The Go Player's Guide

The Go Player's Guide to Canada: Toronto
February 24, 2003
by Chris Garlock

Spread out over a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific
oceans and all the way north to the Arctic Circle, Canadian go players are a
rare but hardy breed. Found in places as far-flung as Saskatoon, Canadian go players are primarily concentrated in the major cities of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. The later two cities, thanks to substantial asian populations, support both Korean and Western go clubs.

Although undoubtedly played in the country for many years, organized go in Canada has a relatively brief history. The Canadian Go Association was
founded in the mid 1970's and though there may be as many as 10,000 actual go players across the country, CGA membership has hovered around 200, as the organization has focused more on education and event organizing than membership-building, according to CGA President Philip Waldron, a young 5-dan familiar to many U.S. Go Congress attendees as a regular representative of his homeland at the Ing Cup and other major competitions.

"Toronto has by far the largest concentration of players," Waldron told me
during a brief visit to Toronto last weekend. "There's a Chinese club, two
or three Korean clubs and a couple of clubs run by westerners." The CGA
webpage, http://www.go-canada.org/ has contact and location information on these and all Canadian clubs, as well as information on the Canadian go
scene.

The Church Street go club, where Saturday's tournament was held, has been meeting in the same location "going on fifteen years now," says Waldron, who first learned the game in high school thanks to the legendary outreach efforts of Toronto go organizer Pat Thompson, who brought the game to hundreds of school-children. When I lived in Upstate New York, I used to drive up to Toronto regularly for visits to the Church Street club, as well as a smoky Korean club off of the famed Yonge Street that Waldron assures me still exists, though exhaustion and ragged throat precluded a visit there last weekend.

Toronto regularly hosts the Canadian Open, traditionally held on Labor (or,
as the Canadians call it, Labour) Day weekend and the Toronto Open has been held, off and on, for many years, almost always at the University of Toronto' s famed Hart House, an impressive and imposing Victorian-era oak-paneled pile of ivied granite that makes a cameo appearance in "Searching for Bobby Fischer."

Canadian go is known for a unique over-time system in which increasing
numbers of stones are added for each period ( i.e. 20 in the first 5
minutes, 30 in the next, 40 in the next and so on); this ensures timely
tournaments, though not nearly as well as last Saturday's "sudden death"
rule, which wrapped up the tournament a full hour earlier than the scheduled 5 p.m. close.

Back to Columns