To capture the essence of sports in Canada over the last 150 years is to try to capture the essence of the country as a whole.

It is to tell the story of the coming together of cultures from around the world, encompassing sports of every imaginable ilk because there is so much about this country, its people and its sportswomen and sportsmen to remember.

It goes from the ubiquitous hockey that is ours to treasure and celebrate to runners and jumpers, skiers, skaters, snooker players, dart throwers and footballers — women and men whose impact on Canadian life has transcended fields of play.

Athletes and teams who have done Canada proud on a global stage, those who have been part of us for years and those who have been like stars shooting across the sporting landscape.

There are so many great stories, memorable moments, individuals and teams to cherish. There are moments of great heartbreak and disappointment. There are tales of perseverance and celebration.

There is no one single thing that stands out because the impact of sports and sports stories in Canada since Confederation is breathtaking.

Starting today and running until July 1, The Star will present a 10-part series to try and capture the quintessential moments and people of the last 150 years, to stir memories and celebrate history.

There is no one common theme that runs through the list because it is impossible to find one, just as it’s impossible to find one common thread that has carried Canada from 1867 until now.

The 150 people and events that we’ve come up with is not an all-encompassing list; it captures a representative look of Canadian sports and athletes and offers a glimpse of what we’ve done, how we did it and what it meant.

Once asked what it meant to be “wholly Canadian,” Steve Nash said this:

“One thing it is to be wholly Canadian is to not get carried away with this answer, you know? We know who we are, we do our best, we try to play as a team and we try to look out for other people rather than ourselves more often than not and let’s just leave it at that.

“It becomes wholly un-Canadian to gush over that answer, you know?”

Maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe now is the time to gush a little bit as we approach the 150th birthday of our country.

Maybe it is time to shine a light on so many great years of Canadian sports, great moments of Canadian sports, great people of Canadian sports.

We hope the next 10 days makes you smile and think. We hope you learn some things and remember some others. We hope it captures us.

MEMORABLE PEOPLE AND MEMORABLE MOMENTS

The new Canadian Museum of History exhibit featuring artifacts from Terry Fox's Marathon of Hope opened in 2015. Fox's road companion and best friend Doug Alward said he didn't realize the impact of their 1980 journey at the time. (The Canadian Pres

Terry Fox

When he dipped his prosthetic leg into the Atlantic Ocean off St. John’s, Nfld., and set out to run across Canada, few had heard of Terry Fox.

By the time the 22-year-old with a mop of dark curls and a determined run-and-hop gait made it to Northern Ontario, he had run deep into the hearts of Canadians.

Fox ran 5,373 kilometres — averaging a marathon a day — from April 12 to Sept 1, 1980, to raise money for cancer research. He did that, certainly, raising more money than any individual had before, but he also changed peoples’ attitudes about disability and inspired Canadians with his unbreakable spirit.

Days before Fox was finally forced to stop near Thunder Bay — the cancer that took his right leg had returned, this time in his lungs — he hadn’t felt well but, with people lining the road to see him run, he didn’t want to disappoint. For 143 days he had kept going, but eventually he couldn’t.

“All I can say is that if there’s anyway I can get out there again and finish it, I will,” Fox said.

He wasn’t able to — he died on June 28, 1981, one month before his 23rd birthday — but Canadians continue his Marathon of Hope through the annual Terry Fox Run.

He started out as a stubborn young man with a dream; he became national symbol of courage and determination.

Marilyn Bell

When the Canadian National Exhibition offered a famed American distance swimmer a $10,000 prize to conquer Lake Ontario, a 16-year-old Toronto schoolgirl decided that just wouldn’t do — a Canadian needed to be the first to swim the 52-kilometre distance.

So, Marilyn Bell entered the water in Youngstown, N.Y., on Sept 8, 1954, just after 11 p.m. For 21 hours straight she swam and swam. Fueled by pabulum and corn syrup, she battled waves as high as four metres, lamprey eels attaching to her arms and legs and, most of all, her own exhaustion and desire to quit.

There were hourly radio reports and countless newspaper editions detailing her progress and when word came that she was heading for shore near Sunnyside Beach, after swimming some 64 kilometres because of currents and misdirection, there was traffic mayhem as people raced for the lake.

Pale and shaking, Bell emerged from the water a Canadian hero.

1972 Summit Series

If there is one moment that sparks “Where were you?” memories among Canadian sports fans, it’s late in the afternoon of Sept. 28, 1972, a day that will resonate forever.

Game 8, Canada vs. Russia in what came to be known as the Summit Series, the first best-on-best hockey series ever, an “Us vs. Them” battle not only of hockey players but of societies.

There was series organizer Alan Eagleson flipping the bird at Russian fans and officials, Phil Esposito chastising Canadian fans for booing the team after a game in Vancouver, Bobby Clarke viciously slashing Russian star Valeri Kharlamov in the ankle.

And there was Paul Henderson, scoring the most famous goal in Canadian hockey history, banging in a loose puck with 34 seconds left in the decisive eighth game to give Canada a 6-5 win.

It was the third straight game in which Henderson scored the winning goal and it etched him in the country’s lore for all time.

Percy Williams

His thrilling 100-metre victory at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics was so unexpected that officials had to scramble to find a recording of the Canadian anthem. Williams gave them a second chance to get it right, winning the 200-metre race as well.

Not bad for a kid who doctors had warned to avoid physical activity and excitement because a bout of rheumatic fever at 15 had damaged his heart. Never one to let any challenge stand in his way, the 19-year-old from Vancouver got himself to the Olympic trials in Hamilton by working as a waiter on the railway dining car and, once at the Games, the five-foot-six, skinny Canadian boldly beat the favoured men.

Williams was as modest as he was slight, writing in his diary after the quarter-finals: “I always imagined it was a game of heroes. Well, I’m in the semifinal myself so it can’t be so hot.”

But it was and so was he.

A Western win

The Grey Cup had been pitting West against East since 1921 but it wasn’t until 1935, the 11th time a team from Western Canada had challenged for the football supremacy of the Dominion, that they found a way to win.

The ’Pegs — the team from Winnipeg had yet to be dubbed the Blue Bombers — travelled to the Hamilton Amateur Athletic Association grounds, stunned a crowd of 6,405 and came away with an 18-12 victory, marking the first time a non-Eastern team has hoisted the cherished Cup.

Before that, teams from the West had lost 10 games by a combined score of 236-29.

The ’Pegs broke through, however, helped by some of the first American “imports” to the Canadian game like punt returner Fritz “The Golden Ghost” Hanson, who ran back a kick for a touchdown.

Wayne Gretzky

The numbers are almost too much to comprehend: 200 points in an NHL season on four different occasions, 894 goals and 1,963 assists in 1,487 games, nine Hart Trophy wins as the NHL’s most valuable player, 16 seasons of 100+ points, four Stanley Cup championships with the dynastic Edmonton Oilers.

The Great One? Indeed.

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The Brantford native is always in the conversation about the greatest hockey player ever; he wasn’t the biggest or strongest or fastest player on the ice but his intelligence and a sixth sense that seemed to let him see plays before they developed set him apart.

He credits his father, the equally famous and beloved Walter Gretzky, with helping him develop the instincts that made him such a special athlete.

“I’ve just learned to guess what’s going to happen next,” he said. “It’s anticipation. It’s not God-given, it’s Wally-given.”

James “Tip” O’Neill

Born nine years before Confederation in tiny Springfield, Ont., O’Neill was the first true baseball icon the country produced. Nicknamed later in his life as “Canada’s Babe Ruth,” the truth is Ruth probably could have been known as the “American Tip O’Neill” given the Canadian’s exploits.

A left fielder and a pitcher in a 10-year major-league career, O’Neill was an astonishingly productive hitter. Twice he won American Association batting titles, his 1887 season was amazing — winning the Triple Crown with a .435 batting average, 14 home runs and 123 runs batted it. Despite winning a Triple Crown, one of only 15 players in history to do it, O’Neill was not voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, although he was an inaugural inductee into the Canadian Hall in 1983 and the annual award given to the country’s best baseball player is the Tip O’Neill Award.

First Hockey Night in Canada broadcast

Hockey games on television in Canada are ubiquitous, one just about every night of the week, a $5.2-billion network investment that means markets are flooded with games.

And it all began in English Canada on Nov. 1, 1952, when the iconic voice of Foster Hewitt called a game in Toronto between the Maple Leafs and Boston Bruins, starting a tradition like no other in Canadian sports and television history. Rene Lecavalier had done a French broadcast a couple of weeks earlier of a Montreal-Detroit game, but it was Hewitt who launched the nationwide staple of Saturday nights.

With his legendary opening — “Hello, Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland” — Hewitt became the voice of the game for decades.

Those certainly were different times. The games were joined in progress, first at 9 p.m. and then 8:30 p.m. until 1968 when the entire game was shown.

Lionel Conacher

The oldest boy of 10 siblings, Lionel Conacher saw sport as a way out of poverty for himself and his family.

He was a natural athlete, easily holding 200 pounds on his six-foot-one frame, but his nickname the “Big Train” came from the hard work he put into everything. In 1922, he led his baseball team to the Ontario championships, hitting a triple in the final inning, and then raced across town to play in the provincial lacrosse championships. His team was down three when he arrived and by the end, with his four goals and one assist, they won 5-3.

Football was his favourite sport and in the 1921 Grey Cup, his three touchdowns almost singlehandedly pulled the Toronto Argos ahead of the Edmonton Eskimos. But he knew hockey was the sport that would pay best so, at 16, he learned to skate and became a defenceman who made up for awkwardness with smarts, winning Stanley Cups with Chicago Blackhawks in 1934 and the Montreal Maroons in 1935.

Gordie Howe

Is there a better, more “Canadian” sports story in all of time than that of a kid born in rural Saskatchewan, one of nine siblings who becomes one of the icons of the NHL? A kid who quit hockey as a youngster so he could work as a labourer to help his family during The Great Depression before striking out on his career path as a teenager that would ultimately lead him to the Hall of Fame?

Howe, of Floral, Sask., became the gold standard for hockey longevity, playing 26 seasons in the NHL, another six in the WHA, played in five different decades and competing when he was 52 years old. He was a teammate of his sons and was “Mr. Hockey” to so many contemporary fans.

Howe was as rough and tumble as they come — the Gordie Howe Hat Trick is a goal, an assist and a fight in the same game — while remaining a dignified and venerated figure off the ice.

Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld

At the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics her lead-off leg in the 4x100-metre relay left spectators in awe and other countries unable to close the gap. It could well have been Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld’s second gold medal had she not been awarded silver in the 100, losing to an American in a split judging decision before the advent of photo finish technology.

And what’s less known was that in the 800, not Rosenfeld’s specialty, she came up behind 17-year-old Jean Thompson, who was faltering, and coaxed her on, running beside her, refusing to push on, and finished behind her teammate in fifth.

Rosenfeld, who had immigrated to Ontario as a youngster, had no formal athletic training but excelled in whatever she tried — from jumping, throwing and running on the track to baseball, basketball, hockey and tennis — often while wearing men’s baggy swim trunks and her father’s borrowed socks.

Richard Riots

The passion of Montreal Canadiens fans knows no bounds and they exploded into one of the darkest moments in NHL and Canadian sports history on St. Patrick’s Day in 1955.

Four days earlier, Quebec icon Rocket Richard had punched linesman Cliff Thompson in the face after Richard himself had been hammered in head by the stick of Boston’s Hal Laycoe.

Richard was suspended by then-league-president Clarence Campbell for the rest of the season and the Stanley Cup playoffs. Ill-advisedly, a defiant Campbell attended the next game at the Forum in Montreal. Fans were incensed, tear gas bombs exploded, the building was evacuated and the riot continued unabated in the street.

It wasn’t until the next day, when Richard went on local radio station to plea for calm, that order was restored.

Tom Longboat

Just two years after he started running, he crushed the field in the 1907 Boston Marathon and his record time achieved over hills and through sleet stood until the course was made easier. An Onondaga from the Six Nations of the Grand River, Tom Longboat’s languid, long-limbed stride was deceivingly fast.

At the 1908 London Olympics, Longboat held an astounding pace on a tough course through the afternoon heat and when he collapsed 10 kilometres from the finish line, theories ranged from the heat to sabotage, possibly even by his own handlers, as part of a sports gambling scheme. The following year, at 21 and the peak of his career, he faced England’s Alfie Shrubb in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Longboat took the lead in the closing kilometres to win the “race of the century.”

Throughout his life, Longboat struggled with prejudice and First Nations stereotypes but, on his day, he was unbeatable and the best long-distance runner the world had ever seen.

Steve Nash

A kid dribbling a tennis ball to improve his basketball-handling skills, a two-time NBA most valuable player and arguably the best basketball player Canada has ever produced, a documentary film-maker, social activist, member of the Order of Canada, part owner of Major League Soccer’s Vancouver Whitecaps, Olympian and the managing director of Canada’s senior men’s basketball team.

It’s been some ride for the South African-born, Victoria-raised Nash.

The 43-year-old was a self-made star on the court who helped revolutionize the NBA with the up-tempo Phoenix Suns, an activist who once wore a T-shirt proclaiming: “No war – Shoot for peace” at an NBA all-star game.

Fervently Canadian despite living in California, Nash produced a documentary on Terry Fox that relived the Marathon of Hope and was one of four athletes to light the cauldron at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Willie O’Ree

The youngest of 13 children, Willie O’Ree grew up in Fredericton, N.B., where his grandparents had arrived on the Underground Railroad, escaping slavery in the United States.

He was a passionate hockey player from a young age and determined to make it to the National Hockey League, a place no Black man had ever skated. As a teenager he was struck with a puck and lost the vision in his right eye and he kept that injury a secret knowing it would keep him from his dream.

On January 18, 1958, thanks to O’Ree’s determination and immense skill, he became the first Black man to play in the NHL when he took to the ice with his team, the Boston Bruins, who beat the Montreal Canadiens that night at the Montreal Forum.

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