What does genealogy have to do with sports and recreation?
Many sport halls of fame and museums have areas in which they keep medals, photos, life stories, and book of achievements on file, which all add up to the genealogy of Canadian sports.
The Winter Olympics started in 1924 with nine sports. Today, there are seven sports in over 80 events, which will be featured in the Vancouver Olympics, and there will be five sports featured at the Vancouver Paralympics Games.
Many of the sports have museums or halls of fame where you can go and check out some available resources and archives, such as http://www.ucalgary.ca/lib-old/ssportsite/mushof.html.
They range from the Canadian Olympic Park in Calgary, to hockey, to skiing, to figure skating archives, and to genealogical collections.
For instance, the Olympic Hall of Fame & Museum in Calgary holds the largest collection of Olympic memorabilia in Canada.
The Park is the largest of its kind in North America, and has the only fully-enclosed refrigerated building in the world devoted to the sports of bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton.
You are asked to "explore past Games through the Olympic timeline or test your knowledge of the Olympics in the Olympic Discovery Room".
It is open year-round. None of their archives are online, but you can write them at info@winsportcanada.ca.
The Hockey Hall of Fame opened the D.K. "Doc" Seaman Hockey Resource Centre and Archives Facility, 400 Kipling Street, Toronto.
There are 10,000 individual player files, 26,000 published hockey books, programs, and guides, as well as over 500,000 digital images, including 32,000 photographs, and over 4,000 film reels.
Contact the Centre at 416.360.7735 or by email acquisitions@hhof.com. The Archives Facility is online at http://www.hhof.com/HTML/rc00.shtml.
If you had an ancestor who was on the ski team, check the Canadian Ski Museum/Hall of Fame at Scott Street in Ottawa.
It also covers snowboards, and the archive holds books, journals of ski areas and clubs, maps, photographs, and scrapbooks. You can search the site online at http://www.skimuseum.ca.
As for curling, you can go to the Canadian Curling Association Hall of Fame in Ottawa.
Although it doesn't have an archives onsite, it points you to the Library and Archives Canada website http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/curling/index-e.html.
From there, you can get the complete history of the game in Canada.
The Skate Canada website http://www.skatecanada.ca was started in 1990, and it contains 2,500 photos and 500 videos.
One can make an appointment with the archivist to see the material.
The archives were started to "collect, preserve, study and interpret artifacts and archival materials which are historically significant to figure skating in Canada".
The country has, through Heritage Canada, put on a website called Canada 2010 at http://www.canada2010.gc.ca for the Olympic Games.
They have announced Senator Nancy Greene Raine as Canada's Olympic Ambassador for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
"I am delighted to be Canada's Olympic Ambassador during to upcoming games", said Senator Greene Raine. "It will be a pleasure to support our athletes by showing them the pride that Canadians share in their achievements."