Sporting lives

Sports continue to awaken our competitive spirits and we have always had our sports heroes—rower Ned Hanlan and strongman Louis Cyr in the 19^th century, and more recently hockey great Wayne Gretzky, golfer Mike Weir, skater Catriona Le May Doan and car racers Gilles and Jacques Villeneuve.

In February 2002, close to six million Canadians watched the final Olympic women’s hockey match in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the cheers were deafening as Canada won 3−2 over the United States, bringing home our first gold medal event in this sport. A few days later, the cheers went up again as the men’s hockey team also won gold. Altogether, Canada collected 17 medals, the best Olympic result since first competing in 1924.

Hockey can be traced back to games of "shinny" and "hurley" played with wooden pucks on frozen ponds in the 1800s. We can trace the origins of other Canadian sports to a variety of sources. Curling first came to Canada from Scotland and native Canadians are credited with canoeing, lacrosse, snowshoeing and tobogganing. Basketball was invented by a Canadian James Naismith.