Sports in Canadian culture
More and more the "Stadiums and Arenas of Canada" thread has become the de facto talk shop for cultural discussions that are only tangentially related to actual stadiums and arenas. Often people will take the time to post pictures and they'll quickly get lost under the weight of other discussions.
So if you want to talk about why Toronto doesn't support its teams or how popular the CFL is out west then this is the thread for you. Clearly there's a lot of interest in these topics. |
I'll repost this from that thread. This misconception about Toronto needs to be settled once and for all.
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Given the city's demographics and the cost of the sport, hockey's about as healthy as it can be in Toronto. Now... would Toronto be so pro-hockey and especially pro-Leafs (NHL) if the sport and the NHL was a non-factor in the big US cities of the northeast? Good question! But one that is impossible to answer. But sure, many Canadians do tend to overestimate how big time the NHL is across the US, but on the other hand I've also had more than a few spontaneous and fun hockey talks with Americans (generally from the cities people have mentioned here already) once they have found out I was Canadian. |
I'd also add to The Architect's points on hockey a more general note: it's becoming incredibly tiresome to hear about how immature and beholden to the U.S. the culture of Toronto is. The city's culture is internationalized, yes, but that doesn't make it counterfeit. TIFF, Pride, Caribana, all the food and ethnic fests... what's wrong with this? It's elitism? Hardly.
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Sorry, just realized there is a new thread. Moving my post here....
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Personally, I would like to see the NHL dissolve and there to be a 12 team Canadian Hockey League - Van, Edm, Cal, Sask, Win, Lon, Ham, Tor, Ott, Mtl, Que, Halifax. The Americans can have their own league and there should be a proper world championship where the top clubs from Canada, US, Europe, and Russia play for hockey supremacy. |
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Contrast with the NFL where you can probably find legions of Cowboys, Giants and Packers fans in every town and city in the entire United States. |
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Hopefully they will adopt a different model (similar to what they do for MLS clubs) and have a Canadian pro club championship consisting of the Canadian NHL and AHL clubs. |
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On here a routine meme is that certain provinces - always the same one(s) - are racist, xenophobic, Nazi-like and redneck, and there hasn't been a hiatus for that, has there? |
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GET IT ON! :swordfight: :machinegun::raygun: :pillowfight: |
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From what I've read regarding Brampton and Mississauga, both organizations found it tough sledding. Brampton couldn't make a go of it despite having 550,000 people to draw from and moved to greener pastures in North Bay of all places. Mississauga has 800,000 so their attendance issues are pitiful, imo. It's under 3,000/game. 3,000! Perhaps we have totally different ideas about what constitutes good support, but neither of these teams were ever close to being well supported. It says a lot when places like Charlottetown can support CHL and Brampton can not. The GTA should be able to support 20 CHL teams each drawing 5,000+. |
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As for this idea of splitting off the Canadian teams into a separate league, I would argue this: as a matter of history and shared culture the U.S. northeast belongs with Canada. I'm super excited to see the Wings and Leafs share a division again. That said, I wouldn't mind seeing the league contract in the south and expand in the north. |
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We treat our football team and national league in much the same way as we used to view Niagara wine, local food, and local fashion. We're embarrassed of it rather than recognizing it's potential. I'm not sure how Niagara wine turned the corner, but it required people who saw its value. They devoted time, money, and energy into its promotion. We no longer thumb our noses at it and the same thing needs to happen to football. When I look at Toronto I see a society that's maturing and looking increasingly to itself rather than simply copying other places. Toronto has made great strides, but hasn't become a place that's developed a sense of place yet. The culture here is still maturing. I'm not sure how a city that's 53% foreign born and accepting 100,000 new comers every year can have a mature culture, tbh. It was always going to be a work in progress and will take a long time to start gelling. Whether Toronto ever celebrates all facets of its history and traditions is still very much up in the air. It's just a little shocking that one institution with such massive national significance might be one that Toronto decides it won't embrace. |
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Regarding the all-Canadian hockey league (assuming that the NHL is dissolved), barring a salary cap, Montreal would be transferring revenues to frontiertowns like Halifax. I was going to say London, but the Knights are a HUGE draw; selling out every game in the JLC (I mean, Buttweezer Gardens) |
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I find lots of problems originate in anglophone Canadians being ignorant of their own history. |
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