title: Sports in Canada

text: The modern form of ice hockey began in Canada in the late 19th century, and is widely considered Canada's national pastime, with high levels of participation by children, men and women at various levels of competition. The Stanley Cup, considered the premiere trophy in professional ice hockey, originated in Canada in 1893. Prominent trophies for national championships in Canada are the Memorial Cup for the top junior-age men's team and the Allan Cup for the top men's senior team. There are national championships in several other divisions of play. Hockey Canada is the sport's official governing body in Canada and is a member of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). A Canadian national men's team, composed of professionals, competes in the annual IIHF Men's World Championship and in the Olympics.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The National Hockey League (NHL) is a professional hockey league that includes teams from both Canada and the United States. Presently, the NHL includes seven teams in Canada: the Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs, Vancouver Canucks, and the Winnipeg Jets. The Canadian NHL presence peaked with eight teams in the mid-1990s, before the Quebec Nordiques relocated to Denver, Colorado in 1995 and a previous incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets relocated to Phoenix, Arizona in 1996. The NHL returned to Winnipeg in 2011 when the Atlanta Thrashers relocated and became the current Winnipeg Jets. The league, founded in Canada, retains a substantial Canadian content as roughly half of its players are Canadian. "Hockey Night in Canada" is a longtime national Saturday night television broadcast featuring Canadian NHL teams. Junior-age ice hockey is also a popular spectator sport. The junior-age Canadian Hockey League is broadcast nationally and its annual Memorial Cup championship is a popular television event. The annual IIHF World U20 Championship, played during December and January, is popular among Canadian television viewers and has been held in Canada numerous times due to its popularity.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The First Nations began playing the sport more than 500 years ago. Today lacrosse not only remains an integral part of Indigenous culture, but is played by tens of thousands of people across Canada and the north eastern United States. From its origin as 'The Creator's Game' to the healthy popularity of the modern game, lacrosse has survived the test of time after treading down a long, controversial path that led it to become recognized as Canada's official national summer sport.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The Canadian Lacrosse Association, founded in 1925, is the governing body of lacrosse in Canada. It conducts national junior and senior championship tournaments for men and women in both field and box lacrosse. It also participated in the inaugural World Indoor Lacrosse Championship in 2003. As of 2018, the only active professional lacrosse league in Canada is the National Lacrosse League, which plays an indoors variation of the game known as box lacrosse. A total of five of the league's thirteen franchises are located in Canada: the Vancouver Warriors, Calgary Roughnecks, Saskatchewan Rush, Toronto Rock, and Halifax Thunderbirds. The 2006 World Lacrosse Championship was held in London, Ontario. Canada beat the United States 15–10 in the final to break a 28-year U.S. winning streak. One of the best lacrosse players of all time, Gary Gait was born in Victoria, British Columbia and has won every possible major lacrosse championship. Great achievements in Canadian Lacrosse are recognized by the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The world's first documented baseball game took place in Beachville, Ontario on June 4, 1838. Although more strongly associated with the United States, baseball has existed in Canada from the very beginning. The world's oldest baseball park still in operation is Labatt Park in London, Ontario. It is home to the London Majors of the semi-pro Intercounty Baseball League.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Presently, the Toronto Blue Jays are Canada's only Major League Baseball team, founded in 1977. The Montreal Expos (the first MLB team in Canada) played in Montreal from 1969 until 2004 when they moved to Washington, D.C. and became the Washington Nationals. The Blue Jays were the first non-American team to host a World Series Game (in 1992) and the only non-American team to win the World Series (back to back in 1992 and 1993). The Blue Jays had the highest attendance in Major League Baseball during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Professional baseball has a long history in Canada, beginning with teams such as the London Tecumsehs, Montreal Royals, and Toronto Maple Leafs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All three were included on the National Baseball Association's top 100 minor league teams.


title: Sports in Canada

text: A number of Canadians have played in the major leagues, and several have won the highest honours in baseball. Ferguson Jenkins won the National League Cy Young Award in 1971 as the best pitcher in the league, and in 1991 became the first Canadian inducted in the (U.S.) Baseball Hall of Fame. Larry Walker, set for Hall of Fame induction in 2020, was National League MVP for the 1997 season and was the league's batting champion 3 times. Since 2000, Éric Gagné won the National League Cy Young Award in 2003, Jason Bay was the first Canadian to be named rookie of the year in 2004, and Justin Morneau (American League, 2006), Joey Votto (National League, 2010) and Freddie Freeman (National League, 2020) have won MVP honours.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The Canada national baseball team has participated in all editions of the World Baseball Classic. In the 2006 World Baseball Classic, the team upset Team USA in first-round play, which some people in Canada call the "Miracle on Dirt" (a play on the phrase "Miracle on Ice" for the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team). However, the team has yet to progress past the first round.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The only Canadian team in MLB-affiliated minor leagues is the Vancouver Canadians of the Northwest League (Short-Season A). There are a number of independent minor league teams, as well as semi-professional and collegiate baseball teams in Canada (see List of baseball teams in Canada). Great achievements in Canadian baseball are recognized by the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Basketball has very strong roots in Canada. The inventor, James Naismith, was Canadian; born in Almonte, Ontario, he was working as a physical education instructor in Massachusetts when he created the game in 1891. As many as 10 of the players in that first game were Canadian students from Quebec. Basketball is a popular sport in parts of Canada, especially in Nova Scotia, Southern Alberta, and more recently Southern Ontario.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The popularity of basketball in Nova Scotia is at the high school and college level. Nova Scotia is home to three perennially strong college basketball programs. Saint Mary's University, Acadia University, and St. Francis Xavier University have made 22, 21, and 13 appearances in the U Sports men's championship, respectively. Carleton University has dominated the U Sports championship in recent years, winning 14 titles in 17 years from 2003 to the present.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Four Canadian-born individuals and one naturalized Canadian have been inducted to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame—Naismith and longtime U.S. college coach and instructor Pete Newell as contributors; Ernie Quigley, who officiated over 1,500 U.S. college games, as a referee; and Bob Houbregs, a superstar at the University of Washington in the early 1950s who went on to a career in the NBA. Newell is also separately recognized by the Hall as the head coach of the 1960 USA Olympic team, which won a gold medal in overwhelming fashion and was inducted as a unit in 2010. The most recent Canadian to enter the Naismith Hall is Steve Nash, born in South Africa but raised from early childhood in Victoria, British Columbia, a two-time NBA MVP who was inducted in 2016.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The National Basketball Association (NBA) recognizes its first ever game as being a contest between the New York Knickerbockers and Toronto Huskies at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens on November 1, 1946.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The NBA expanded into Canada in 1995 with the addition of the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies. The Grizzlies moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 2001, but the Raptors continue to draw healthy crowds at Scotiabank Arena. The Raptors won their first NBA title in 2019.


title: Sports in Canada

text: A record 16 Canadian players—14 born in the country and two naturalized—were on NBA rosters at the start of the . This was also a record for the number of players from any single non-U.S. country at the start of any NBA season.


title: Sports in Canada

text: In Canada, the term "football" is used to refer to Canadian football, a gridiron-based game closely related to but distinct from American football as played in the United States. Canadian football has its origins in Rugby football beginning in the early 1860s, but, over time, a unique code known as Canadian football developed. The first documented football match was a game played at University College, University of Toronto on November 9, 1861. One of the participants in the game involving University of Toronto students was (Sir) William Mulock, later Chancellor of the school. A football club was formed at the university soon afterward, although its rules of play at this stage are unclear. In 1864, at Trinity College, Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devised rules based on rugby football.


title: Sports in Canada

text: However, modern Canadian football is widely regarded as having originated with a game of rugby played in Montreal, in 1865, when British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and the Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868, the first recorded non-university football club in Canada. This "rugby-football" soon became popular at Montreal's McGill University. McGill challenged Harvard University to a game, in 1874. The game grew separately in parallel from this point onward in the U.S. and Canada.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canadian football is also played at the high school, junior, collegiate, and semi-professional levels: the Canadian Junior Football League and Quebec Junior Football League are for players aged 18–22, many post-secondary institutions compete for the Vanier Cup. The Vanier Cup is the championship for U Sports football, the post-secondary Canadian football league. In addition, senior leagues such as the Alberta Football League have grown in popularity in recent years. Great achievements in Canadian football are recognized by the Canadian Football Hall of Fame; located at Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton, Ontario.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Both the Canadian Football League (CFL), the sport's only professional football league in Canada, and Football Canada, the governing body for amateur play, trace their roots to 1884 and the founding of the Canadian Rugby Football Union. Currently active teams such as the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats have similar longevity. The CFL's championship game, the Grey Cup, is the country's single largest sporting event and is watched by nearly one third of Canadian television households. The nine CFL teams are the BC Lions, Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Elks, Saskatchewan Roughriders, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Toronto Argonauts, Ottawa Redblacks, and Montreal Alouettes. A tenth team, the Halifax-based Atlantic Schooners, is currently in an advanced planning stage.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The earliest reports of cricket in Canada date from 1785 where games seem to have taken place in Montreal. The first reference to cricket being played on an organized basis is in 1834 when a club was founded in Toronto and there are reports of matches being played in Hamilton and Guelph. Along with the United States, Canada was one of the two participants in the first international cricket match, which took place in September 1884. In 1867, Canadian prime minister John A. MacDonald and his cabinet declared cricket to be Canada’s first official sport.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Curling competitions in Canada include the Tim Hortons Brier (national men's championship) and Scotties Tournament of Hearts (national women's championship.) Men's and women's (and mixed teams) national champions move on to annual international competitions, where Canadian teams have historically dominated (even over the country of curling's origin, Scotland). The Continental Cup features a Canada vs. The World format.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Curling Canada is the sport's national governing body; achievements are recognized by the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame.


title: Sports in Canada

text: In Canada, organized disc sports began in the early 1970s, with promotional efforts from Irwin Toy (Frisbee distributor in Canada), the Canadian Open Frisbee Championships, Toronto (1972–85) and professionals using Frisbee show tours to perform at universities, fairs and sporting events. Disc sports such as freestyle, disc dog (with a human handler throwing discs for a dog to catch), double disc court, guts, ultimate and disc golf became this sport's first events. Two sports, the team sport of disc ultimate and disc golf are very popular worldwide and are now being played semi-professionally. The World Flying Disc Federation, Professional Disc Golf Association, and the Freestyle Players Association are the rules and sanctioning organizations for flying disc sports worldwide. Ultimate Canada is the rules and sanctioning organization for disc ultimate in Canada.


title: Sports in Canada

text: In 2013, as a founding partner, the Toronto Ultimate Club presented Canada's first semi-professional Ultimate team, the Toronto Rush, to the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL). They went undefeated 18–0 and won the AUDL Championships.


title: Sports in Canada

text: In 2014, the Montreal Royal and the Vancouver Riptide joined the AUDL. From 2015–2022, the Ottawa Outlaws competed in the AUDL, becoming the fourth Canadian franchise of 26 teams in total.


title: Sports in Canada

text: In 2015, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) granted full recognition to the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) for flying disc sports including Ultimate.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Ringette first appeared in Canada in 1963 after it was first conceptualized by Sam Jacks, a former Toronto YMCA director who served as a Canadian soldier during World War II. Created specifically for girls by Sam Jacks while he was living in North Bay, Ontario, the sport is now most popularly played by girls and women of all ages and has experienced its greatest success in Canada and Finland. Unlike most organized sports, all of ringette's top athletes are female, one of the sport's most distinctive features.


title: Sports in Canada

text: By the 1980s, ringette surpassed female ice hockey in national registrations. While the sport lost potential talent once women's ice hockey became an Olympic sport, the 21st century has seen the sport regain popularity.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada's semi-professional ringette league, the National Ringette League (NRL) formed in 2004, becoming the first winter team sports league in North America to feature elite female athletes rather than male. The NRL acts as a showcase league for the sport.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Rugby league first appeared in Canada in the 20th century, although by the end of the 1980s, the sport had disappeared entirely from the nation. However, the 21st century has seen the game gain popularity in Canada. Internationally, Canada is represented by the Canadian Wolverines. Domestically, the Canada Rugby League (CRL) runs several amateur and semi-professional club competitions.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Toronto Wolfpack, the first fully professional team of any code of rugby football in Canada, began play in 2017 in the predominantly British and French Rugby Football League system. The new franchise started in the 3rd tier League 1, which offers a Promotion and relegation route to the Super League and won promotion to the 2nd tier Championship in its inaugural season. The Wolfpack spent two seasons in the Championship before earning promotion to Super League for the 2020 season. The team also competes in the Challenge Cup. Their home ground is Lamport Stadium in Toronto.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada has around 13,000 seniors and twice as many junior players spread across the country. Many of these come from Canada's rugby stronghold of British Columbia while also being strong in Newfoundland and Ontario. The Canadian Rugby Championship is the premier domestic rugby union competition since 2009, featuring four regionally based Canadian teams. In 2009, the top two teams advanced to the Americas Rugby Championship, where they faced the A national teams from Argentina and the United States. From 2010 to 2015, the country was represented at the ARC by one team, Canada A. Starting in 2016, the competition was revamped along the lines of Europe's Six Nations Championship and the Southern Hemisphere's Rugby Championship. Since that time, Canada's senior national team has competed in the ARC alongside senior national sides from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and the USA, plus Argentina's A national team.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The sport's domestic governing body, Rugby Canada, scrapped its previous national competition, the Rugby Canada Super League, in favour of a new national under-20 league, the Rugby Canada National Junior Championship.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The Canadian national side have competed in every Rugby World Cup to date, yet have only won one match each tournament with the exception of the 1991 tournament where they reached the quarterfinals; the 2007 tournament when their best result was a draw against Japan in the group stage; and the 2019 tournament, when they went winless in their first three group matches and then saw their final match against Namibia cancelled and scored as a draw due to an impending typhoon.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Highlights include famous victories over Scotland and Wales, and until recently frequent wins over their North American neighbours, the United States. However, since 2013, the USA has dominated the rivalry, with 11 wins and one draw from the teams' last 12 matches. Known for their trademark "hard nosed" style of play, many Canadian players play their trade professionally in English and French leagues.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The Toronto Arrows professional rugby union club debuted September 2017, and started play in Major League Rugby as of 2019. The Arrows team, an independent off-shoot of the Ontario Blues Rugby Football Club, features mostly Canadian players and staff. The team's home field is York Lions Stadium on the Keele Campus of York University.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Soccer has been played in Canada since 1876. The Dominion of Canada Football Association was inaugurated on May 24, 1912, and initially became a member of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association on December 31, 1912. Today, Canada's governing body for soccer (both professional and amateur) is known as the Canadian Soccer Association.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Soccer is the highest participation sport in Canada, with 847,616 registered players (according to the Canada Soccer 2012 Yearbook). Male/female participation is split roughly 59/41 percent. There are 1,456 clubs in 139 districts across 12 regions (provincial and territory member associations).


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada's annual amateur competition is known as the National Championships. Senior men's teams play for The Challenge Trophy while senior women's teams play for The Jubilee Trophy. The men's national competition was first played in 1913, with the trophy (Connaught Cup) donated by Canadian Governor-General, the Duke of Connaught. The women's national competition was first played in 1982. The Canadian Soccer Association's annual National Championships also feature competitions at the U-18, U-16 and U-14 levels. At all levels, clubs qualify for the National Championships through their respective provincial championships.


title: Sports in Canada

text: At the St. Louis 1904 Olympics, Canada won the gold medal in soccer. The Canadian team was represented by Galt FC of Ontario. From 1967 to 1988, Canada's best men's amateur soccer players also participated in Olympic Qualifying tournaments (although in the 1980s a number of those players were indeed professional). Canada qualified as host of the Montréal 1976 Olympics and then again for the Los Angeles 1984 Olympics (where it finished fifth overall). Since the early 1990s, the Men's olympic qualifying tournaments have featured U-23 players (with a mix of professional and amateur/university players).


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada's annual professional competition is the Canadian Championship, which is contested between Toronto FC, Vancouver Whitecaps FC, CF Montréal, all nine Canadian Premier League teams, and the champions of League1 British Columbia, League1 Ontario, and the Première Ligue de soccer du Québec. The national champion qualifies for the CONCACAF Champions League from which a confederation champion then qualifies for the annual FIFA Club World Cup. Toronto FC is the only Canadian club to have won the MLS Cup, having done so on December 9, 2017.


title: Sports in Canada

text: A minority of the teams in the Canadian Championship play in U.S.-based leagues. Toronto FC, Vancouver Whitecaps FC and CF Montréal play in Major League Soccer. FC Edmonton played in the second-level North American Soccer League until going dormant in late 2017, and Ottawa Fury FC voluntarily dropped from the NASL to the third-level United Soccer League, now known as the USL Championship (USLC), after the 2016 season. FC Edmonton ultimately resumed professional operations in 2019 as inaugural Canadian Premier League members, while Fury FC continued in the USLC until folding after the 2019 season.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Two other Canadian professional sides play in U.S.-based leagues. Toronto FC's reserve side, Toronto FC II, which is ineligible for the Canadian Championship due to its relation to the MLS side, started play in the league now known as the USLC in 2014, and remained at that level through the 2018 season. In 2019, TFC II moved to the new third-level USL League One, continuing to play in that league through the 2021 season before moving to the newly established MLS Next Pro, a different third-level league made up almost entirely of MLS reserve sides, in 2022. Whitecaps FC revived its former reserve side of Whitecaps FC 2 in 2022 after a five-year hiatus, with Whitecaps 2 also playing in Next Pro. Whitecaps 2, also ineligible for the Canadian Championship due to its relationship with the MLS side, will adopt a new name after the 2022 season.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The Canadian Premier League (CPL) is a professional soccer league that began play in spring 2019, consisting of an initial seven teams; one is based in the outer suburbs of Toronto, with all others in Canadian markets not served by Major League Soccer. An eighth team, Atlético Ottawa, began CPL play in 2020, while Vancouver FC is scheduled to debut in 2023 as the league's ninth team. Two more teams have been announced for Saskatoon and Windsor, but no entry dates have been announced. The league has a minimum requirement of Canadian players on each roster and an annual draft of U Sports players, to develop Canadian talent. The eventual goal of the league is to have multiple divisions with promotion and relegation.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada's best soccer players—male and female—play in professional leagues around the world. Players are called into the national program at different times of the year, primarily in conjunction with the FIFA International Calendar (when professional clubs are required to release players for national duty).


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada's national teams compete in CONCACAF, the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football. Canada's national "A" team has won two CONCACAF championships: in 1985 to qualify for the 1986 FIFA World Cup and in 2000 to qualify for the FIFA Confederations Cup. In 2022, the men's side finished first in the final CONCACAF qualifying group for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada's women's "A" team has also won two CONCACAF championships: in 1998 and 2010. The Canadian women have participated in six FIFA Women's World Cups (Sweden 1995, United States 1999, United States 2003, China 2007, Germany 2011 and as hosts in 2015) and four Women's Olympic Football Tournaments (Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016, and Tokyo 2020/21), winning bronze medals in both London and Rio and gold in Tokyo. Canada also hosted the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2015. The country has also hosted four age-grade World Cups—the FIFA U-17 World Cup in 1987 (when the age limit was 16 instead of the current 17), the inaugural FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in 2002 (when the age limit was 19 instead of 20), the FIFA U-20 World Cup in 2007, and the U-20 Women's World Cup for a second time in 2014. Canada will host the 2026 FIFA World Cup jointly with Mexico and the United States.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Australian rules football in Canada is a minor participation sport and is governed by AFL Canada. The sport has been played in the country since 1989 when the first league was formed. The sport is quickly becoming popular, with the Ontario Australian Football League being the biggest outside of Australia. The men's Canada national Australian rules football team and a women's national team both who regularly play international matches and play in the Australian Football International Cup which is essentially a World Cup for all countries apart from Australia which is the only place where the sport is played professionally. Mike Pyke became the first Canadian to play in the Australian Football League when he was drafted by the Sydney Swans in 2008, and became the first Canadian to play in an AFL premiership (championship-winning) team when the Swans won the 2012 AFL Grand Final.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Cricket in Canada never caught on the way it did in the rest of the British Empire. While Canada is not sanctioned to play Test matches, the national team does take part in One Day International (ODI) matches and also in first-class games (in the ICC Intercontinental Cup) against other non-Test-playing opposition, with a rivalry against the United States. The match between these two nations is in fact the oldest international fixture in cricket, having first been played in 1844.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada has participated in the 1979, 2003 and 2007 Cricket World Cups, and qualified for the 2011 Cricket World Cup.


title: Sports in Canada

text: In February 2018, the ICC sanctioned the Global T20 Canada, the first franchise-based Twenty20 league in North America.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada featured a men's national team in beach volleyball that competed at the 2018–2020 NORCECA Beach Volleyball Continental Cup.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The sport of bowling takes several forms in Canada, including ten-pin and lawn bowling, but most notably Canada has its own version: Five-pin bowling, which was invented circa 1909 by Thomas F. Ryan in Toronto, Ontario, at his "Toronto Bowling Club", in response to customers who complained that the ten-pin game was too strenuous. He cut five tenpins down to about 75% of their size, and used hand-sized hard rubber balls, thus inventing the original version of five-pin bowling. Five-pin is played in all parts of Canada, but not played in any other country. Candlepin bowling, regulated by the International Candlepin Bowling Association in both Canada and the United States, is played at several centres in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.


title: Sports in Canada

text: In Quebec, a variation of duckpin bowling is played using pins with rubber bands around their widest section, known in French as "petites quilles".


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada has produced several boxing world champions, including heavyweights Tommy Burns and Lennox Lewis. Boxing is generally learned in independent gyms, located in most large Canadian cities. Canadian boxers compete in the Olympic Games and often then turn professional.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The Japanese martial art Judo has been practised in Canada for nearly a century. The first Judo dojo in Canada, Tai Iku Dojo, was established in Vancouver in 1924 by Shigetaka "Steve" Sasaki. Today, an estimated 30,000 Canadians participate in Judo programs in approximately 400 clubs across Canada.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canadians have won five Olympic medals in Judo since it was added to the Summer games in 1964. Doug Rogers won silver in the +80 kg category in 1964, Mark Berger won bronze in the +95 kg category in 1984, Nicolas Gill won bronze in the 86 kg category in 1992 and silver in the 100 kg category in 2000, and Antoine Valois-Fortier won bronze in the −81 kg category in 2012. The Canadian Judo team trains at the National Training Centre in Montreal under Gill's direction.


title: Sports in Canada

text: MMA has produced several notable fighters in the UFC and other promotions. Canada is the home of former UFC Welterweight and Middleweight Champion Georges St-Pierre as well as former Bellator MMA Welterweight Champion Rory McDonald.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Wrestling in Canada is very popular both as a recreational and as a competitive sport, and takes a variety of forms, reflecting Canada's diverse and multicultural makeup. At the middle, high school and collegiate level there is a broad-based varsity participation in Freestyle Wrestling and Greco-Roman Wrestling. Outside of schools among the general population, the dominant forms of wrestling are Judo, Submission Grappling, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and Sambo. Each of these forms of wrestling was brought to Canada from abroad both by coaches who immigrated to Canada from elsewhere and by students of the sport who studied it overseas and returned with their enthusiasm. Examples of famous Canadian wrestlers among these various wrestling sports are such as Daniel Igali for Freestyle Wrestling, Nicolas Gill, Ron Angus and Keith Morgan for Judo, Marc Bocek for both Submission Grappling and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Canada has a strong showing on the international scene, at world championships and at the Olympics in all these wrestling sports.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Cycling has increased its participation in the past few years. Several new genres of the sport have become popular in Canada, including slopestyle competition, four cross, downhill mountain biking, dirt jumping, and freeride. With the sport increasing bikes have also increased in quality and durability.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Golf is a widely enjoyed recreational sport in Canada, and the country boasts several highly rated courses. Golf Canada is the governing organization, and has over 1,600 associated member clubs and over 300,000 individual members. Golf Canada also conducts the only PGA Tour and LPGA Tour events in Canada, and it also manages the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. PGA Tour Canada (also known as the Canadian Tour), owned and operated by the PGA Tour since late 2012, operates an organization that runs a series of tournaments for professional players. In its first season under PGA Tour operation in 2013, it held a qualifying school in California, and followed it with nine tournaments in Canada. The 2014 season saw significant expansion. Three qualifying schools were held—one in California, another in Florida, and finally in British Columbia. The BC qualifier was followed by a series of 12 tournaments, all in Canada. The top five money-winners on the tour earn full membership in the following season of the PGA Tour's second-level Korn Ferry Tour.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Twenty-seven Canadians have won a total of 76 events on the PGA and LPGA tours, combined. Ontario's Mike Weir won the 2003 Masters Tournament, becoming the first Canadian man to win one of golf's majors. The first Canadian to win any recognized major championship was Sandra Post, winner of the 1968 LPGA Championship. From 1979 through 2000, the du Maurier Classic (now known as the Canadian Women's Open) was one of the LPGA's four majors. The most recent Canadian of either gender to win a major championship was Brooke Henderson, who has won the 2016 KPMG Women's PGA Championship and the 2022 Evian Championship.


title: Sports in Canada

text: While tennis is not a huge sport in Canada, there have been several Canadian players who have had success in the last decade. Milos Raonic is regarded as one of the most successful Canadian male players in history. His career-high No. 3 ranking, as of November 21, 2016, is the highest ever ranking for a Canadian man. He is the first Canadian male in the Open Era to reach the Australian Open semi-finals (2016), the French Open (2014) quarterfinals, and the Wimbledon final (2016). In women's singles, Eugenie Bouchard became the first Canadian-born player representing Canada to reach the final of a Grand Slam tournament in singles, finishing runner-up to Petra Kvitová at the 2014 Wimbledon Championships. She also reached the semi-finals of the 2014 Australian Open and 2014 French Open. Later in the same year she received the WTA Most Improved Player award for the 2014 season and reached a career-high ranking of No. 5, becoming the first Canadian female tennis player to be ranked in the top 5 in singles.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada has also had success in tennis during the late 2010s with talents such as Denis Shapovalov and Félix Auger-Aliassime. On October 20, 2019, Shapovalov beat Filip Krajinović in the Stockholm Open, winning his first ATP title. Later, during the final event of the year, the Paris Rolex Masters, Shapovalov secured a top 20-year end finish after reaching the semi-finals. He reached the final as well, but lost to Novak Djokovic 6–3 6–4. He finished the season at a career high ranking of number 15. Auger-Aliassime reached a career high ATP singles ranking of No. 17 on October 14, 2019.


title: Sports in Canada

text: In recent women's tennis, Bianca Andreescu won the 2019 Rogers Cup in Toronto, where she defeated two current top-ten players in Kiki Bertens and Karolína Plíšková. In the final, Serena Williams experienced back spasms and was forced to retire while down 1–3 in the first set. This gave Bianca her second WTA title, and a new career-high ranking of 14. With the three top-ten wins at the tournament, she won her first seven matches against top-ten opponents. At the US Open, she reached her maiden Grand Slam final, where she defeated Serena Williams, becoming the first Canadian representing Canada to win a Grand Slam singles title.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The largest tennis tournament held in Canada is the Canadian Open, also known as Rogers Cup, and is the second-oldest tournament in all of tennis (behind only Wimbledon). The Canadian Open's men's competition is a Masters 1000 event on the ATP tour. The women's competition is a WTA 1000 event on the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) tour. The competition is played on hard courts. The events alternate from year to year between the cities of Montreal and Toronto. Since 1980 in odd-numbered years the men's tournament is held in Montreal, while the women's tournament is held in Toronto, and vice versa in even-numbered years. Before 2011, they were held during separate weeks in the July–August period; now the two competitions are held during the same week in August. The Toronto tournament is held at the Aviva Centre and the Montreal tournament is held at the IGA Stadium.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The Canadian Grand Prix Formula One auto race had been conducted every year since 1967, and since 1978 had been held at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, apart from 1987 when a dispute arose between brewers Labatts and Molson over sponsorship, again in 2009 when the race was not on the FIA calendar for one year, and most recently in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The track was named for Canada's first Grand Prix driver, the late Gilles Villeneuve, whose son, Jacques, won the Formula One World championship in 1997.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Several Canadians have starred in American Championship Car Racing, most notably Jacques Villeneuve, who won the 1995 CART championship and Indianapolis 500 before moving to Formula One, and Paul Tracy, who captured the 2003 CART title and collected 31 race wins. Races were held in Mont-Tremblant and Mosport road courses and on street circuits in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton. In 2008, Champ Car merged with its long-time rival, the Indy Racing League (since renamed INDYCAR), under the banner of the latter body's top series, the IndyCar Series. The Edmonton race was transferred over to the new series immediately, and the Toronto event was added for 2009.


title: Sports in Canada

text: CASCAR (the Canadian Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) was the country's governing body for amateur and professional stock car racing, and the CASCAR Super Series was the highest-level stock car racing series in the country. In 2006, NASCAR purchased CASCAR and rebranded the Super Series as the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, now known as the NASCAR Pinty's Series; nevertheless, the series remains Canada's top-level stock car racing circuit. In 2007 the Castrol Canadian Touring Car Championship was formed.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Because Canada is NASCAR's largest market outside the United States, NASCAR brought the NAPA Auto Parts 200 Busch Series (now Xfinity Series) race to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in 2007. The race remained on the schedule until being discontinued after the 2012 season. Beginning the next year, NASCAR brought the Camping World Truck Series to Mosport with the Chevrolet Silverado 250.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canadians have combined to win 53 races in American Championship Car Racing (Including 1 Indianapolis 500), 17 races in Formula 1 and 7 races in NASCAR's top 3 divisions (1 in the Cup Series).


title: Sports in Canada

text: The Canadian Professional Rodeo Association is the governing body that sanctions professional rodeo events in Canada. The most well-known event is at the Calgary Stampede, normally held annually in July, and the Canadian Finals Rodeo, the national championship rodeo, is held in November each year.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Shooting sports are a part of Canada's cultural heritage. Many Canadians enjoy participating in the various disciplines that make up this broad sport. In the past decade shooting sports in Canada have seen a major surge of popularity as more and more Canadians are applying for firearms licences.


title: Sports in Canada

text: At the recreational level individuals and families can be found across the nation improving their marksmanship skills at various private and public shooting ranges. Hunting is also a popular activity due to Canada's vast wilderness and pioneer past.


title: Sports in Canada

text: At the competitive level, many Canadians train in Olympic events. There are also a variety of other competitive shooting sports that operate provincially, nationally and internationally through their respective organizations.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Major multi-sport events with Canadian participation, or that have taken place in Canada, are the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, Canada Games, World Championships in Athletics, Pan American Games, and the Universiade. Others include the North American Indigenous Games, the World Police and Fire Games, and the Gay Games.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The Canada Games is a high-level multi-sport event with held every two years in Canada, alternating between the Canada Winter Games and the Canada Summer Games. Athletes are strictly amateur only, and represent their province or territory. Since their inception, the Canada Games have played a prominent role in developing some of Canada's premier athletes, including Lennox Lewis, Catriona Le May Doan, Hayley Wickenheiser, Sidney Crosby, Martin Brodeur, Steve Nash, Suzanne Gaudet and David Ling. The Games were first held in 1967 in Quebec City as part of Canada's Centennial celebrations. Similar events are held on the provincial level, such as the annual BC Games.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada is one of only six nations to have attended every Commonwealth Games, and hosted the first ever British Empire Games in 1930 in Hamilton, Ontario. Canada also hosted the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Alberta, and the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, British Columbia. Canada ranks third in the all-time medal tally of Commonwealth Games.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada has competed at every Olympic Games, except for the first games in 1896 and the boycotted games in 1980. Canada has previously hosted the games three times, at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.


title: Sports in Canada

text: At the summer games, the majority of Canada's medals come from the sports of athletics, aquatics (swimming, synchronized swimming and diving), rowing and canoeing/kayaking. In the post-boycott era (since 1988), Canada's medal total ranks 19th in the world, with the highest rank of 11th in 1992 and the lowest of 24th in 2000.


title: Sports in Canada

text: At the winter games, Canada is usually one of the top nations in terms of medals won. Canada is traditionally strong in the sports of ice hockey, speed skating (especially the short track variation), figure skating and most of the national men's and women's curling teams have won medals since the sport was added to the Olympic program.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Because Canada failed to win any gold medals at the 1976 Summer and 1988 Winter games, soon after Vancouver-Whistler was awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics several organizations including Sport Canada and the Canadian Olympic Committee began collaborations to launch "Own the Podium – 2010", a development program to help Canada earn the most medals at the 2010 Games. Canada did not win the most total medals at the Vancouver Olympics (they finished third, behind the United States, whose 37 total medals was the most of any country at a single Winter Olympics, and Germany, with 26), but did win the most gold medals, with 14, the most of any country at a single Winter Olympics.


title: Sports in Canada

text: The National Sport School in Calgary, founded 1994, is the first Canadian high school designed exclusively for Olympic-calibre athletes.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canada has participated in each of the Pan American Games since the second edition of the games, held in Mexico City in 1955. The fifth games took place in Winnipeg in 1967, Canada's Centennial year. Winnipeg hosted again in 1999. Toronto was selected as the host city for the 2015 games, which was held in July 2015 in venues located in Toronto and several surrounding municipalities.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Canadian athletes are world-ranked in many amateur sports. These include the 'winter' sports of alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, figure skating, freestyle skiing, snowboarding, speed skating, ringette, biathlon, and curling. In ice hockey, Canada supports national teams for both men and women in the under-20 and under-18 categories. In 'summer' sports, Canadians participate in rugby, soccer, disc ultimate, track and field among most sports presented in the Summer Olympics. There are sports federations for most sports in Canada. Funding for amateur athletics is provided by governments, private companies and individual citizens through donation.


title: Sports in Canada

text: Major television broadcasters of sports in Canada include CBC Television, Télévision de Radio-Canada, The Sports Network (TSN), Réseau des sports (RDS), Sportsnet, and The Score. A consortium led by CTVglobemedia outbid CBC for the broadcast rights to the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2012 Summer Olympics. Major national weekly sports broadcasts include Hockey Night in Canada and Friday Night Football. There are sports radio stations in most major Canadian cities as well as on satellite radio.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Romanian cuisine () is a diverse blend of different dishes from several traditions with which it has come into contact, but it also maintains its own character. It has been mainly influenced by Turkish and a series of European cuisines in particular from the Balkans, or Hungarian cuisine as well as culinary elements stemming from the cuisines of Central Europe.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Romanian cuisine includes numerous holiday dishes arranged according to the mentioned season and holiday since the country has its roots in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Romanian dishes consist of vegetables, cereals, fruits, honey, milk, dairy products, meat and game.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Multiple different types of dishes are available, which are sometimes included under a generic term; for example, the category "ciorbă" includes a wide range of soups with a characteristic sour taste. Variations include meat and vegetable soup, tripe ("ciorbă de burtă") and calf foot soup, or fish soup, all of which are soured by lemon juice, sauerkraut juice (), vinegar, or "borș" (traditionally made from bran). The category "țuică" (plum brandy) is a name for a strong alcoholic spirit in Romania.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: In the history of Romanian culinary literature, Costache Negruzzi and Mihail Kogălniceanu were the compilers of a cookbook "200 rețete cercate de bucate, prăjituri și alte trebi gospodărești" (200 tried recipes for dishes, pastries and other household things) printed in 1841. Also, Negruzzi writes in "Alexandru Lăpușneanu", "In Moldavia, at this time, fine food wasn't fashioned. The greatest feast only offered a few types of dishes. After the borș, Greek dishes would follow, boiled with herbs floating in butter, and finally cosmopolitan steaks".


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Cheese has been a part of Romanian cuisine since ancient history. "Brânză" is the generic term for cheese in Romanian; it is originally a Dacian word. Traditional Dacian cuisine included vegetables (lentils, peas, spinach, garlic) and fruits (grapes, apples, raspberries) with high nutritional values. The Dacians produced wine in massive quantities. Burebista, a Dacian king, angered by the wine abuse of his warriors, cut down the vines. As such, his people gave up drinking wine.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Romans helped introduce different pastries made with cheese, including "alivenci", "pască", or "brânzoaice". They also introduced different variations of millet porridge.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Maize and potatoes became staples of Romanian cuisine after their introduction to Europe. Maize, in particular, contributed to health and nutrition improvements of Romanians in the 16th and 17th centuries, resulting in a population boom.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: For about three centuries, Wallachia and Moldavia, the two medieval Romanian principalities, were mildly influenced by their various neighbors, like the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman cuisine changed the Romanian table with appetizers made from various vegetables, such as eggplant and bell peppers, as well as various meat preparations, such as "chiftele" (deep-fried meatballs, a variation of kofta). The various kinds of "ciorbă" and meat-and-vegetable stews, such as "iahnie de fasole" (beans), "ardei umpluți" (stuffed peppers), and "sarmale" (stuffed cabbage) are influenced by Turkish cuisine. The Romanian tomato salad is a variation of the Turkish "çoban salata".


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Romanian recipes bear the same influences as the rest of Romanian culture. The Turks brought meatballs ("perișoare" in a meatball soup), from the Greeks there is "musaca", from the Austrians there is the "șnițel", and the list continues. The Romanians share many foods with the Balkan area and former Austria-Hungary. Some others are original or can be traced to the Romans, as well as other ancient civilizations. The lack of written sources in Eastern Europe makes it impossible to determine today the exact origin for most of them.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: One of the most common meals is the "mămăligă", the precursor of polenta, served on its own or as an accompaniment. Pork is the main meat used in Romanian cuisine, but also beef is consumed and a good lamb or fish dish is never to be refused.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Before Christmas, on December 20 (Ignat's Day or "Ignatul" in Romanian), a pig is traditionally sacrificed by every rural family. A variety of foods for Christmas are prepared from the slaughtered pig, such as:


title: Romanian cuisine

text: The Christmas meal is sweetened with the traditional "cozonac", a sweet bread made with nuts, poppy seeds, or "rahat" (Turkish delight).


title: Romanian cuisine

text: At Easter, lamb is served: the main dishes are "borș de miel" (lamb sour soup), roast lamb, and "drob de miel" – a Romanian-style lamb haggis made from minced offal (heart, liver, lungs), lamb meat and spring onions with spices, wrapped in a caul and roasted. The traditional Easter cake is "pască", a pie made from yeast dough with a sweet cottage cheese filling at the center.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Romanian pancakes, called "clătite", are thin (like the French crêpe) and can be prepared with savory or sweet fillings: ground meat, cheese, or jam. Different recipes are prepared depending on the season or the occasion.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Wine is the preferred drink, and Romanian wine has a tradition of over three millennia. Romania is currently the world's ninth largest wine producer, and recently the export market has started to grow. Romania produces a wide selection of domestic varieties (Fetească, Grasă, Tămâioasă, Busuioacă, and Băbească), as well as varieties from across the world (Italian Riesling, Merlot, Sauvignon blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, and Muscat Ottonel). Beer is also highly regarded, generally blonde pilsener beer, made with German influences. There are also Romanian breweries with a long tradition.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: According to the 2009 data of FAOSTAT, Romania is the world's second largest plum producer (after the United States), and as much as 75% of Romania's plum production is processed into the famous "țuică", a plum brandy obtained through one or more distillation steps.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: Followers of the Romanian Orthodox Church keep fast during several periods throughout the ecclesiastical calendar amounting to a majority of the year. In the Romanian Orthodox tradition, devotees keep to a diet without any animal products during these times. As a result, vegan foods are abundant in stores and restaurants; however, Romanians may not be familiar with a vegan or vegetarian diet as a full-time lifestyle choice. Many recipes below have vegan versions, and the Vegetables section below contains many common fasting foods.


title: Romanian cuisine

text: The generic name for cheese in Romania is "brânză", and it is considered to be of Dacian origin. Most of the cheeses are made from cow's or sheep's milk. Goat's milk is rarely used. Sheep cheese is considered "the real cheese", although in modern times, some people refrain from consuming it due to its higher fat content and specific smell.


title: Foxhound

text: A foxhound is a type of large hunting hound bred for strong hunting instincts, a keen sense of smell, and their bark, energy, drive, and speed. In fox hunting, the foxhound's namesake, packs of foxhounds track quarry, followed—usually on horseback—by the hunters, sometimes for several miles at a stretch; moreover, foxhounds also sometimes guard sheep and houses.


title: Foxhound

text: There are different breeds of foxhound, each having slightly different characteristics and appearances, and each often called simply "Foxhound" in their native countries:


title: Foxhound

text: The International Foxhound Association was created in 2012 for the international promotion of the Foxhound as a breed


title: Foxhound

text: Foxhounds are medium-large dogs and males typically weigh 29-32 kg (65-70 lb) and females 27-29 kg (60-65 lb). Height for males measures 55-63 cm (22-25 in) and females 53-60 cm (21-24 in). Foxhounds have a short coat, and long, strong legs, as well as deep chests for lots of lung space.


title: Foxhound

text: Foxhounds generally display a gentle and affectionate temperament. Foxhounds are highly active and energetic, and therefore require activity and exercise. Foxhounds are sociable and these dogs have great stamina, sense of smell, and enjoy being in a pack, as they are bred for hunting in packs.


title: Foxhound

text: In fox hunting, the foxhound's namesake, packs of foxhounds track and chase fox while hunters follow along on horseback. Fox hunting has shifted over the years and may differ depending on the country. Some changes over time include focusing on chasing rather than killing, and chasing other creatures, such as the coyote, instead of only the fox.


title: Foxhound

text: Most common causes of death among Foxhound puppies are respiratory disease, anorexia and dehydration, skin disorders, gastrointestinal disease, and myocardial infarction (heart attack).


title: Foxhound

text: A kennel of working, hunting English Foxhounds in the south of England, had an outbreak of tuberculosis (TB) that impacted 180 dogs in late 2016 and early 2017. The kennel housed Foxhound puppies to adults, up to 8 years old. The Foxhounds work among six counties and some of the six counties are in the "Edge Area" that is impacted by bovine tuberculosis.


title: Foxhound

text: An investigation occurred which consisted of testing the dogs and looking deeper into the regional area, diet of the dogs, and even more factors while conducting tests and gathering information. The dogs eat raw meat and there was speculation about the diet containing the M. bovis that causes TB as the meat comes from areas impacted by M. bovis.


title: Foxhound

text: In 2005, the American Kennel Club reported that the English and American Foxhounds were their least and fourth least registered breeds in North America with 22 and 44 registrations, respectively; the top registered breed, the Labrador Retriever, had 137,867 registrations during the same year.


title: Doric Greek

text: Doric or Dorian (), also known as West Greek, was a group of Ancient Greek dialects; its varieties are divided into the Doric proper and Northwest Doric subgroups. Doric was spoken in a vast area, that included northern Greece (Acarnania, Aetolia, Epirus, western and eastern Locris, Phocis, Doris, and possibly ancient Macedonia), most of the Peloponnese (Achaea, Elis, Messenia, Laconia, Argolid, Aegina, Corinth, and Megara), the southern Aegean (Kythira, Milos, Thera, Crete, Karpathos, and Rhodes), as well as the colonies of some of the aforementioned regions, in Cyrene, Magna Graecia, the Black Sea, the Ionian Sea and the Adriatic Sea. It was also spoken in the Greek sanctuaries of Dodona, Delphi, and Olympia, as well as at the four Panhellenic festivals; the Isthmian, Nemean, Pythian, and Olympic Games.


title: Doric Greek

text: By Hellenistic times, under the Achaean League, an Achaean Doric koine appeared, exhibiting many peculiarities common to all Doric dialects, which delayed the spread of the Attic-based Koine Greek to the Peloponnese until the 2nd century BC. The only living descendant of Doric is the Tsakonian language which is still spoken in Greece today; though critically endangered, with only a few hundred – mostly elderly – fluent speakers left.


title: Doric Greek

text: It is widely accepted that Doric originated in the mountains of Epirus in northwestern Greece, the original seat of the Dorians. It was expanded to all other regions during the Dorian invasion (c. 1150 BC) and the colonisations that followed. The presence of a Doric state (Doris) in central Greece, north of the Gulf of Corinth, led to the theory that Doric had originated in northwest Greece or maybe beyond in the Balkans. The dialect's distribution towards the north extends to the Megarian colony of Byzantium and the Corinthian colonies of Potidaea, Epidamnos, Apollonia and Ambracia; there, it further added words to what would become the Albanian language, probably via traders from a now-extinct Illyrian intermediary. In the north, local epigraphical evidence includes the decrees of the Epirote League, the Pella curse tablet, three additional lesser known Macedonian inscriptions (all of them identifiable as Doric), numerous inscriptions from a number of Greek colonies. Furthermore, there is an abundance of place names used to examine features of the northern Doric dialects. Southern dialects, in addition to numerous inscriptions, coins, and names, have also provided much more literary evidence through authors such as Alcman, Pindar, and Archimedes of Syracuse, among others, all of whom wrote in Doric. There are also ancient dictionaries that have survived; notably the one by Hesychius of Alexandria, whose work preserved many dialectal words from throughout the Greek-speaking world.


title: Doric Greek

text: Where the Doric dialect group fits in the overall classification of ancient Greek dialects depends to some extent on the classification. Several views are stated under Greek dialects. The prevalent theme of most views listed there is that Doric is a subgroup of West Greek. Some use the terms Northern Greek or Northwest Greek instead. The geographic distinction is only verbal and ostensibly is misnamed: all of Doric was spoken south of "Southern Greek" or "Southeastern Greek."


title: Doric Greek

text: Be that as it may, "Northern Greek" is based on a presumption that Dorians came from the north and on the fact that Doric is closely related to Northwest Greek. When the distinction began is not known. All the "northerners" might have spoken one dialect at the time of the Dorian invasion; certainly, Doric could only have further differentiated into its classical dialects when the Dorians were in place in the south. Thus West Greek is the most accurate name for the classical dialects.


title: Doric Greek

text: Tsakonian, a descendant of Laconian Doric (Spartan), is still spoken on the southern Argolid coast of the Peloponnese, in the modern prefectures of Arcadia and Laconia. Today it is a source of considerable interest to linguists, and an endangered dialect.


title: Doric Greek

text: Laconian was spoken by the population of Laconia in the southern Peloponnese and also by its colonies, Taras and Herakleia in Magna Graecia. Sparta was the seat of ancient Laconia.


title: Doric Greek

text: Laconian is attested in inscriptions on pottery and stone from the seventh century BC. A dedication to Helen dates from the second quarter of the seventh century. Taras was founded in 706 and its founders must already have spoken Laconic.


title: Doric Greek

text: Many documents from the state of Sparta survive, whose citizens called themselves Lacedaemonians after the name of the valley in which they lived. Homer calls it "hollow Lacedaemon", though he refers to a pre-Dorian period. The seventh century Spartan poet Alcman used a dialect that some consider to be predominantly Laconian. Philoxenus of Alexandria wrote a treatise "On the Laconian dialect".


title: Doric Greek

text: Argolic was spoken in the thickly settled northeast Peloponnese at, for example, Argos, Mycenae, Hermione, Troezen, Epidaurus, and as close to Athens as the island of Aegina. As Mycenaean Greek had been spoken in this dialect region in the Bronze Age, it is clear that the Dorians overran it but were unable to take Attica. The Dorians went on from Argos to Crete and Rhodes.


title: Doric Greek

text: Ample inscriptional material of a legal, political and religious content exists from at least the sixth century BC.


title: Doric Greek

text: Corinthian was spoken first in the isthmus region between the Peloponnesus and mainland Greece; that is, the Isthmus of Corinth. The cities and states of the Corinthian dialect region were Corinth, Sicyon, Archaies Kleones, Phlius, the colonies of Corinth in western Greece: Corcyra, Leucas, Anactorium, Ambracia and others, the colonies in and around Italy: Syracuse, Sicily and Ancona, and the colonies of Corcyra: Dyrrachium, and Apollonia. The earliest inscriptions at Corinth date from the early sixth century BC. They use a Corinthian epichoric alphabet. (See under Attic Greek.)


title: Doric Greek

text: Corinth contradicts the prejudice that Dorians were rustic militarists, as some consider the speakers of Laconian to be. Positioned on an international trade route, Corinth played a leading part in the re-civilizing of Greece after the centuries of disorder and isolation following the collapse of Mycenaean Greece.


title: Doric Greek

text: The Northwest Doric (or "Northwest Greek", with "Northwest Doric" now considered more accurate so as not to distance the group from Doric proper) group is closely related to Doric proper, while sometimes there is no distinction between Doric and the Northwest Doric. Whether it is to be considered a part of the southern Doric Group or the latter a part of it or the two considered subgroups of West Greek, the dialects and their grouping remain the same. West Thessalian and Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Doric influence.


title: Doric Greek

text: While Northwest Doric is generally seen as a dialectal group, dissenting views exist, such as that of Méndez-Dosuna, who argues that Northwest Doric is not a proper dialectal group but rather merely a case of areal dialectal convergence. Throughout the Northwest Doric area, most internal differences did not hinder mutual understanding, though Filos, citing Bubenik, notes that there were certain cases where a bit of accommodation may have been necessary.


title: Doric Greek

text: The earliest epigraphic texts for Northwest Doric date to the 6th–5th century BC. These are thought to provide evidence for Northwest Doric features, especially the phonology and morphophonology, but most of the features thus attributed to Northwest Doric are not exclusive to it. The Northwest Doric dialects differ from the main Doric Group dialects in the below features:


title: Doric Greek

text: This dialect was spoken in Phocis and in its main settlement, Delphi. Because of that it is also cited as Delphian. Plutarch says that Delphians pronounce "b" in the place of "p" ( for )


title: Doric Greek

text: The dialect of Elis (earliest c. 600 BC) is considered, after Aeolic Greek, one of the most difficult for the modern reader of epigraphic texts.


title: Doric Greek

text: Spoken at the Dodona oracle, (earliest c. 550–500 BC) firstly under control of the Thesprotians; later organized in the Epirote League (since c. 370 BC).


title: Doric Greek

text: Most scholars maintain that ancient Macedonian was a Greek dialect, probably of the Northwestern Doric group in particular. Olivier Masson, in his article for "The Oxford Classical Dictionary", talks of "two schools of thought": one rejecting "the Greek affiliation of Macedonian" and preferring "to treat it as an Indo-European language of the Balkans" of contested affiliation (examples are Bonfante 1987, and Russu 1938); the other favouring "a purely Greek nature of Macedonian as a northern Greek dialect" with numerous adherents from the 19th century and on (Fick 1874; Hoffmann 1906; Hatzidakis 1897 etc.; Kalleris 1964 and 1976).


title: Doric Greek

text: Masson himself argues with the largely Greek character of the Macedonian onomastics and sees Macedonian as "a Greek dialect, characterised by its marginal position and by local pronunciations" and probably most closely related to the dialects of the Greek North-West (Locrian, Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote). Brian D. Joseph acknowledges the closeness of Macedonian to Greek (even contemplating to group them into a "Hellenic branch" of Indo-European), but retains that "[t]he slender evidence is open to different interpretations, so that no definitive answer is really possible". Johannes Engels has pointed to the Pella curse tablet, written in Doric Greek: "This has been judged to be the most important ancient testimony to substantiate that Macedonian was a north-western Greek and mainly a Doric dialect". Miltiades Hatzopoulos has suggested that the Macedonian dialect of the 4th century BC, as attested in the Pella curse tablet, was a sort of Macedonian ‘koine’ resulting from the encounter of the idiom of the ‘Aeolic’-speaking populations around Mount Olympus and the Pierian Mountains with the Northwest Greek-speaking Argead Macedonians hailing from Argos Orestikon, who founded the kingdom of Lower Macedonia. However, according to Hatzopoulos, B. Helly expanded and improved his own earlier suggestion and presented the hypothesis of a (North-)‘Achaean’ substratum extending as far north as the head of the Thermaic Gulf, which had a continuous relation, in prehistoric times both in Thessaly and Macedonia, with the Northwest Greek-speaking populations living on the other side of the Pindus mountain range, and contacts became cohabitation when the Argead Macedonians completed their wandering from Orestis to Lower Macedonia in the 7th c. BC. According to this hypothesis, Hatzopoulos concludes that the Macedonian Greek dialect of the historical period, which is attested in inscriptions, is a sort of koine resulting from the interaction and the influences of various elements, the most important of which are the North-Achaean substratum, the Northwest Greek idiom of the Argead Macedonians, and the Thracian and Phrygian adstrata.


title: Doric Greek

text: Achaean Doric most probably belonged to the Northwest Doric group. It was spoken in Achaea in the northwestern Peloponnese, on the islands of Cephalonia and Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea, and in the Achaean colonies of Magna Graecia in Southern Italy (including Sybaris and Crotone). This "strict" Doric dialect was later subject to the influence of "mild" Doric spoken in Corinthia. It survived until 350 BC.


title: Doric Greek

text: By Hellenistic times, under the Achaean League, an Achaean Doric koine appeared, exhibiting many peculiarities common to all Doric dialects, which delayed the spread of the Attic-based Koine Greek to the Peloponnese until the 2nd century BC.


title: Doric Greek

text: The Northwest Doric koine refers to a supraregional North-West common variety that emerged in the third and second centuries BC, and was used in the official texts of the Aetolian League. Such texts have been found in W. Locris, Phocis, and Phtiotis, among other sites. It contained a mix of native Northwest Doric dialectal elements and Attic forms. It was apparently based on the most general features of Northwest Doric, eschewing less common local traits.


title: Doric Greek

text: Its rise was driven by both linguistic and non-linguistic factors, with non-linguistic motivating factors including the spread of the rival Attic-Ionic koine after it was recruited by the Macedonian state for administration, and the political unification of a vast territories by the Aetolian League and the state of Epirus. The Northwest Doric koine was thus both a linguistic and a political rival of the Attic-Ionic koine.


title: Doric Greek

text: Proto-Greek long *ā is retained as "ā", in contrast to Attic developing a long open "ē" (eta) in at least some positions.


title: Doric Greek

text: In certain Doric dialects (Severe Doric), *e and *o lengthen by compensatory lengthening or contraction to eta or omega, in contrast to Attic "ei" and "ou" (spurious diphthongs).


title: Doric Greek

text: Proto-Greek *ts > "-ss-" between vowels. (Attic shares the same development, but further shortens the geminate to "-s-".)


title: Germaine de Staël

text: Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (; ; 22 April 176614 July 1817), commonly known as Madame de Staël (), was a French woman of letters and political theorist, the daughter of banker and French finance minister Jacques Necker and Suzanne Curchod, a leading salonnière. She was a voice of moderation in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era up to the French Restoration. She was present at the Estates General of 1789 and at the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Her intellectual collaboration with Benjamin Constant between 1794 and 1810 made them one of the most celebrated intellectual couples of their time. She discovered sooner than others the tyrannical character and designs of Napoleon. For many years she lived as an exile – firstly during the Reign of Terror and later due to personal persecution by Napoleon.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: In exile, she became the centre of the Coppet group with her unrivalled network of contacts across Europe. In 1814 one of her contemporaries observed that "there are three great powers struggling against Napoleon for the soul of Europe: England, Russia, and Madame de Staël". Known as a witty and brilliant conversationalist, and often dressed in daring outfits, she stimulated the political and intellectual life of her times. Her works, whether novels, travel literature or polemics, which emphasised individuality and passion, made a lasting mark on European thought. De Staël spread the notion of Romanticism widely by its repeated use.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: Germaine (or "Minette") was the only child of the Swiss governess Suzanne Curchod with aptitude for mathematics and science and prominent Swiss banker and statesman Jacques Necker. He became the Director-General of Finance under King Louis XVI of France and she hosted in Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin one of the most popular salons of Paris. Mme Necker wanted her daughter educated according to the principles of the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and endow her with the intellectual education and Calvinist discipline instilled in her by her father. On Fridays she regularly brought Germaine as a young child to sit at her feet in her salon, where the guests took pleasure in stimulating the brilliant child. At the age of 13, she read Montesquieu, Shakespeare, Rousseau and Dante. Her parents' social life led to a somewhat neglected and wild Germaine, unwilling to bow to her mother's demands.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: Her father "is remembered today for taking the unprecedented step in 1781 of making public the country’s budget, a novelty in an absolute monarchy where the state of the national finances had always been kept secret, leading to his dismissal in May of that year." The family eventually took up residence in 1784 at Château Coppet, an estate on Lake Geneva. The family returned to the Paris region in 1785.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: Aged 11, Germaine had suggested to her mother that she marry Edward Gibbon, a visitor to her salon, whom she found most attractive. Then, she reasoned, he would always be around for her. In 1783, at seventeen, she was courted by William Pitt the Younger and by Comte de Guibert, whose conversation, she thought, was the most far-ranging, spirited and fertile she had ever known. When she did not accept their offers Germaine's parents became impatient. With the help of Marie-Charlotte Hippolyte de Boufflers, a marriage was arranged with Baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, a Protestant and attaché of the Swedish legation to France. The wedding took place on 14 January 1786 in the Swedish embassy at 97, Rue du Bac; Germaine was 20, her husband 37. On the whole, the marriage seems to have been workable for both parties, although neither seems to have had much affection for the other. Mlle Necker continued to write miscellaneous works, including the three-act romantic drama "Sophie" (1786) and the five-act tragedy, "Jeanne Grey" (1787). The baron, also a gambler, obtained great benefits from the match as he received 80,000 pounds and was confirmed as lifetime ambassador to Paris, although his wife would become almost certainly the more effective envoy.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: In 1788, de Staël published "Letters on the works and character of J.J. Rousseau". In this panegyric, written initially for a limited number of friends (in which she considered his housekeeper Thérèse Levasseur as unfaithful), she demonstrated evident talent, but little critical discernment. De Staël was at this time enthusiastic about the mixture of Rousseau's ideas about love and Montesquieu's on politics.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: In December 1788 her father persuaded the king to double the number of deputies at the Third Estate in order to gain enough support to raise taxes to defray the excessive costs of supporting the revolutionaries in America. This approach had serious repercussions on Necker's reputation; he appeared to consider the Estates-General as a facility designed to help the administration rather than to reform the government. In an argument with the king, whose speech on 23 June he didn't attend, Necker was dismissed and exiled on 11 July. Her parents left France on the same day in unpopularity and disgrace. On Sunday, 12 July the news became public, and an angry Camille Desmoulins suggested storming the Bastille. On 16 July he was reappointed; Necker entered Versailles in triumph. His efforts to clean up public finances were unsuccessful and his idea of a National Bank failed. Necker was attacked by Jean-Paul Marat and Count Mirabeau in the Constituante, when he did not agree with using assignats as legal tender. He resigned on 4 September 1790. Accompanied by their son-in-law, her parents left for Switzerland, without the two million livres, half of his fortune, loaned as an investment in the public treasury in 1778.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: The increasing disturbances caused by the Revolution made her privileges as the consort of an ambassador an important safeguard. Germaine held a salon in the Swedish embassy, where she gave "coalition dinners", which were frequented by moderates such as Talleyrand and De Narbonne, monarchists (Feuillants) such as Antoine Barnave, Charles Lameth and his brothers Alexandre and Théodore, the Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, Pierre Victor, baron Malouet, the poet Abbé Delille, Thomas Jefferson, the one-legged Minister Plenipotentiary to France Gouverneur Morris, Paul Barras (from the Plain) and the Girondin Condorcets. "The issue of leadership, or rather lack of it, was central to de Staël's preoccupations at this stage of her political reflections. She experienced the death of Mirabeau, accused of royalism, as a sign of great political disorientation and uncertainty. He was the only man with the necessary charisma, energy, and prestige to keep the revolutionary movement on a path of constitutional reform."


title: Germaine de Staël

text: Following the 1791 French legislative election, and after the French Constitution of 1791 was announced in the National Assembly, she resigned from a political career and decided not to stand for re-election. "Fine arts and letters will occupy my leisure." She did, however, play an important role in the succession of Comte de Montmorin the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in the appointment of Narbonne as and continued to be centre stage behind the scenes. Marie Antoinette wrote to Hans Axel Fersen: "Count Louis de Narbonne is finally Minister of War, since yesterday; what a glory for Mme de Staël and what a joy for her to have the whole army, all to herself."


title: Germaine de Staël

text: In 1792 the French Legislative Assembly saw an unprecedented turnover of ministers, six ministers of the interior, seven ministers of foreign affairs, and nine ministers of war. On 10 August 1792 Clermont-Tonnere was thrown out of a window of the Louvre Palace and trampled to death. De Staël offered baron Malouet a plan of escape for the royal family. As there was no government, militant members of the Insurrectionary Commune were given extensive police powers from the provisional, executive council, " to detain, interrogate and incarcerate suspects without anything resembling due process of law". She helped De Narbonne, dismissed for plotting, to hide under the altar in the chapel in the Swedish embassy, and lectured the sans-culottes from the section in the hall.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: On Sunday 2 September, the day the Elections for the National Convention and the September massacres began, she fled herself in the garb of an ambassadress. Her carriage was stopped and the crowd forced her into the Paris town hall, where Robespierre presided. That same evening she was conveyed home, escorted by the procurator Louis Pierre Manuel. The next day the commissioner to the Commune of Paris Jean-Lambert Tallien arrived with a new passport and accompanied her to the edge of the barricade.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: After her flight from Paris, de Staël moved to Rolle in Switzerland, where Albert was born. She was supported by de Montmorency and the Marquis de Jaucourt, whom she had previously supplied with Swedish passports. In January 1793, she made a four-month visit to England to be with her then-lover, the Comte de Narbonne, at Juniper Hall. (Since 1 February, France and Great Britain had been at war.) Within a few weeks, she was pregnant; it was apparently one of the reasons for the scandal she caused in England. According to Fanny Burney, the result was that her father urged Fanny to avoid the company of de Staël and her circle of French Émigrés in Surrey. De Staël met Horace Walpole, James Mackintosh, Lord Sheffield, a friend of Edward Gibbon, and Lord Loughborough, the new Lord Chancellor. She was not impressed with the condition of women in English society. Individual freedom was as important to her as were abstract political liberties.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: In the summer of 1793, de Staël returned to Switzerland, probably because De Narbonne had cooled towards her. She published a defence of the character of Marie Antoinette, entitled, "Réflexions sur le procès de la Reine", 1793 ("Reflections on the Queen's trial"). In de Staël's view, France should have adapted from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy as was the case in England. Living in Jouxtens-Mézery, farther away from the French border than Coppet, Germaine was visited by Adolph Ribbing. Count Ribbing was living in exile, after his conviction for taking part in a conspiracy to assassinate the Swedish king, Gustav III. In September 1794, the recently divorced Benjamin Constant visited her, wanting to meet her before he committed suicide.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: In May 1795, de Staël moved to Paris, now with Constant in tow, as her protégé and lover. De Staël rejected the idea of the right of resistance – which had been introduced into the never implemented French Constitution of 1793, and was removed from the Constitution of 1795. In 1796, she published "Sur l'influence des passions", in which she praised suicide, a book which attracted the attention of the German writers Schiller and Goethe.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: Still absorbed by French politics, de Staël reopened her salon. It was during these years that Mme de Staël arguably exerted most political influence. For a time she was still visible in the diverse and eccentric society of the mid-1790s. However, on the 13 Vendémiaire the "Comité de salut public" ordered her to leave Paris after accusations of politicking, and put Constant in detention for one night. De Staël spent that autumn in the spa of Forges-les-Eaux. She was considered a threat to political stability and mistrusted by both sides in the political conflict. The couple moved to Ormesson-sur-Marne where they stayed with Mathieu Montmorency. In Summer 1796 Constant founded the "Cercle constitutionnel" in Luzarches with de Staël's support. In May 1797, she was back in Paris and eight months pregnant. She succeeded in getting Talleyrand from the list of Émigrés and on his return from the United States to have him appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in July. From the coup of 18 Fructidor it was announced that anyone campaigning to restore the monarchy or the French Constitution of 1793 would be shot without trial. Germaine moved to Saint-Ouen, on her father's estate and became a close friend of the beautiful and wealthy Juliette Récamier to whom she sold her parents' house in the Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: De Staël completed the initial part of her first most substantial contribution to political and constitutional theory, "Of present circumstances that can end the Revolution, and of the principles that must found the republic of France".


title: Germaine de Staël

text: On 6 December 1797 de Staël had the first meeting with Napoleon Bonaparte in Talleyrand's office and met him again on 3 January 1798 during a ball. She made it clear to him that she did not agree with his planned invasion of Switzerland. He ignored her opinions and would not read her letters.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: In January 1800, Napoleon appointed Benjamin Constant a member of the Tribunat; not long after, Constant became his enemy. Two years later, Napoleon forced him into exile on account of his speeches which he took to be actually written by Mme de Staël. In August 1802, Napoleon was elected first consul for life. This put de Staël into opposition to him both for personal and political reasons. In her view, Napoleon had begun to resemble Machiavelli; while for Napoleon, Voltaire, J.J. Rousseau and their followers were the cause of the French Revolution. This view was cemented when Jacques Necker published his "Last Views on Politics and Finance" and his daughter, her "De la littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales". It was her first philosophical treatment of the Europe question: it dealt with such factors as nationality, history, and social institutions. Napoleon started a campaign against her latest publication. He did not like her cultural determinism and generalizations, in which she stated that "an artist must be of his own time". In his opinion a woman should stick to knitting. He said about her, according to the Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat, that she "teaches people to think who had never thought before, or who had forgotten how to think". It became clear that the first man of France and de Staël were not likely ever to get along together.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: De Staël published a provocative, anti-Catholic novel "Delphine", in which the "femme incomprise" (misunderstood woman) living in Paris between 1789 and 1792, is confronted with conservative ideas about divorce after the Concordat of 1801. In this tragic novel, influenced by Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and Rousseau's "Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse", she reflects on the legal and practical aspects on divorce, the arrests and the September Massacres, and the fate of the émigrés. (During the winter of 1794 it seems De Staël was pondering a divorce and whether to marry Ribbing.) The main characters have traits of the unstable Benjamin Constant, and Talleyrand is depicted as an old woman, herself as the heroine with the liberal view of the Italian aristocrat and politician Melzi d'Eril.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: When Constant moved to Maffliers in September 1803 de Staël went to see him and let Napoleon know she would be wise and cautious. Thereupon her house immediately became popular again among her friends, but Napoleon, informed by Madame de Genlis, suspected a conspiracy. "Her extensive network of connections – which included foreign diplomats and known political opponents, as well as members of the government and of Bonaparte's own family – was in itself a source of suspicion and alarm for the government." Her protection of – who plotted the death of Napoleon – influenced his decision on 13 October 1803 to exile her without trial.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: For ten years, de Staël was not allowed to come within 40 leagues (almost 200 km) of Paris. She accused Napoleon of "persecuting a woman and her children". On 23 October, she left for Germany "out of pride", in the hope of gaining support and to be able to return home as soon as possible.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: With her children and Constant, de Staël stopped off in Metz and met Kant's French translator Charles de Villers. In mid-December, they arrived in Weimar, where she stayed for two and a half months at the court of the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and his mother Anna Amalia. Goethe who had become ill hesitated about seeing her. After meeting her, Goethe went on to refer to her as an "extraordinary woman" in his private correspondence. Schiller complimented her intelligence and eloquence, but her frequent visits distracted him from completing "William Tell". De Staël was constantly on the move, talking and asking questions. Constant decided to abandon her in Leipzig and return to Switzerland. De Staël travelled on to Berlin, where she made the acquaintance of August Schlegel who was lecturing there on literature. She appointed him on an enormous salary to tutor her children. On 18 April they all left Berlin when the news of her father's death reached her.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: On 19 May, de Staël arrived in Coppet now its wealthy and independent mistress. She spent the summer at the chateau sorting through his writings and published an essay on his private life. In April 1804, Friedrich Schlegel married Dorothea Veit in the Swedish embassy. In July Constant wrote about her, "She exerts over everything around her a kind of inexplicable but real power. If only she could govern herself, she might have governed the world." In December 1804 she travelled to Italy, accompanied by her children, Schlegel, and the historian Sismondi. There she met the poet Monti and the painter, Angelica Kauffman. "Her visit to Italy helped her to develop her theory of the difference between northern and southern societies..."


title: Germaine de Staël

text: De Staël returned to Coppet in June 1805, moved to Meulan (Château d'Acosta), and spent nearly a year writing her next book on Italy's culture and history. In "Corinne, ou L'Italie" (1807), her own impressions of a sentimental and intellectual journey, the heroine appears to have been inspired by the Italian poet Diodata Saluzzo Roero. She combined romance with travelogue, showed all of Italy's works of art still in place, rather than plundered by Napoleon and taken to France. The book's publication acted as a reminder of her existence, and Napoleon sent her back to Coppet. Her house became, according to Stendhal, "the general headquarters of European thought" and was a debating club hostile to Napoleon, "turning conquered Europe into a parody of a feudal empire, with his own relatives in the roles of vassal states". Madame Récamier, also banned by Napoleon, Prince Augustus of Prussia, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, and Chateaubriand all belonged to the "Coppet group". Each day the table was laid for about thirty guests. Talking seemed to be everybody's chief activity.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: For a time de Staël lived with Constant in Auxerre (1806), Rouen (1807), Aubergenville (1807). Then she met Friedrich Schlegel, whose wife Dorothea had translated "Corinne" into German. The use of the word Romanticism was invented by Schlegel but spread more widely across France through its persistent use by de Staël. Late in 1807 she set out for Vienna and visited Maurice O'Donnell. She was accompanied by her children and August Schlegel who gave his famous lectures there. In 1808 Benjamin Constant was afraid to admit to her that he had married Charlotte von Hardenberg in the meantime. "If men had the qualities of women", de Staël wrote, "love would simply cease to be a problem." De Staël set to work on her book about Germany – in which she presented the idea of a state called "Germany" as a model of ethics and aesthetics and praised German literature and philosophy. The exchange of ideas and literary and philosophical conversations with Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland had inspired de Staël to write one of the most influential books of the nineteenth century on Germany.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: Pretending she wanted to emigrate to the United States, de Staël was given permission to re-enter France. She moved first into the Château de Chaumont (1810), then relocated to Fossé and Vendôme. She was determined to publish "De l'Allemagne" in France, a book in which she called French political structures into question, so indirectly criticizing Napoleon. Constrained by censorship, she wrote to the emperor a letter of complaint. The minister of police Savary had emphatically forbidden her to publish her “un-French" book. In October 1810 de Staël was exiled again and had to leave France within three days. August Schlegel was also ordered to leave the Swiss Confederation as an enemy of French literature. She found consolation in a wounded veteran officer named Albert de Rocca, twenty-three years her junior, to whom she got privately engaged in 1811 but did not marry publicly until 1816.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: The operations of the French imperial police in the case of de Staël are rather obscure. She was at first left undisturbed, but by degrees, the chateau itself became a source of suspicion, and her visitors found themselves heavily persecuted. François-Emmanuel Guignard, De Montmorency and Mme Récamier were exiled for the crime of visiting her. She remained at home during the winter of 1811, planning to escape to England or Sweden with the manuscript. On 23 May 1812, she left Coppet under the pretext of a short outing, but journeyed through Bern, Innsbruck and Salzburg to Vienna, where she met Metternich. There, after some trepidation and trouble, she received the necessary passports to go on to Russia.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: During Napoleon's invasion of Russia, de Staël, her two children, and Schlegel travelled through Galicia in the Habsburg empire from Brno to Łańcut where de Rocca, having deserted the French army and having been searched by the French gendarmerie, was waiting for her. The journey continued to Lemberg. On 14 July 1812 they arrived in Volhynia. In the meantime, Napoleon, who took a more northern route, had crossed the Niemen River with his army. In Kyiv, she met Miloradovich, governor of the city. De Staël hesitated to travel on to Odessa, Constantinople, and decided instead to go north. Perhaps she was informed of the outbreak of plague in the Ottoman Empire. In Moscow, she was invited by the governor Fyodor Rostopchin. According to de Staël, it was Rostopchin who ordered his mansion in Italian style near Winkovo to be set on fire. She left only a few weeks before Napoleon arrived there. Until 7 September, her party stayed in Saint Petersburg. According to John Quincy Adams, the American ambassador in Russia, her sentiments appeared to be as much the result of personal resentment against Bonaparte as of her general views of public affairs. She complained that he would not let her live in peace anywhere, merely because she had not praised him in her works. She met twice with the tsar Alexander I of Russia who "related to me also the lessons a la Machiavelli which Napoleon had thought proper to give him."


title: Germaine de Staël

text: For de Staël, that was a vulgar and vicious theory. General Kutuzov sent her letters from the Battle of Tarutino; before the end of that year he succeeded, aided by the extreme weather, in chasing the Grande Armée out of Russia.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: After four months of travel, de Staël arrived in Sweden. In Stockholm, she began writing her "Ten Years' Exile", detailing her travels and encounters. She did not finish the manuscript and after eight months, she set out for England, without August Schlegel, who meanwhile had been appointed secretary to the Crown Prince Carl Johan, formerly French Marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte (She supported Bernadotte as the new ruler of France, as she hoped he would introduce a constitutional monarchy). In London she received a great welcome. She met Lord Byron, William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, and Sir Humphry Davy, the chemist and inventor. According to Byron, "She preached English politics to the first of our English Whig politicians ... preached politics no less to our Tory politicians the day after." In March 1814 she invited Wilberforce for dinner and devoted the remaining years of her life to the fight for the abolition of the slave trade. Her stay was severely marred by the death of her son Albert, who as a member of the Swedish army had fallen in a duel with a Cossack officer in Doberan as a result of a gambling dispute. In October John Murray published "De l'Allemagne" both in French and English translation, in which she reflected on nationalism and suggested a re-consideration of cultural rather than natural boundaries. In May 1814, after Louis XVIII had been crowned (Bourbon Restoration) she returned to Paris. She wrote her "Considérations sur la révolution française", based on Part One of "Ten Years' Exile". Again her salon became a major attraction both for Parisians and foreigners.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: When news came of Napoleon's landing on the Côte d'Azur, between Cannes and Antibes, early in March 1815, de Staël fled again to Coppet, and never forgave Constant for approving of Napoleon's return. Although she had no affection for the Bourbons she succeeded in obtaining restitution for the huge loan Necker had made to the French state in 1778 before the Revolution (see above). In October, after the Battle of Waterloo, she set out for Italy, not only for the sake of her own health but for that of her second husband, de Rocca, who was suffering from tuberculosis. In May her 19-year-old daughter Albertine married Victor, 3rd duc de Broglie in Livorno.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: The whole family returned to Coppet in June. Lord Byron, at that time in debt, left London in great trouble and frequently visited de Staël during July and August. For Byron, she was Europe's greatest living writer, but "with her pen behind her ears and her mouth full of ink". "Byron was particularly critical of de Staël's self-dramatizing tendencies". Byron was a supporter of Napoleon, but for de Staël Bonaparte "was not only a talented man but also one who represented a whole pernicious system of power", a system that "ought to be examined as a great political problem relevant to many generations." "Napoleon imposed standards of homogeneity on Europe that is, French taste in literature, art and the legal systems, all of which de Staël saw as inimical to her cosmopolitan point of view." Byron wrote she was "sometimes right and often wrong about Italy and England – but almost always true in delineating the heart, which is of but one nation of no country, or rather, of all."


title: Germaine de Staël

text: Despite her increasingly ill health, de Staël returned to Paris for the winter of 1816–17, living at 40, rue des Mathurins. Constant argued with de Staël, who had asked him to pay off his debts to her. A warm friendship sprang up between de Staël and the Duke of Wellington, whom she had first met in 1814, and she used her influence with him to have the size of the Army of Occupation greatly reduced.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: De Staël became confined to her house, paralyzed since 21 February 1817 following a stroke. She died on 14 July 1817. Her deathbed conversion to Roman Catholicism, after reading Thomas à Kempis, was reported but is subject to some debate. Wellington remarked that, while he knew that she was greatly afraid of death, he had thought her incapable of believing in the afterlife. Wellington makes no mention of de Stael reading Thomas à Kempis in the quote found in Elizabeth Longford's biography of the Iron Duke. Furthermore, he reports hearsay, which may explain why two modern biographies of de Staël – Herold and Fairweather – discount the conversion entirely. Herold states that "her last deed in life was to reaffirm in her "Considerations, her faith in Enlightenment, freedom, and progress." Fairweather makes no mention of the conversion at all. Rocca survived her by little more than six months.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: Besides two daughters, Gustava Sofia Magdalena (born July 1787) and Gustava Hedvig (born August 1789), both died in infancy, de Staël had two sons, Ludwig August (1790–1827), Albert (1792–1813), and a daughter, Albertine, baroness Staël von Holstein (1797–1838). It is believed Louis, Comte de Narbonne-Lara was the father of Ludvig August and Albert, and Benjamin Constant the father of red-haired Albertine. With Albert de Rocca, de Staël then aged 46, had one son, the disabled Louis-Alphonse de Rocca (1812–1842), who married Marie-Louise-Antoinette de Rambuteau, daughter of Claude-Philibert Barthelot de Rambuteau, and granddaughter of De Narbonne. Even as she gave birth, there were fifteen people in her bedroom.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: After the death of de Staël's husband, Mathieu de Montmorency became the legal guardian of her children. Like August Schlegel he was one of her intimates until the end of her life.


title: Germaine de Staël

text: Albertine Necker de Saussure, married to de Staël's cousin, wrote her biography in 1821, published as part of the collected works. Auguste Comte included Mme de Staël in his 1849 "Calendar of Great Men". Her political legacy has been generally identified with a stout defence of "liberal" values: equality, individual freedom, and the limitation of state power by constitutional rules. "Yet although she insisted to the Duke of Wellington that she needed politics in order to live, her attitude towards the propriety of female political engagement varied: at times she declared that women should simply be the guardians of domestic space for the opposite sex, while at others, that denying women access to the public sphere of activism and engagement was an abuse of human rights. This paradox partly explains the persona of the “homme-femme” she presented in society, and it remained unresolved throughout her life."