CFL this week

Ham @ Sask
Attendance: 33,050
% Capacity 99.1

Tor @ Ott
Attendance: 24,347
% Capacity 98.7

Cal @ Wpg
Attendance: 30,165
% Capacity 91.3

BC @ Mtl
Attendance: 18,728
% Capacity 79.7

Financial break even point acknowledged to be 18,000 according to CFL super fan Sportsnet's Arash Madani.

When Toronto's novelty of not being the only Canadian city, especially to much smaller cities, to host events..sporting or otherwise (Argos, Junos, Vanier Cup), then Toronto usually abandons that team or that event in droves just because of losing lustre of what was once sacred to only Toronto is now in other Canadian cities that get that event/sport as well.
The single exception is hockey but hockey is ingrained at a young age in Canada & Toronto & it's no exception in Canada, outside of Saskatchewan, that it remains the most popular sport.

The two recent World Juniors hosted by Toronto and Montreal disagree.

well, I think the last World Juniors hosted back to back with Montreal and Toronto again was just too much for the size of the market to bare, Hockey Canada should have waited a decade before having it back in those cities again,
ie. Saskatoon in the 1990s and again in 2010

Huh? It will be news to a lot of people (incl. in the 416) that Toronto doesn't lay claim to being Canada's centre of the universe. (Even if the exact term is not actually used.)

Well, then this is where it gets confusing. If the city isn't "shackled" by Canadiana, and instead is known for having representation from all of the cultures of the world, if all of these representations are mostly subpar pastiches... then what's the city's claim to fame?

Uhh, Montreal does fine hosting international sporting events I'd say.

What's the attendance for F1 Grand Prix weekend? 300,000?

Rogers Cup tennis attendance in Montreal is consistently higher than in Toronto and the stadiums are about the same size.

The Montreal Impact holds the top of couple of rungs for record soccer attendance in Canada.

Yes, Montreal won't draw well for a random women's NT soccer friendly against North Korea, but those game don't draw flies in Toronto either. The only place they same to draw well is Edmonton.

Have I ever mentioned that I think Edmonton is the best sports city in the country?

The most interesting thing about Montreal's consistent support of these two events is that they're annual international events where there is very limited, if any, Canadian representation in the field. People give Toronto a hard time for not backing Canadian events but Montreal will support international events when they won't come out in similar numbers for Canadian events. I'd almost say that Montreal has more of a fetish for globalized events than Toronto.

I don't know...the women's friendly in Winnipeg in June had double the people turn out than the men's friendly in Montreal the same week. Toronto had triple Montreal. :shrug:

Montreal has routinely drawn lower than expectations for a number of FIFA events in Canada. Outside of the 2007 U20s where attendance was quite good they were later outdrawn by Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Vancouver (and nearly Ottawa) in the 2014 U20s and 2015 Women's World Cup. It's become pretty obvious that the hierarchy for hosting in Canada, at least in the eyes of CSA, is something like Toronto = Vancouver > Edmonton. If it's a sole friendly event featuring a Canadian National Team Montreal is likely further down the list below a few others.

There are other things you fail to consider but that enter into it. There is a long-standing malaise in Quebec with respect to the Canadian sports system (worse in some sports than others, but often it touches the national team sports) with a perception that there is an ingrained hostility to athletes from Quebec and francophones. Rightly or wrongly (and true or not) this affects interest in and support for these teams here. There may be a few more now but historically there were hardly any members from Quebec (sometimes none) on the national teams in rugby, soccer, and some other sports.

very reminiscent of NHL following in Saskatchewan being lower than every other province in Canada.

.with NMS in Regina hosting La Liga's Valencia vs New York Cosmos in a couple weeks Montreal may fall even further down the Canadian list for soccer.

I agree,
..with Edmonton being the only city in Canada to have a large enough & suitable track & field stadium plus all the other major events for sports used for World University Games & World Track & Field Championships etc. Edmonton is poised to be number 1 city for being next to host a Summer Olympics in Canada if it bids.

as far as bids for sports, Regina seems to be the epicentre for sports in Canada next year in 2018 with the Brier, Memorial Cup, the Skate Canada International this Fall (in highly sought after Winter Olympic season) ..and..
..Plus a World Ladies LPGA golf tournament next year.

http://www.lpga.com/news/2017-wascan...cp-womens-open

not to be left out, Saskatoon held its annual International Houghton-Boston Tennis Classic this last week. Couple years ago, Denis Shapovalov played in the tournament & while the then 16-year-old didn’t win, he did get his first qualifying point in Saskatchewan, which made his Boy’s Singles Final win last year at Wimbledon special for Riverside Tennis club in S'toon.

https://www.saskatoonriverside.com/h...ennis-classic/

Saskatoon also bid for and is hosting Canada's first FIBA 3x3 World Tour stop this next week & showcasing Canada's best 3x3 basketball team from the Paris-of-the-Prairies :tup:

http://globalnews.ca/news/3222259/fi...-to-saskatoon/

Uhh... that's not really where I was going with that.

SK still produces more NHLers per capita than any other province, I am pretty sure.

Well, the Université de Montréal Carabins sell out their stadium with 5,000 fans most every game, and they play in the all-Quebec CIS-RSEQ. They also get excellent media coverage with games televised live and broadcast on the radio, highlights on all of the francophone national TV sportscasts...

How many fans go to Varsity Blues football games? A few hundred?

On another front, we're in the middle of summer blockbuster season and two of the top 10 movies in Montreal and Quebec are home-grown, including the one that's currently in first place. One is Bon Cop Bad Cop and the other is a movie that no one outside Quebec has ever heard of, nor will they ever hear of it.

But sure, Montreal does like international events a lot. But that's not all they're interested in. Homegrown stuff is still very popular. Even if Rita MacNeil and Team Gushue and the Tragically Hip don't count as "local". Plenty of other stuff does.

Something in-between? Like most larger cities these days? Not much for a 'brand' I suppose, but as you said, most people are coming for the 'big city' aspect of it.

London is hardly the 'classic British' city today than it was in the past. New York City isn't the hardscrabble gateway to America that it was prior. More like a gateway for rich immigrants. You don't go to New York to find a slice of Middle America.

My original post related to Toronto being a Canadian city. I still think it is one, with the power of 'internationalization' changing it.

That seems very judgemental and condescending wrt the immigrant experience. I'm not sure where you're going with it. I think it's well recognized that immigrant communities begin to diverge from the "old country" from the moment they arrive in Canada (just as did the old stock communities from France and the UK - are they also "subpar pastiches"?). That's probably less true in an age of easy air travel than it used to be, but it seems inevitable. That, however, in no way makes the "hypenated Canadian culture(s)" any less valid or worthy.

Culture is both a personal and collective thing. Sometimes a distinction needs to be made between the two.

I live in Quebec but am of Acadian and Franco-Ontarian origin with a not-insignificant anglo dimension to my persona, even if I am francophone.

This is me and it's as legitimate a way of being as any other. But that doesn't mean that the Québécois-Acadien-Franco-Ontarien-Gatinois-(anglo-familiar) culture exists out there in the broader context to any significant degree. Nor that it ever will.

Toronto is not devoid of Canadian cultural traits but by far the most striking one is related to what I might call "societal ethos". In that respect, it is most definitely Canadian. Other more traditional ("put-your-finger-on-it") types of cultural cues that tell you the city is part of a bigger thing called Canada are more discreet and in some cases even marginal.

I am pretty familiar with most of the world's megacities and Toronto is much further down this path that even London, New York City, Paris, etc. In all of these cases there is much more of a reciprocal cultural relationship between the metropolis and the heartland/hinterland. New Yorkers may not eat grits or have luaus but they sure as hell have heard of them and probably have some idea of what they are.

In a sense Toronto may be the closest thing there is to a "globalist capital city". Yes, American culture in Toronto takes up a lot of the space that would normally be occupied by domestic culture, but American culture is also a large part of the diet of globalists around the world regardless of nationality.

I'd hardly call the Leafs' coverage discreet. I'm sure most Canadians would agree with me on that point :P

I take your overall meaning though. It's probably a product of Toronto being a fairly new city in the grand scheme of things (no chance to really develop its own history prior to globalization) and the fact that English Canadian culture is very similar to American culture, so it gets somewhat lost in the din.

Didn't Edmonton rip up the track at Commonwealth?

Point taken about the Leafs, though you could almost cal them an exceptional case: they play the most Canadian of sports, but in the "best league in the world" of that particular sport. It's fully consistent with the type of conceit we're talking about.