Sport
The Halifax Regional Municipality is home to a number of outdoor recreational opportunities, including numerous ocean and lake beaches, as well as rural and urban parks. The municipality has a host of organised community intramural sports, as well as varsity and intramural sports offered by public schools and post-secondary institutions and has extensive facilities.
The region is home to several semi-professional sport franchises, such as the Halifax Rainmen of the NBL Canada and the Halifax Mooseheads of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (see also Sports teams in the Halifax Regional Municipality).
The region has also hosted several major sporting events, including the 2003 World Junior Hockey Championship, 2003 Nokia Brier, the 2004 Women's World Ice Hockey Championships, and 2007 World Indoor Lacrosse Championship. From 1984 to 2007, the region had been home to the CIS Men's Basketball Championship, however the tournament was moved to Ottawa, Ontario from 2008 to 2010 and returned to Halifax in 2011 and 2012. The 72nd Ice Hockey World Championship was held between May 2 and May 18, 2008, in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Quebec City, Canada.
Halifax was selected as Canada's bid for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in 2006 but withdrew from the international competition in advance of the November 9, 2007 selection date on March 8.
In February 2011, the municipality hosted the 2011 Canada Winter Games.
Read more about this topic: Halifax Regional Municipality
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er the green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one’s appetite is not too keen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)