Canada is a very sporty nation. Canadian sports and Canadian teams are an important source of patriotism, pride, and community unity in Canada. Our various pro sports teams provide the nation with some of its leading heroes and role models, and serve as important symbols of city and provincial identities. Ask some Canadian on the street to name something famous from Montreal and I bet he'd respond with "the Montreal Canadiens" without hesitation.

As might be expected, many of Canada's best-known sports tend to be winter-themed in some way and a lot of them involve ice. When it comes to organized sports, Canadian teams are usually included as part of the United States leagues. There are no borders when it comes to sports.

I'm not a huge sports person, so the following are all fairly superficial descriptions. But hopefully you'll get the gist.

Lacrosse

Lacrosse players have started wearing a lot of protection cause the game has gotten so violent.

This will no doubt come as a surprise to many, but the Official National Sport of Canada is Lacrosse. Lacrosse is an odd Indian game, played with a hard rubber ball and a long stick with a net on the end of it. For a long time Lacrosse was a weird, obscure sport that not many people played. In recent years however, there has been a bit of a resurgence of interest in Lacrosse, especially among younger Canadians. There's now even a National Lacrosse League with teams from all across Canada and the US. It's still not a sport you can expect to see on TV, however.

Lacrosse is supposed to be a very difficult and physically demanding sport. It's a traditional team-based scoring game in which two teams of ten players each attempt to get a ball into the other team's goal. It can either be played indoors or outdoors. There's a lot of body-checking and bashing other players involved in Lacrosse, which I guess may partially explain why a lot of overly aggressive teenage boys seem to like it. In many ways it's not very difference from Canada's other national sport.

Hockey

This happy fellow is Maurice "Rocket" Richard, probably the most famous Canadian hockey player ever. He was the first NHL player to score over 500 goals in a career.

That other sport is of course Hockey, which is one of the things Canada is best known for. Hockey was supposedly invented in Canada (or at least in New England- disputes continue) and has been a proud part of the Canadian way of life for many centuries.

A lot of Canadians are extremely obsessed with hockey, and think it is the greatest game ever conceived by man. They watch hockey games on TV and at the arena, wear hockey shirts, and go into a huge depression when their team loses. Hockey-related stories routinely appear on the front pages of Canadian newspapers, and hockey stars are treated as huge Canadian celebrities. Canadians consider themselves to be the best hockey players in the world, despite the fact that a Canadian team has only won the Stanley Cup once in the last 10 years. Canadians will counter this argument by saying that a lot of Canadians play on American teams, so it's not an entirely fair criticism. Nevertheless, Canada's prestige as a hockey superpower had been declining in recent years, but it surged back up again in 2002, when the Canadian Olympic Team won the gold medal, beating the United States. That game is already being regarded as an extremely important cultural milestone, and you can buy special commemorative videos, plaques, jerseys and all the rest to celebrate. The last Hockey game to receive this much attention was back in 1972, when Canada dramatically defeated the Soviet Union in a special Cold War tournament.

Canada has six hockey teams, which compete in the National Hockey League alongside teams from the United States. Canada's teams are:

The teams represent the six biggest cities in Canada. If you don't live in one of those cities, the custom is to cheer for whatever city is closest to you. It's also customary for Canadians to unite behind whatever Canadian team makes it to the final, putting aside the petty regional differences that were so prominent during the play offs. Of course, this is not always the case in practice... because of regionalism, the Maple Leafs and the Canadiens are rather controversial teams that a lot of people within Canada itself don't even like. If you've read the rest of my guide, you'll know why.

The Stanley Cup is the ultimate prize in Hockey. It was created by Lord Stanley, the former Governor General of Canada, and is awarded the team that is able to win the yearly NHL tournament. The team gets to keep the cup for a year, and publicly display in their arena. They also get a special banner to hang from the ceiling, once the cup is handed over to another team. The cup has been awarded over 100 times to dozens of different teams and cities since it's debut in 1893.

A lot of old people like curling because it doesn't require much physical skill.

Curling

Curling is... ugh, well... it's very popular in some circles. But you can rest assured, I would easily estimate the vast majority of Canadians find curling about as dull as the rest of the world does. Nevertheless, it's a proud Canadian sport so I must mention it.

Curling is like a big glorified game of shuffle board. You have a big long stretch of ice, and the two teams take turns sliding big polished stones with handles ("rocks" in curling-speak) down the ice in the hopes of making them land in the middle of the big bull's-eye painted at the end. After the one guy throws the stone, another two team members whip out brooms and chase after the rock, sweeping furiously to make the ice more or less slippery to either speed up or slow down the rock's path. And that's curling for you. You have to play it in big fancy curling arenas. Some people just think it's the greatest sport ever and get quite offended when you speak ill of it.

Football

The CFL features two different teams both called the "Rough Riders." Isn't that hilarious?

In Canada "football" means football and not soccer (like in England). Unlike baseball, hockey, and basketball, US and Canadian teams don't compete in the sport together and Canada isn't part of the National Football League. This is because the rules for Canadian football are slightly different than American football. In Canadian football the fields are longer, there are more players on the team, and there are a bunch of other small differences in scoring and timing and things of that nature.

There are nine teams in the Canadian Football League. I would say the CFL is reasonably popular in Canada, but only if you live in a city with a team. These days a lot of CFL players migrate to US NFL teams, and hardcore Canadian football fans pay attention to both leagues. The Canadian version of the Superbowl is the Grey Cup, which is another award created by a long-dead Governor General.

Much like in the United States, Soccer is not very popular in Canada and has not caught on as a mainstream organized sport. Soccer's greatest popularity continues to come at the amateur level, with youth and local teams. Canada never gets far in the World Cup, and no one cares.

Baseball

Ah, good old baseball. It's never been nearly as popular in Canada as it is in the United States, and as a result there is now only one Canadian team left in the Major Leagues- the Toronto Blue Jays. Quebec used to have the Montreal Expos as well, but they were recently sold to Washington and became the Washington Nationals.

Steve Nash, of the Phoenix Suns won the NBA MVP award in both 2005 and 2006. He's originally from Victoria, British Columbia.

Basketball

Basketball is one of the many things Canada tries to take credit for inventing. As is often the case, the story is a bit flimsy. Some Canadian priest left Canada to go live in the US. While he was there he invented basketball. What a patriotic story.

Anyway, you all know what basketball is. There is currently only one Canadian team present in the National Basketball Association. That would be the Toronto Raptors, founded in 1995. Vancouver used to have a team too, the Vancouver Grizzlies, but they were recently sold to Memphis.

Canada and the Olympics: Recent track record

The 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia!