Popularity
The sport is played across Canada, with clubs even in places like Yukon. It is most popular on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland in British Columbia on the west coast, and Newfoundland, where rugby is considered to be the most popular summer sport.
Rugby in British Columbia has had a strong international flavour, with the University of British Columbia playing a regular series against the University of California, and representative BC sides have made tours to Japan and England.
Up until just after the Second World War, rugby union was very popular on the west coast, and the east coast respectively. However, despite increasing interest in the Canadian football strongholds of Quebec and Ontario, rugby union was weakened in its western and eastern strongholds, particularly the latter. Despite its battle for survival, rugby has managed to maintain a presence in all parts of Canada.
Rugby in the Central Provinces was reinforced partially by immigration from other Commonwealth Countries.
Read more about this topic: Rugby Union In Canada
Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“Here also was made the novelty ‘Chestnut Bell’ which enjoyed unusual popularity during the gay nineties when every dandy jauntily wore one of the tiny bells on the lapel of his coat, and rang it whenever a story-teller offered a ‘chestnut.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)
“The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in the public mind, and a disgrace to our theatrical history.”
—Thomas Campbell (1777–1844)