Sports in Canada

[18] Approximately half of Canadians aged 15 and older participate in sports, with 55% reporting involvement in activities like soccer, ice hockey, swimming, and running.

[22] Sports such as baseball, golf, curling, volleyball, badminton, bowling, and martial arts are also widely enjoyed at the youth and amateur levels.

[21] A gender analysis revealed that 54% of males opted for one of the leading four sports hockey, soccer, basketball, or baseball whereas only 35% of females did so.

Members of Generation X and Baby Boomers showed a greater likelihood of selecting hockey, with 25% and 24% respectively, juxtaposed with Gen Z and Millennials at 13% and 17%.

In Canada, individual sports such as figure skating, skiing, golf, paddling, swimming, and track and field have long been important.

Presently, the NHL includes seven teams in Canada: the Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs, Vancouver Canucks, and the Winnipeg Jets.

The junior-age Canadian Hockey League is broadcast nationally and its annual Memorial Cup championship is a popular television event.

Today lacrosse not only remains an integral part of Indigenous culture, but is played by tens of thousands of people across Canada and the north eastern United States.

A total of five of the league's thirteen franchises are located in Canada: the Vancouver Warriors, Calgary Roughnecks, Saskatchewan Rush, Toronto Rock, and Halifax Thunderbirds.

[49] Professional baseball has a long history in Canada, beginning with teams such as the London Tecumsehs, Montreal Royals, and Toronto Maple Leafs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The inventor, James Naismith, was Canadian; born in Almonte, Ontario, he was working as a physical education instructor in Massachusetts when he created the game in 1891.

Newell is also separately recognized by the Hall as the head coach of the 1960 USA Olympic team, which won a gold medal in overwhelming fashion and was inducted as a unit in 2010.

The most recent Canadian to enter the Naismith Hall is Steve Nash, born in South Africa but raised from early childhood in Victoria, British Columbia, a two-time NBA MVP who was inducted in 2016.

In 1864, at Trinity College, Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devised rules based on rugby football.

The CFL's championship game, the Grey Cup, is the country's single largest sporting event and is watched by nearly one third of Canadian television households.

[55] The nine CFL teams are the BC Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Elks, Saskatchewan Roughriders, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Toronto Argonauts, Ottawa Redblacks, and Montreal Alouettes.

[67][68] Ringette first appeared in Canada in 1963 after it was first conceptualized by Sam Jacks, a former Toronto YMCA director who served as a Canadian soldier during World War II.

In July 2020, the team withdrew from the remainder of the Super League season due to "overwhelming financial challenges" caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Highlights include famous victories over Scotland and Wales, and until recently frequent wins over their North American neighbours, the United States.

[75] The Arrows team, an independent off-shoot of the Ontario Blues Rugby Football Club, features mostly Canadian players and staff.

Effective with the 2023 season, the team that tops the CPL regular-season table and the winner of the postseason playoffs qualify for the following year's CONCACAF Champions Cup.

Canada's national teams compete in CONCACAF, the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football.

In Quebec, a variation of duckpin bowling is played using pins with rubber bands around their widest section, known in French as petites quilles.

Boxing was illegal in Canada during the bare-knuckle era but fights took place in remote areas and the last of them was in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1901.

Later, during the final event of the year, the Paris Rolex Masters, Shapovalov secured a top 20-year end finish after reaching the semi-finals.

In recent women's tennis, Bianca Andreescu won the 2019 Rogers Cup in Toronto, where she defeated two current top-ten players in Kiki Bertens and Karolína Plíšková.

The track was named for Canada's first Grand Prix driver, the late Gilles Villeneuve, whose son, Jacques, won the Formula One World championship in 1997.

Races were held in Mont-Tremblant and Mosport road courses and on street circuits in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton.

In the past decade shooting sports in Canada have seen a major surge of popularity as more and more Canadians are applying for firearms licences.

[106] At the recreational level individuals and families can be found across the nation improving their marksmanship skills at various private and public shooting ranges.