The professionals

Professional sport is a business, and it is concerned as much with the bottom line as the blueline or the base line. Professional franchises move like chess pieces across the map, or disappear off the board altogether, and salaries and strikes make regular headlines.

Lacrosse has been popular in Ontario and New England for more than a hundred years. Although not as well known as our other professional sports, lacrosse is the national sport of Canada and is part of the legacy given to us by Aboriginal peoples, who have been playing it for centuries. Long before settlers from Europe arrived in North America, games involving hundreds of players from different tribes were played to settle disputes. The matches, which were considered excellent training, lasted for days on fields that could cover more than two square kilometres. The game remains popular among Aboriginal peoples, who see it as a social event that allows them to keep in touch with each other. Many Native people also play professionally in the recently renamed and re-organized National Lacrosse League (NLL), which is a box (or indoor) lacrosse league. The NLL is composed of 10 teams and has its headquarters in Buffalo, New York. In 2003, The Toronto Rock, 1 of 3 Canadian teams in the league, won the NLL Championship title, the team’s fourth championship in five years. 

The National Basketball Association (NBA) returned to Canada after a time-out of 50 years, with the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies opening the 1995/96 season as part of the 29-team NBA. Unfortunately, the 2000/01 season was the last for the Grizzlies franchise in Vancouver. After only five years, they moved to Memphis, Tennessee, as a result of decreasing fan support in Vancouver.

Canadian football is similar to the American game, but it is played on a larger field with more players and different rules. In the early 1990s, the Canadian Football League expanded into the United States, but after a series of franchise failures, this experiment in expansion came to a halt. There are now nine teams in the Canadian Football League: the Montréal Alouettes, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the Toronto Argonauts, and the Ottawa Renegades in the East Division, and the BC Lions, the Calgary Stampeders, the Edmonton Eskimos, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the West Division.

When the National Hockey League (NHL) was established in Montréal in 1917, the original teams were the Montréal Canadiens, the Montréal Wanderers, the Ottawa Senators and the Toronto Arenas. The NHL has come a long way since, and it now comprises 30 teams. The game has taken on a decidedly American flavour, however, as only six of the current teams are Canadian.

Baseball in Canada can trace its roots back to 1854 in Hamilton, where the first organized Canadian baseball team was formed. From its beginnings in this Ontario base, the sport then spread across the country. By 1904, it had become so popular in the Yukon Territory that an international championship was established, with a team from Alaska representing the United States. In 1969, the Montréal Expos joined the National League and eight years later, the Toronto Blue Jays entered the American League. In 1992, the Blue Jays were the first professional team outside the United States to win the coveted World Series, which they won again in 1993.

Soccer is becoming increasingly popular as a professional sport in Canada. The highest level of professional soccer played in Canada is in the U.S.-based A-League, to which four Canadian teams belong: the Toronto Lynx, the Montréal Impact, the Calgary Storm and the Vancouver Whitecaps. The A-League is an outdoor soccer league, but the sport is also played indoors in the National Professional Soccer League.