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The Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy was added to the NHL’s awards for individual excellence in 1999. It is awarded each year to the league’s top goal scorer during the regular season. The trophy honours former Montreal Canadiens superstar Maurice “Rocket” Richard, who was the first player to score 50 goals in a season and the first to reach the 500-goal plateau. The tribute to Richard was a gift from the Montreal Canadiens and was first proposed by team president Ronald Corey. The award’s first recipient was Teemu Selanne of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. Alex Ovechkin has won the award nine times — more than any other player.

Dene games are tests of physical and mental skill that were originally used by the Dene (northern Athabascan peoples) to prepare for the hunting and fishing seasons, and to provide entertainment. Today, Dene games (e.g., Finger Pull and Hand Games) are still played in many schools and community centres in the North as a means of preserving tradition and culture. As competitive sports, Dene games are also featured in various national and international athletic competitions, including the Arctic Winter Games.

The Iroquois Nationals are a lacrosse team representing the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which crosses the Canada-US border (see Iroquois). It is the only First Nations team officially sanctioned to compete in any sport internationally.

The Ladies Ontario Hockey Association (LOHA) was the first governing body for community women’s ice hockey in Canada. It was formed in 1922 and disbanded in 1940. Initially, the league consisted of 18 senior teams from across Ontario, from bigger cities such as Toronto, London and Ottawa, to smaller centres such as Bowmanville, Huntsville and Owen Sound. The creation of the LOHA led to the 1925 founding of the Women’s Amateur Athletic Federation, which absorbed the LOHA when it disbanded.

The origins of ice hockey have long been debated. In 2008, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) officially declared that the first game of organized ice hockey was played in Montreal in 1875. Many also consider ice hockey’s first rules to have been published by the Montreal Gazette in 1877. However, research reveals that organized ice hockey/bandy games were first played on skates in England and that the earliest rules were also published in England. Canada made important contributions to the game from the 1870s on. By the early 20th century, “Canadian rules” had reshaped the sport.

The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) is the organization responsible for Canada’s participation at the Olympic Games, Pan American Games, and Youth Olympic Games. It helps select and financially assist Canadian cities in their efforts to host an Olympic Games or Pan American Games. It also manages programs that promote the values of the Olympics throughout Canada. The organization, which was known as the Canadian Olympic Association (COA) from 1912 to 2002, has a staff of more than 100 people. Its offices are in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Olympic Games are an international sports competition, held every four years. Until 1992 the Olympic Summer Games and the Olympic Winter Games were held in the same year, but beginning in 1994 they were rescheduled so that they are held in alternate even-numbered years.

 Northern Dancer, racehorse (b at Oshawa, Ont 27 May 1961; d at Chesapeake City, Md 16 Nov 1990).

Hockey is Canada's national winter game and arguably its greatest contribution to world sport, and this prowess undeniably translates to the Olympic arena as well.

The first Olympic Winter Games were held in Chamonix, France, from 25 January to 5 February 1924. Canada sent 12 athletes (11 men, one woman) to the Games, and won the gold medal in ice hockey. The country finished ninth in the overall medal count.

The Lou Marsh Trophy is awarded annually to Canada’s best athlete, as decided by a committee of Canadian sports journalists convened by the Toronto Star. The award is named after Louis Edwin Marsh, a former sports editor with the Toronto Star. It was first awarded in 1936. More recently, there have been calls to rename the award, due to Marsh’s long, documented history of promoting racism and discrimination in his columns. In November 2021, the Toronto Star agreed to assess “whether it is appropriate and fitting to continue to have his name associated with the award.”

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats are a professional team in the Canadian Football League (CFL). The franchise dates back to the formation of the Hamilton Football Club (the Tigers) in November 1869. The Tigers and another Hamilton football team, the Wildcats, amalgamated as the Tiger-Cats for the 1950 season and played in the Inter-provincial Rugby Football Union (IRFU). The IRFU became the Eastern Conference of the CFL in 1960. Since the early 20th century, the Tigers and Tiger-Cats have been associated with a tough, physical brand of football that reflects the blue-collar roots of Hamilton as an industrial city. The team’s iconic cheer, “Oskie Wee Wee, Oskie Waa Waa, Holy Mackinaw, Tigers… Eat ’em Raw!” is well known throughout Canada and dates back to the early 20th century. The Tiger-Cats have won the Grey Cup 13 times, including five times as the Tigers.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers are a football team that plays in the Canadian Football League (CFL). Located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the Blue Bombers have alternated between the league’s West Division and East Division. They have been part of the West Division since 2014. Since its founding in 1930, the team has won 12 Grey Cup championships. In 2019, the team won its first Grey Cup since 1990 when it defeated the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 33–12. After the 2020 season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Blue Bombers defeated Hamilton in the 2021 Grey Cup by a score of 33–25. It marked the team’s first back-to-back championship since 1962, and the first in the CFL since the Montreal Alouettes in 2010.

The Grey Cup is a trophy produced by Birks Jewellers that has been part of Canadian sports since 1909, when it was donated by Governor General Earl Grey for the Canadian football championship. The original conditions stated that the "cup must remain always under purely amateur conditions," although there is good reason to believe that this was at the urging of P. D. Ross of the Ottawa Journal rather than Lord Grey. The name "Grey Cup" has since been used to refer both to the trophy and the event.

Lacrosse is one of the oldest organized sports in North America. While at one point it was a field game or ritual played by First Nations, it became popular among non-Indigenous peoples in the mid-1800s. When the National Lacrosse Association of Canada was formed in 1867, it was the Dominion of Canada’s first governing body of sport. Lacrosse was confirmed as Canada’s official summer sport in 1994. The Canadian national lacrosse teams (men and women) rank highly in the world standings, both in field and box lacrosse.

For many Canadians, particularly baby boomers and Generation X, the eight-game hockey series between Team Canada and the national team of the Soviet Union in September 1972 provided the greatest moment in Canada’s sporting history. Most expected that Canada would handily defeat the Soviet Union, but this confidence quickly disappeared when Canada lost the first game. The series was tied heading into the final game in Moscow, which ended in dramatic fashion, with Paul Henderson scoring in the final seconds to give Canada the victory. The series became as much a Cold War political battle of democracy versus communism and freedom versus oppression as it was about hockey. The series had a lasting impact on hockey in Canada and abroad.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Olympic Summer Games were the first Olympic Games to be postponed. They were held in Tokyo, Japan, from 23 July to 8 August 2021. Canada sent 371 athletes (225 women, 146 men) and finished 11th in the overall medal standings with 24 (seven gold, six silver, 11 bronze). It is the most Canada has ever won at a non-boycotted Olympic Summer Games. Of the 24 medals, 18 were won by Canadian women. The seven gold medals tied Canada’s record at a non-boycotted Olympic Summer Games. Highlights for Canada at the Tokyo Games included Penny Oleksiak becoming Canada’s most decorated Olympian; Andre De Grasse winning three medals, including gold in the men’s 200 m dash; the Canadian women’s soccer team winning gold for the first time in dramatic fashion; and gold medallist Damian Warner becoming only the fourth athlete in Olympic history to score more than 9,000 points in the decathlon.

The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes (CHL) was an all-Black men’s hockey league. It was organized by Black Baptists and Black intellectuals and was founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1895. It was defunct during and after the First World War, reformed in 1921 and then fell apart during the Depression in the 1930s. Play was known to be fast, physical and innovative. The league was designed to attract young Black men to Sunday worship with the promise of a hockey game between rival churches after the services. Later, with the influence of the Black Nationalism Movement — and with rising interest in the sport of hockey — the league came to be seen as a potential driving force for the equality of Black Canadians. Canada Post issued a commemorative stamp in honour of the league in January 2020.

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.

The Montreal Canadiens are the oldest professional hockey team in the world and one of the most storied franchises in professional sports. Founded in 1909 and officially called the Club de Hockey Canadien, the team (also known as the Les Habitants, or Habs for short) is the only existing National Hockey League (NHL) franchise to have formed prior to the league’s inception in 1917. One of the NHL’s “Original Six,” it is the only team to have operated continuously throughout the league’s history. The Canadiens have won 24 Stanley Cup championships — more than any other organization — and have appeared in the Stanley Cup Finals 35 times, most recently in 2021. More than 60 Canadiens players and personnel have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, including such legendary figures as Howie Morenz, Georges Vézina, Maurice “Rocket” Richard, Jacques Plante, Henri Richard, Jean Béliveau, Ken Dryden, Guy Lafleur and Patrick Roy.