Sports in Canada Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. 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. 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
James Naismith (chemist) James Naismith (chemist) James Henderson Naismith (born 26 July 1968) is Professor of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford, Director of the Research Complex at Harwell and co-interim academic lead of the Rosalind Franklin Institute. He was formerly Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of St Andrews until May 2017. Naismith was educated at Hamilton Grammar School. He went on to study at the University of Edinburgh where he was awarded a first class Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry in 1989. He won a Carnegie Scholarship to work under the supervision of Bill Hunter, John