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Hockey and Beer
I was driving in the downtown core of Denver, snooping around for news photos, when I saw this billboard. Being a Canadian by birth, it naturally caught my eye. Of course, it is an advertising campaign that is part of the Molson-Coors merger, but still it was funny to see a large graphic of the two major Canadian symbols in downtown Denver. The most prominent recent Canadian invasion of Colorado was the arrival of the Colorado Avalanche in 1995. They were the old Quebec Nordiques who moved to Denver because Quebec City wasn’t large enough to support the team anymore. And strangely enough, they started winning Stanley Cups when they moved out West.
But Canadians have been coming to Colorado for centuries. The eastern part of Colorado was once part of New France and French fur trappers and explorers have been travelling out West since the 17th century, their traces left behind in names like the Cache La Poudre river near Fort Collins. Colorado became part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. According to historian Thomas Noel, Canadians made up a large part of the immigration wave to Denver in the 19th century. According to him, “most Canadians were of British, Scottish, Irish or French extraction. Colorado’s great mineral rushes and the booming city of Denver attracted many Canadians who might otherwise have settled the colder and poorer Canadian West.”
Ii was refreshing to read the info regarding the Canadian footprint in Colorado- it was definitely news to me! I don’t pretend to be a hockey expert, but the strange improvement in the Quebec Nordique in their move to Colorado seems a little bizarre- perhaps a little too much poutine?
Thanks for the beautiful shots in and around the privileged Denver district- I haven’t been there for years but it seems to be alive and well.
Hi Mary–
No doubt a little too much poutine! Smuggled in direct from Quebec!