Is This Heaven? No, It’s Vancouver.

Vancouver’s team, then known as the Mounties, began playing in the 1950s at a newly built, concrete-based stadium near downtown that decades later came to be known as Nat Bailey, or, to locals, “the Nat.”

When the Mounties moved to Salt Lake City for the 1970 season, baseball went fallow in Vancouver for eight years, when the Canadians were born.

But by 2000, the big leagues began a full-tilt retrenchment from Canada. (A smattering of independent teams still play there.)

“The majors became less inclined to want their players playing in that cold,” said Jon Stott, a retired English professor at the University of Alberta who has written extensively about professional baseball in his home country. Stott recalled going to Edmonton Trappers games in the 1990s when the temperature seemed to hover near freezing. “But more than that, rich Americans were willing to come in and move our teams and build luxury stadiums in the United States for them.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/sports/baseball/vancouver-canadians-minor-league.html