Hockey Hall of Fame, Maple Leafs & Canadian Sports Culture

Ice hockey is to Canada what football is to the United States or cricket to England — the defining national sport and the sport most deeply embedded in Canadian cultural identity; Toronto, as the largest city in Canada and home of the Toronto Maple Leafs (one of the Original Six NHL franchises, founded 1917), is the centre of Canadian hockey culture, and the Hockey Hall of Fame (in the historic Bank of Montreal building in the Financial District) is the sport's most sacred shrine.