Updated May 11, 2004

Arts and leisure

The year was 1982, and tiny Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec, was hosting one of its many artistic festivals. It was there that a group of young street performers, calling themselves le Club des talons hauts, walked among the crowds on towering stilts, juggling and eating fire. The performers hatched the idea of a festival to be called La Fête Foraine de Baie-Saint Paul. Twenty years later, the Cirque du Soleil, as it was to become, charms some seven million people a year with eight troupes on two continents.

More and more, the talents of Canadians have been finding their way onto the world stage. Canada's artists—filmmaker Denys Arcand, multimedia artist Janet Cardiff, writer Alistair MacLeod, jazz singer Diana Krall, poet Anne Carson—are the active witnesses of how the times and our country are changing.

The audience can feel art when they hear the first note of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival, and they are amazed by it when the dancers from the Quebec troupe La La La Human Steps take to the air. Art in Canada, as presented at the Vancouver International Children's Festival—celebrating the young at art—or Prince Edward Island's World Dance Festival, is an ongoing exploration of our times.

Leisure is also something Canadians enjoy taking seriously. Living in such a large country makes Canadians natural tourists in their own land. This trait is exemplified by the Trans Canada Trail project, which will draw a continuous line across the country from the 'C' in 'Canada' to the final 'a.' On the home front, Canadians are increasingly becoming tourists of the Internet, surfing the sea of information on leisure and recreation that grows deeper every year.

Canadians come together in teams all year round to enjoy and enhance their prowess, perhaps in a game of street hockey interrupted by the shout of "Car!" or to race war canoes. Meanwhile, new competitors emerge and old sports expand. Canada's newest territory, Nunavut, competed in the Arctic Winter games in March 2000, and a growing grassroots interest in soccer culminated in a landmark victory for Canada at the Gold Cup in Los Angeles in February 2000. In fact, soccer is now one of the 10 most played sports in Canada—more popular than tennis or hockey.