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The guide names Terry Fox, Rick Hansen, Wayne Gretzky, Donovan Bailey and Chantal Petitclerc as examples of Canadian sporting achievement and public contribution. It also connects James Naismith with basketball.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William B. Grice · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Canadian Football Hall of Fame was awarded to Hamilton, Ontario, in February 1963, after a successful presentation by Mayor Lloyd D. Jackson.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Nhl4hamilton · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Robert Tait McKenzie, born in Lanark County, Ontario, graduated in medicine at McGill and became its medical director of physical training in 1894. A pioneer of physical education, he served as a surgeon in the First World War and developed widely adopted rehabilitation methods. He won international acclaim for sculptures of athletes; his medallion The Joy of Effort was set in Stockholm’s Olympic Stadium in 1912.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Bain News Service · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
On March 3, 1875, James Creighton and his teammates played the first indoor public hockey game at Montréal’s Victoria Skating Rink. Over the next two years he brought together pucks, sticks, goals and skates with standardized rules and promoted the game. Captain of the first regular hockey club in Canada, he is often called the father of organized hockey.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: William James Topley · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Lionel “Big Train” Conacher excelled at six professional sports and was voted Canada’s all-round male athlete of the half-century in 1950. A star of football and lacrosse who helped win the 1921 Grey Cup, he played in the National Hockey League from 1925 to 1937 on two Stanley Cup-winning teams, then was elected to the Ontario legislature and, in 1949, to the House of Commons.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Howie Morenz of Mitchell, Ontario, joined the Montréal Canadiens in 1923 and helped them win three Stanley Cups, twice leading the league in scoring and winning the Hart Trophy three times. Probably the most exciting player of his day, he died in Montréal of complications from a hockey injury and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1945.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Ned Hanlan of Toronto was a champion rower in an era when rowing was a hugely popular spectator sport. He won the world sculling title in 1880 and held it until 1884, and by his retirement in 1897 had lost only about six of some 350 races. Known as “The Boy in Blue”, he was one of Canada’s first national sporting heroes.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Notman & Sandham · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The Toronto Maple Leafs trace their origins to one of the first National Hockey League teams, formed in 1917; co-owner Conn Smythe renamed the St. Patricks the Maple Leafs in 1927 and built Maple Leaf Gardens during the Depression. Foster Hewitt’s broadcasts brought the team national attention, and it won 13 Stanley Cups between 1918 and 1967.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Jeff Hitchcock · Photo licence: CC BY 2.0 · Credit & context
Ethel Catherwood (1908–1987) set national and world records in high jump and javelin between 1926 and 1930 and won the high jump gold medal at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, the first Games to allow women in track and field. With her “Matchless Six” teammates she earned Canada four medals, helping secure women’s place in Olympic track and field.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
George Dixon (1870–1908), born in Africville, Nova Scotia, was the first Black boxer and the first Canadian to win a world title, taking the bantamweight title in 1890 and the featherweight title in 1891. His training innovations, including shadowboxing, are still in use, and he used his popularity to open opportunities for Black boxers.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: unattributed · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, formed in 1895 by African Canadian Baptist leaders in Dartmouth and Halifax, was the only all-Black men’s ice hockey league in Canada and soon expanded across Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Its championships drew multiracial crowds, though players endured racism, and the league advanced the fight for equality.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: DRheaume · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Harry Jerome (1940–1982) was one of the fastest men in the world for much of the 1960s, holding multiple world sprint records, including the 100 metres in ten seconds flat. He later made major contributions to amateur sport and fitness in Canada, and remains a point of pride for African Canadians.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Dietmar Rabich · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
The Winnipeg Falcons, a hockey club made up almost entirely of Icelandic Canadian players, won the Allan Cup as Canada’s senior amateur champions in 1920. That year they represented Canada in Antwerp, Belgium, and won the first Olympic gold medal for hockey.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld (1903–1969), an all-round athlete who excelled in hockey, basketball, tennis, softball and track, won gold and silver medals at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. In 1949 she was chosen Canada’s outstanding female athlete of the half-century, after a later career as a Toronto sports columnist.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The Preston Rivulettes of Preston (now Cambridge), Ontario, are considered the most successful early women’s hockey team, winning more than 95% of their games in their ten-year existence. Led by right-winger Hilda Ranscombe, they won most provincial, regional and national championships between 1931 and 1940.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Preston Rivulettes · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Between 1914 and 1941, when Japanese Canadians faced racism, Vancouver’s Asahi Baseball Team won championships in senior amateur leagues with its “brain ball” style of bunting and speed. The team became a symbol of the Japanese Canadian struggle for equality and respect, and was disbanded during the Second World War internment.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Vancouver Public Library Historical Photographs · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Tom Longboat (1886–1949), an Onondaga athlete from the Six Nations of the Grand River, became the foremost long-distance runner of his time and won the 1907 Boston Marathon. He competed at the 1908 Olympics and was one of the first Canadian athletes to make a living solely from sport.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
Non-white athletes faced racial barriers to playing in the National Hockey League after its founding in 1917. In the league’s early decades, players such as Paul Jacobs, Henry “Elmer” Maracle, Larry Kwong, Fred Sasakamoose and Willie O’Ree confronted racism on and off the ice and broke through those barriers to reach the NHL.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Canada · Photo licence: Public domain · Credit & context
The 1972 Summit Series, eight games played in September 1972, was the first encounter between top Canadian professional hockey players and the Soviet Union’s national team. Team Canada won the series in Moscow with a come-from-behind victory, scoring the winning goal with 34 seconds left in the final game.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Jeangagnon · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
In 1892, Governor General Lord Stanley’s donation of a challenge cup for Canada’s best hockey club was announced. First awarded to amateur teams, the Stanley Cup has been the exclusive prize of the National Hockey League’s playoff champion since 1927.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Alex Goykhman · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Credit & context
James Naismith, born in Ramsay Township, Ontario, invented basketball. In 1891, as a teacher in Massachusetts, he devised it as a non-contact indoor team game; Parks Canada designated him a National Historic Person.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: D. Gordon E. Robertson · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 · Credit & context
Canadian law recognizes ice hockey as the national winter sport and lacrosse as the national summer sport.
Contributor: Citizen.ca
Photo: Uncleweed · Photo licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 · Credit & context