Canada

Canada shares several major professional sports leagues with the United States.[385] Canadian teams in these leagues include seven franchises in the National Hockey League, as well as three Major League Soccer teams and one team in each of Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. Other popular professional sports in Canada include Canadian football, which is played in the Canadian Football League, National Lacrosse League lacrosse, and curling.[386]

Canada has participated in almost every Olympic Games since its Olympic debut in 1900,[387] and has hosted several high-profile international sporting events, including the 1976 Summer Olympics,[388] the 1988 Winter Olympics,[389] the 1994 Basketball World Championship,[390] the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup,[391] the 2010 Winter Olympics[392][393] and the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup.[394] Most recently, Canada staged the 2015 Pan American Games and 2015 Parapan American Games, the former being the largest sporting event hosted by the country.[395]

1. ^ Canada's de facto royal anthem is "God Save the Queen", which is sometimes played or sung together with the national anthem, "O Canada", at private and public events. Additionally, its first three lines are also included within the "Viceregal Salute", which is accorded to the governor general and provincial lieutenant governors. However, it has never been adopted as an official symbol of the country.[1]
   


2. ^ "Brokerage politics: A Canadian term for successful big tent parties that embody a pluralistic catch-all approach to appeal to the median Canadian voter ... adopting centrist policies and electoral coalitions to satisfy the short-term preferences of a majority of electors who are not located on the ideological fringe."[137][138]
   


3. ^ Includes general responses indicating North American origins (e.g., 'North American') as well as more specific responses indicating North American origins that have not been included elsewhere (e.g., 'Maritimer' or 'Quebecois').[297]
   


4. ^ All citizens of Canada are classified as "Canadians" as defined by Canada's nationality laws. However, "Canadian" as an ethnic group has since 1996 been added to census questionnaires for possible ancestral origin or descent. "Canadian" was included as an example on the English questionnaire and "Canadien" as an example on the French questionnaire. "The majority of respondents to this selection are from the eastern part of the country that was first settled. Respondents generally are visibly European (Anglophones and Francophones), however no-longer self-identify with their ethnic ancestral origins. This response is attributed to a multitude or generational distance from ancestral lineage.[298][299]