“I don’t trust any country that looks around a continent and says,
‘Hey, I’ll take the frozen part.’”
– Jon Stewart
Residents of Québec City enjoy some wintertime fun on the shores of the St. Lawrence River
The Simcoe Hockey Club, winners of the Lacrosse Hockey League Championship, pose for a team photo in 1899.
Cree children attend All Saints Residential School in Treaty 6 Territory, La Ronge, Saskatchewan. The Canadian government’s residential school program, supported by all major churches in Canada, aimed to destroy cultural ties and forcibly assimilate Indigenous children into the Canadian mainstream.
A steam-powered snowplow clears train tracks outside Saint-Agapit, Québec.
Fishermen in Lockeport, Nova Scotia, admire their haul: two 650-pound tuna.
If any of us think about it at all, we’d probably think of cuisine at the time of Confederation as being bland, and it certainly didn’t offer the variety that most of us enjoy today. Winters were long, and “just in time” delivery that allows for year-round fresh fruits didn’t exist (no one expected strawberries in January, apart from those you canned yourself).
That said, Canadian winter cuisine wasn’t entirely lacking in variety, and a lot of it resembles the so-called comfort foods that are enjoying a resurgence on restaurant menus today. Long-lasting vegetables such as onions, potatoes and squash were a staple, as they had been for centuries for Indigenous nations before Europeans arrived. Dried legumes, along with cured meat, added some welcome protein—often in the same dish, such as split pea and ham soup. Tourtière, of course, dates as far back as French settlers. Pemmican on the Prairies, salt cod on the East Coast, and smoked salmon in the West all helped get families through the winter. Bannock, the result of Scottish ingredients and Indigenous ingenuity, spread as far north as the Arctic Ocean. Just about everywhere, dinner could be concluded with a dessert that usually featured a variation on brown sugar, maple syrup or molasses.
Today, for the vast majority of city- and town-dwelling Canadians, our winter comfort foods would be barely recognizable to the Canadians of yesteryear, now that we’re prone to tucking in to chili made colourful with ghost peppers and fresh corn, rice studded with scallions and bok choy, and burgers piled high with chèvre and organic arugula.
From snowshoeing to curling to snowboarding, winter sports have played a major role in helping Canadians embrace the colder months (or, if not to embrace, at least to prevent cabin fever).
And, for the largest portion of our 150 years as a country, the dominant force in our winter activities has been hockey. It’s the only sport immortalized on our currency and the only one that can still shut the country down when a gold medal’s on the line
But recently, fewer and fewer kids have been dragging their parents out to the rink at 5:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning in the middle of January.
As youth hockey participation rates plummet and TV ratings stagnate (even if Canada still produces the most—and best—players), our attention in the doldrums of winter has started to shift to another game with Canadian origins.
James Naismith, from Almonte, Ontario, might have invented basketball, but for the better part of the sport’s first century, Canadians only had a passing interest in the game. The Toronto Huskies, hastily formed by some National Hockey League brass who saw an opportunity to fill empty arenas in the off-season, played one pro season in 1946–47 before calling it quits. Only after Toronto and Vancouver were awarded National Basketball Association franchises in the 1990s did basketball start to catch on—and slowly, at first. The Vancouver Grizzlies limped through six seasons before hightailing it for the slightly greener pastures of Memphis. The Toronto Raptors also had a tough go in their early days as Toronto’s fourth sports franchise, lagging well behind the Maple Leafs, the Blue Jays (who’d just won two World Series) and even the Argonauts.
Then, in 1998, Vince Carter arrived in Toronto. With a penchant for highlight-reel dunks, and a steadily improving corps around him, “Vinsanity” suddenly electrified audiences at Air Canada Centre just as their building-mates, the Leafs, began yet another decade-long stretch of despair. A few years later, a short-statured (by basketball standards), long-haired kid from Victoria, BC, named Steve Nash took the NBA by storm, winning two consecutive MVP awards and setting numerous records, all through amassing that most Canadian of sports statistics—the assist.
For once, kids from St. John’s to Surrey could see themselves not just playing basketball in the park, but devoting their lives to it. Hockey, with its rigid culture of conformity, high cost of entry, punishing physicality and Everest-like learning curve, for the first time faced competition from a sport its diametric opposite. Basketball encourages individuality and personality (to a point); shoes, shorts and a ball are the only equipment needed; and its massive international appeal resonates with the children of immigrants from every corner of the world for whom hockey is as foreign as snow tires.
A few starts and stops later, and the Raptors are the hottest ticket in town. Basketball is flourishing at the university and club levels. The national women’s team, led by Kia Nurse, won gold on home court at the Pan Am Games in 2015; in another couple of years, the men’s team, stuffed with talent like never before, could make a run for a medal in the Olympics. NBA teams have drafted a slew of young Canadians with serious skills in recent years, such as Tristan Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Kelly Olynyk and Cory Joseph, almost all of whom cite Carter or Nash as inspiration. Outdoor courts are packed in the summer, and laneway basketball nets are about as common as their hockey equivalents; snagging gym time in the winter is almost as tough as getting ice time.
Two scenes from 2016 on the same patch of land in downtown Toronto illustrate this shift. The Raps embarked on their longest playoff run in team history, making it all the way to the conference finals. Outside the Air Canada Centre, thousands of fans—mostly young, and representative of the dizzying diversity of the city they call home—crammed Maple Leaf Square, turning it temporarily into Jurassic Park. The city and much of the nation were held rapt (pardon the pun) for every free throw, every three-point attempt, every adorable interaction between stars DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry, even as LeBron James made it quite clear that the Raps wouldn’t make it past him to make the finals. A playoff loss has hardly been more noble in Canadian sports history.
Contrast that with just a few months later, when the inaugural World Cup of Hockey came to town. Exorbitantly expensive tickets proved a tougher sell than anticipated—you could get tickets for as little as $25 on the resale markets for the first finals game, and the rows of empty seats garnered as much discussion as the games themselves. Team Canada, to no one’s surprise, steamrolled through the competition, sapping the tournament of any real drama. And the fans noticed. In that same Maple Leaf Square, a camera crew had to squeeze together the dozen or so fans who showed up on a balmy September day to take in the game for free outside to give the appearance of pandemonium. If crickets could be found in downtown Toronto, you would have heard them chirping.
At 150 years, Canadian hockey is far from its deathbed. Millions of people still tune into Hockey Night in Canada each weekend, and, while fewer kids are playing the game, the calibre of play in Canada has only improved in the past decades. But during our cold, dark winters, it’s no longer the only game in town.
Cool Heads Prevail
Sometimes stereotypes, no matter how positive they might seem, can be a double-edged sword. For every person who thinks Canadians are polite and well tempered, there’s someone who thinks these qualities aren’t endearing, but aggravating: we’re too polite, too boring or too naive. But in the heat of the moment, we know that cool heads prevail — and a lot of good can come from it.
Egg Cartons
Canadians don’t just solve global disputes—we’re good with homegrown problems, too. In 1911, British Columbia newspaper publisher Joseph Coyle heard of an argument between a local farmer and a hotel owner, who claimed his eggs were regularly delivered broken. To solve the problem and restore the peace, Coyle got to work and developed the egg carton, a brilliantly simple invention that’s so handy it’s remained largely unchanged for over a hundred years. It might not be wise to put all your eggs in one basket, but in one carton? Safe and snug.
Peacekeeping
Instead of following the UK’s lead during the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956, Canada took a rational step back and focused on resolutions to the situation in Egypt. Spearheaded by Lester B. Pearson (at the time a diplomat and later the prime minister overseeing the de facto abolition of capital punishment in Canada and keeping our country out of the Vietnam War), the first United Nations Emergency Force was born, which contributed to an eventual ceasefire and earned Pearson a Nobel Peace Prize. For all the flack Canada gets for having a supposedly “underfunded” military, the Canadian Forces’ legacy as peacekeepers instead of warmakers still resonates today. Now that’s a reputation worth fighting for.
Standard Time Zones
After missing his train because of a printing error on the schedule, Sir Sandford Fleming didn’t get mad—he got scientific. Building from train timetables, Fleming realized the world could benefit from a universal 24-hour time system, and he proposed standard time zones to the Royal Canadian Institute in 1879. Fleming continued to promote his idea at major conferences, and by 1929 nearly all major countries in the world had accepted time zones. Thanks to Fleming, if you miss a train now, it’s all on you.
Trivial Pursuit
Question: What happens when you settle down to play your favourite board game and discover that you’re missing some pieces? Do you: A. Rifle through your couch cushions, swearing all the while? B. Prod the family pet to see if they’ve swallowed them? C. Break down and cry? If you’re Chris Haney and Scott Abbot, you get over it and make up your own game. And that’s exactly how a few missing Scrabble tiles and a cool attitude paved the way for Canada’s brainiest game: Trivial Pursuit.
