it should go. Two other players on the team “sweep” in front of the rock to either make it move faster, slower or to try and move it in different directions. Whichever team’s rock is closest to the center of the painted circle gets the points.

Canadian Football - Not many people realize this but Canada actually has another form of football that is it’s own, it’s similar to the American version but different on a number of issues. Like American Football it is played with an oblong shaped ball which must be moved by the Offensive team down the field while the defensive team tries to stop them. Some of the differences are that the field is longer and you only have 3 “downs” or tries to get the ball 10 years instead of 4. This has led to a much faster style than in American football as throwing is more common than trying to run the ball.

Football was brought to North America by the British Army in around 1860 and the first official game of Football was played on November 9, 1861, at University College, University of Toronto. The Canadian Football League was founded on January 19, 1958 and currently holds eight teams with a new team expected to be added in 2012. The CFL tried to open an American division to try and broaden the appeal of the sport but was ultimately a failure due to the love of the National Football League in the USA.



Basketball - Basketball was created by a Canadian man named James Naismith while he was teaching at what is now known as Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. It spread very quickly all over North America and today is still a very popular game in most of the continent. However Canada has never really fallen in love with the game to the same degree that the USA has, currently Canada has only one team in the National Basketball Association (NBA) which is the Toronto Raptors but they have never really showed much promise.

However when Canadians are young Basketball is a large part of our Physical Education classes and most schools and Universities have a Basketball team which compete at their own level.

Soccer - Also known in most of the world as Football, Soccer is a popular past-time in Canada among all ages. Games involving kicking a ball around a field have been around for thousands of years with the oldest that we have proof of being Cuju in China at around 200-300 BC. However the modern rules of football were codified in the mid 19th century in England.

Canadian Soccer has always been popular and in fact Soccer has more registered players than any other sport in Canada. Canada has two teams, Toronto FC and the Vancouver Whitecaps, in Major League Soccer which is North America’s top soccer league. Despite all this Canada has never seen much success in soccer and the sport has remained mired in a middle ground where lots of people love to play it but not so many enjoy watching it.

Winter Sports – Canada has always had a love of Winter sports like Skiing, Snowboarding, Sleding and skating. Because of it’s cold, long winters, Canadian people tend to spend a lot of time playing these sports and enjoying the beautiful winter scenery as they do. Canada tends to do very well in the Winter Olympics but rarely does equally well in the Summer Olympics and as such, though Canada has hosted the Olympics three times, only once was it in the Summer (1976).


Other popular sports in Canada include Rugby, Cricket, Motorsport, Bowling, Golf, Cycling, Wrestling and Mixed Martial Arts