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The Asahi was a Japanese Canadian baseball club in Vancouver (1914–42). One of the city’s most dominant amateur teams, the Asahi used skill and tactics to win multiple league titles in Vancouver and along the Northwest Coast. In 1942, the team was disbanded when its members were among the 22,000 Japanese Canadians who were interned by the federal government (see Internment of Japanese Canadians). The Asahi were inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2003 and the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame in 2005.

During the 1920s Oppenheimer Park, also known as the Powell Street Grounds, was home to the best baseball team in the city. The Asahi drew its members from the surrounding Japanese-Canadian community. It all ended with the outbreak of World War Two.

Through the formation of the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club (OUIHC), Canadian students at the University of Oxford helped bring Canadian hockey rules to prominence in Europe, thus influencing the development of British and European ice hockey.

Toronto FC (also known as TFC or “The Reds”) is a men’s professional soccer team that plays in Major League Soccer (MLS). Founded in 2006 by Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, the club has won the Voyageurs Cup seven times (2009–2012 and 2016–18). They have made it to the MLS playoffs three times (2015, 2016 and 2017), becoming the first Canadian club to reach the MLS Cup final in 2016 and the first to win the MLS Cup in 2017. TFC has competed in the CONCACAF Champions League five times, making it as far as the finals in 2018. The club is one of three MLS franchises in Canada, including Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps FC.

Special Olympics is a global sports organization for people with intellectual disabilities. The impetus for the organization was research done by Canadian sports scientist Dr. Frank Hayden, who helped develop the first International Special Olympics Games in Chicago in 1968. The World Games are now held every two years and alternate between summer and winter events. The 2015 Summer Games were held in Los Angeles, California, and the 2017 Winter Games will be held in Austria. Canada began holding National Games in 1969, thanks to the efforts of broadcaster Harry “Red” Foster. Like the World Games, the National Games alternate between summer and winter events, with the 2014 Summer Games held in Vancouver, British Columbia, and the 2016 Winter Games held in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador. Special Olympics Canada has chapters in all provinces and territories, except Nunavut, and there are currently more than 40,000 children, youth and adults registered in Special Olympics programs across the country.

The Soccer Hall of Fame and Museum is an organization that aims to “collect, record, interpret and commemorate the soccer heritage of Canada.”

The Parapan American Games are a multi-sport event for para-athletes (athletes with disabilities) from 28 countries in the Americas and the Caribbean.

​On 9 August 2012, millions of people in Canada and around the world watched the Canadian women’s soccer team take on France for the Olympic bronze medal.

For hundreds of years, very few sports were considered appropriate for women, whether for reasons of supposed physical frailty, or the alleged moral dangers of vigorous exercise. Increasingly, women have claimed their right to participate not only in what were deemed graceful and feminine sports, but also in the sweaty, rough-and-tumble games their brothers played.

Humans wrestled first for survival and eventually for sport; in fact, drawings on cave walls portray a form of freestyle wrestling. Wall paintings in Egyptian tombs from about 2000 BC depict matches that show moves very similar to those practised today.

This text is from the free Toronto in Time app, which was created by The Canadian Encyclopedia and is available from the App Store and the Google Play store. Visit its companion website, which is linked below, to explore all the features of the app online.

In 1976, Montréal became the first Canadian city to host the Olympic Games.