Hockey Game

Wel­come to my new series, the “Cana­dian List of Ten”! Ten weeks, ten posts, ten lists and one hun­dred new Cana­dian things for you, from food to lan­guage, from city to weather.

There is more to Canada than ice hockey, eh!

Indeed, Cana­di­ans par­tic­i­pate in a vari­ety of sports, pro­fes­sion­ally or as ama­teur. They com­pete in var­i­ous cham­pi­onships and inter­na­tional games and Canada is a good con­tender in many fields.

Have you ever heard of curl­ing? Did you know that cricket was pop­u­lar here? Can you name Canada’s offi­cial sum­mer sport?

No?

Looks like you need this 10 Cana­dian sports list!

1. Curl­ing: this is a sport I had never heard of before I came to Canada. To me, curl­ing is like play­ing darts hor­i­zon­tally on ice…! Basi­cally, curl­ing is a sport in which teams take turns slid­ing heavy, pol­ished gran­ite stones down the ice towards a tar­get. This sport is most pop­u­lar in the prairies.
2. Base­ball: although more strongly asso­ci­ated with the United States, base­ball is also pop­u­lar in Canada. The only Major League Base­ball team are cur­rently The Toronto Blue Jays, since the Mon­treal Expos moved to Washington.
3. Lacrosse: this is a true orig­i­nal Cana­dian sport, since First Nations started play­ing it some 500 years ago. Today, it is a wide­spread sport among autochtones and Cana­di­ans of all back­grounds, and it has been rec­og­nized as Canada’s offi­cial sum­mer sport.
4. Foot­ball: not soc­cer (one of Canada’s weak points!), but US style foot­ball. Canada has eight foot­ball teams: the B.C. Lions, Cal­gary Stam­ped­ers, Edmon­ton Eski­mos, Saskatchewan Roughrid­ers, Win­nipeg Blue Bombers, Toronto Arg­onauts, Hamil­ton Tiger Cats, and Mon­treal Alouettes.
5. Bas­ket­ball: it is a pop­u­lar sport in Canada, espe­cially in Nova Sco­tia and South­ern Ontario. Cur­rently, the only pro­fes­sional team is the Toronto Rap­tors.
6. Cricket: although not as big as in India or Pak­istan, cricket was the most pop­u­lar sport in Canada until the early 20^th cen­tury. It is still played today by a num­ber of fans. The match between the USA and Canada the old­est inter­na­tional fix­ture in cricket, hav­ing first been played in 1844.
7. Auto Rac­ing: who hasn’t heard of Gilles Vil­leneuve, the famous Grand Prix Dri­ver? It was a huge deal when the Cir­cuit Gilles Vil­leneuve in Mon­treal has been dropped from the For­mula One cal­en­dar in 2008, but it is sched­uled to return in 2010. Indeed, the Cana­dian Grand Prix was the most watched For­mula One GP in the world in 2005.
8. Run­ning: although it is not really a pro­fes­sional sport in Canada, run­ning is some­thing that a lot of Cana­di­ans enjoy doing. It is a pop­u­lar activ­ity and it’s not rare to spot coura­geous soul jog­ging in a bliz­zard (I even took a pic­ture once!). Marathons, semi-marathons and var­i­ous races are also often orga­nized to fund raise for var­i­ous char­i­ties and par­tic­i­pa­tion is sur­pris­ingly large.
9. Field Hockey: what do you do in the sum­mer? You play field hockey, a fun sub­sti­tute to ice hockey, very pop­u­lar in many coun­tries includ­ing Canada.
   
10. Ice Hockey: Canada’s offi­cial pas­time is best watched live, among other fans who will cheer dur­ing each fight. Many stereo­types are asso­ci­ated with hockey, start­ing with the tooth­less bloodshot-eyed play­ers cliché. But in fact, the sport is sur­pris­ingly grace­ful. It is also fast-paced and quite fas­ci­nat­ing, not only for the game itself but for the skat­ing skills of the players.

Related posts:

1. Hockey (2÷10)
2. Stuffs Cana­di­ans Like (Part 2)
3. Sports Nation (3÷10)
4. Cana­di­ans Behind The Camera
5. 10 Myths About Canada