Sport in Canada The sporting culture

of Canada consists of a variety of games. Although there are many contests that Canadians value, the most common are ice hockey, Canadian football, basketball, soccer, curling and baseball.

Ice hockey, referred to as simply "hockey", is Canada's most prevalent winter sport, its most popular spectator sport, and its most successful sport in international competition. It is Canada's official national winter sport.

Lacrosse, a sport with Native American origins, is Canada's oldest and official summer sport. Canadian football is Canada's second most popular spectator sport/

While other sports have a larger spectator base, association football, known in Canada as soccer in both English and French, has the most registered players of any team sport in Canada.

Professional teams exist in many cities in Canada. Other popular team sports include curling, street hockey, cricket, rugby and softball. Popular individual sports include auto racing, boxing, cycling, golf, hiking, horse racing, ice-skating, rodeo, skateboarding, skiing, snowboarding, swimming, tennis, triathlon, track and field, water sports, and wrestling.

The modern form of ice hockey began in Canada in the late 1800s, and is widely considered Canada's national pastime, with high levels of participation by children, men and women at various levels of competition. The Stanley Cup, considered the premiere trophy in professional ice hockey, originated in Canada in 1893. Prominent trophies for national championships in Canada are the Memorial Cup for the top junior-age men's team and the Allan Cup for the top men's senior team. There are national championships in several other divisions of play. Hockey Canada is the sport's official governing body in Canada and is a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). A Canadian national men's team, composed of professionals, competes in the annual IIHF Men's World Championship and in the Olympics.

The First Nations began playing the sport more than 500 years ago. Today lacrosse not only remains an integral part of native culture, but is played by tens of thousands of people across Canada and the north eastern United States. From its origin as 'The Creator's Game' to the overwhelming popularity of the Toronto Rock and the modern game, lacrosse has survived the test of time after treading down a long, controversial path that led it to become recognized as Canada's official national sport. It's commonly assumed that Lacrosse was named Canada's National sport by Parliament in 1859. To date, documented evidence has not been uncovered for this claim. In a 1994 controversial and advantageous effort to raise the profile of Canadian hockey in the international arena resulted in lacrosse, through an act of parliament, becoming the official summer sport of Canada.

Sport in the United Kingdom plays an important role in British culture, and many people make an emotional investment in their favourite spectator sports. The most popular sport is football, except in Northern Ireland where Gaelic games are the most popular sports and Wales, where rugby union is generally perceived from outside as being the national sport, although there are more registered football clubs than rugby clubs. 

Cricket is popular in England and Wales, but is less popular in the other home nations. Rugby union and rugby league are the other major team sports. Major individual sports include athletics, golf, motorsport, and horseracing. Tennis is the highest profile sport for the two weeks of the Wimbledon Championships, but otherwise struggles to hold its own in the country of its birth. Many other sports are also played and followed to a lesser degree.

The United Kingdom has given birth to a range of major international sports including: football, rugby (union and league), cricket, golf, tennis, badminton, squash, baseball, hockey, boxing, snooker, billiards and curling. It has also played a key role in the development of sports such as Sailing and Formula One.

The early reference to the separate national identities in the UK is perhaps best illustrated by the game of cricket. Cricket was invented in England. The national sport of England is cricket. There is no UK team, although the England team also represents Wales. England is one of the test-playing nations, whilst Scotland and Ireland are associate members of the ICC and compete at One Day International level.

Like association football, rugby union and rugby league both developed from traditional British football games in the 19th century. Rugby union was codified in 1871. Rugby league was established in 1895 by a number of clubs which wished to be allowed to pay their players, and subsequently developed somewhat different rules.

For much of the 20th century there was considerable antagonism between rugby league, which was a mainly working class game based in the industrial regions of northern England, and rugby union, which is a predominantly middle class game in England, and is also popular in the other home nations. This antagonism has abated since 1995 when theInternational Rugby Board opened rugby union to professional players.

Athletics does not have a very high profile in Britain on a week-in week-out basis, but it leaps to prominence during major championships. The level of attention received by successful British athletes is illustrated by the fact that athletes have won far more BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards than practitioners of any other sport. The governing body of British Athletics is UK Athletics. There are also semi-independent athletics associations in each of the home nations.

Modern competitive golf originated in Scotland. In the early 20th century British golfers were the best in the world, winning nearly all of the U.S. Open championships beforeWorld War I. American golfers later became dominant, but Britain has continued to produce leading golfers, with an especially strong period in the 1980s and 1990s. There are usually more British golfers than Americans in the top 100 of the Official World Golf Rankings relative to population, that is to say more than a fifth as many, but Britain has not yet produced a major new golf star this century (although two Englishmen, Justin Rose and Luke Donald, have been in the Top Ten in the recent past).

Many kinds of sport originated from England. The English have a proverb, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." They do not think that play is more important than work; they think that Jack will do his work better if he plays as well, so he is encouraged to do both.

I think that I have proved sport’s deserving attention. Especially sport is a very interesting theme concerning the United Kingdom and Canada. Of course, I couldn’t illustrate all Britain and Canadian sports, but which I still do reflect Britain’s life with all contradictory combinations. Both life is calm and exciting, and sport is calm with golf’s followers and exciting with football’s fans.