Ontario boasts more professional sports teams than any other Canadian province. The history of sports in Canada's largest province is long and filled with interesting, amazing, weird and funny stories from hockey to tug-of-war: * Ottawa-born Frank McGee played hockey with only one good eye but still managed to score 14 goals in one Stanley Cup game * Although it sounds improbable, a Canadian soccer team from Galt won Olympic Gold in 1904 * Governor General of Canada Earl Grey donated the Grey Cup in 1909, but the Hamilton Tiger Seniors actually won the Grey Cup in 1908 * The Lord's Day Act forbidding sports to be played on Sundays was put into effect in 1907 in order to keep the curlers in church * In 1947, a miracle saved the Grey Cup from being destroyed in a fire at the Argos head office--it tumbled from a shelf and got hooked on a nail, saving it from the inferno below * The Death Spiral, a common manoeuver in pairs figure skating, was invented by two skaters from Ontario, Suzanne Morrow and Wallace Diestelmeyer * Golfer George Lyon won Canada's first and last Olympic gold medal in the sport of golf; after receiving the medal at the ceremony, he celebrated by walking on his hands across the stage.

Arpon Basu had said since the age of eight that he would one day make the National Hockey League. Any chance of that happening, came to a crashing halt when, at 15 when he realized he was completely devoid of any talent. He earned a graduate journalism degree from Concordia University and went straight to a sports-writing job with the Canadian Press. The first time he walked into the Montréal Canadiens dressing room as a giddy cub reporter, Basu nearly fell over as it dawned on him that, despite his ineptitude on the ice, he had in fact been telling the truth as a dreamy-eyed eight-year-old.Basu covers sports for the Canadian Press in Montréal and writes a weekly sports column for the Montréal Gazette. He is also editor of Montréal’s South Shore, The St-Lambert Journal.

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