The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Real axe-tion in Toronto
Friendly, weapon-hurling activity the highlight of sports-themed visit to city
With one foot far back, you lean forward, over your other foot planted a step or two in front of you. With two hands gripping the wooden handle, you lean back, bringing the somewhat-weighty object behind your head. Finally, in one fluid motion, you use the top half of your body to hurl the axe toward the three-ringed target. Clang. Thud. The sounds of failure, again and again, as you first try to stick the sharp part of the axe into the wood.
Fret not. With the help of some some helpful instruction (which may come with some gentle teasing) from the guys at B.A.T.L., you eventually will be sticking your throws, if not often hitting the bullseye.
The Toronto company is part of the growing trend — and to hear them tell it, they started it — of competitive axe throwing. B.A.T.L. stands for Backyard Axe Throwing League, and, as the name suggests, it grew out of a game for playing behind the house. It was the brainchild of CEO Matt Wilson more than a decade ago.
B.A.T.L., which has a few locations, treated a group of journalists to the experience in a converted warehouse in Toronto’s Portlands, just a stone’s throw from the city’s trendy Distillery District.
After some tips and what seemed like practice rounds, a B.A.T.L. instructor, armed with an iPad, put the writers through a round-robin tournament. The seeding of the tourney, it turned out, he’d determined by the earlier throwing.
With the etiquette and procedure down pat — you tap axe heads at the beginning of a round and you learn not to retrieve your axe until the person next to you has thrown, which certainly makes sense — the writers hurled and hurled, many of the axes colliding unimpressively with the targets before falling lifelessly to the floor.
As time marched on, everyone became at least a bit better. However, just when you thought you had your form down and were becoming a consistent thrower, you easily could be humbled by a series of atrocious attempts. So frustrating! Ultimately, some participants were better than others — and, sorry gals, this broke down largely along gender lines — and a writer from Liverpool, England, cruised to victory in the tourney. (The gent denied he’d enjoyed any previous experience hurling axes, but good-natured suspicions permeated the extremely fun affair. For now, the matter is considered closed.)
Lots of other cities have jumped on this idea — Cleveland Axe Throwing (ClevelandAxeThrowing.com), for example, is based in Valley View and is connected to similar operations in Columbus, Cincinnati and Dallas — but, to hear the guys at B.A.T.L. tell it, this all started in Toronto.
“Every other axe-throwing company in the world is because of us,” says Wes Thomas, manager of the operation at 33 Villiers St.
If you want to experience B.A.T.L., which has hundreds of affiliated league players, make your plans well in advance, as there is a waiting list.
As Wilson says in a short film made a few years ago about B.A.T.L., “Everybody wants to throw an axe — they just don’t know it yet.”
Axe throwing is just one potential element to a sports-themed visit to Canada’s most-populous city and, at 2.7 million folks, the fourth-most-populated in North America. The metropolis in the province of Ontario is but a very-brief flight — less than a fivehour drive — away from Cleveland.
The biggest game in town
is, without question, the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League. As do the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association, the Leafs play at the Air Canada Centre downtown.
If you want to see the Leafs skate, be prepared to buy a ticket on the secondary market, likely for several dollars, be they Canadian or American. You hear locals talk about waiting lists for tickets and make statements such as, “This is the Leafs’ town.”
Regardless of whether you can get a Leafs ticket, if you’re a hockey fan, the Hockey Hall of Fame has to be a must-visit. In its current home in Brookfield Place on Yonge Street since 1993, the attraction steadily has been expanded and improved upon since then.
There, of course, is a ton of hockey history to be absorbed in the form of memorabilia and informational displays, along with modern touches such as high-tech stations where guests can try to defend the hockey net or take a slapshot against a mechanical opponent or try simulated hockey broadcasting.
If, however, you are determined to experience live sports at the Air Canada Centre, you’d probably more easily get inside the arena to see the Raptors, who during a visit to the city in early May
were in the process of being swept in the second round of the playoffs by the Cleveland Cavaliers. (That fact, and the unseasonably cool weather — it was even colder than it was in Cleveland — didn’t seem to dampen the mood of the friendly Torontonians too much.)
While they’re not likely to be the biggest sports show in town anytime soon — and Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays are probably second — Canada’s lone NBA team has gained momentum in recent years. While the Raps recent competitiveness has helped, folks also have bought into an ad campaign based on the slogan “We the North,” a rallying cry that can be spotted on signs and flags in the area surrounding the arena.
As you may have seen watching a televised game taking place at the Air Canada Centre, fans gather outside the venue in an area closed off during sporting events to watch the action taking place inside on Canada’s largest outdoor screen, at 30 by 50 feet. For Raps games, this area has become affectionately known as “Jurassic Park.”
A bit older in the tooth but still worth a visit is the Rogers Centre — formerly the SkyDome, a much more popular moniker than the current one stemming from its purchase by Canadian telecom giant Rogers Communications — to see the Blue Jays play. During this trip, they happened to be starting a series with the Cleveland Indians, bringing Jays-turned-Tribe slugger Edwin Encarnacion back to Toronto for the first time since leaving as a free agent in the offseason.
The Jays were victorious this night, in front of a fairly crowded house. Had the weather been warmer, the 28-year-old stadium’s retractable roof would have been opened. It’s a bummer to see baseball played indoors, but, admittedly, it was nice to be warm and enjoy a couple of cold beers.
If you want to experience a spectator sport a bit off the beaten path, consider a Toronto Wolfpack game. The newly formed Wolfpack is Canada’s first professional rugby team, and the squad’s first home match happened during this visit at relatively small Lamport Stadium before a reasonably big and enthusiastic game, given the cold, damp weather that afternoon.
An American with little familiarity with rugby will notice some similarities with American football — and wonder how the players, wearing a jersey, shorts, socks and shoes but seemingly only little in the way of protection, aren’t seriously injured on every play.
You didn’t have to understand the rules — or even know that the rough equivalent of a touchdown in rugby is called a “try” — to understand the Wolfpack was decimating the clearly inferior Oxford RLFC. (The final tally was 62-12.)
If you’d like to get back to taking part in a little friendly competition — and aren’t looking for a rugby injury — here’s one more tip:
TRAVELERS’ CHECKS
Toronto is a short flight from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Expect to spend more time once you arrive at the massive Toronto Pearson International Airport, where you’ll have to go through customs. One option to get downtown from the airport is a comfortable, roughly 25-minute train ride aboard the Union Pearson Express, which departs from the airport every 15 minutes and ends at Union Station, a short walk to the sports arenas and hotels. Learn more at upexpress.com. American visitors are enjoying an exchange in their favors In mid-June, a U.S. dollar equated to $1.32 Canadian. Start planning a trip with help from Tourism Toronto at 416203-2600 or seetorontonow.com.
BATL Axe Throwing: batlgrounds.com.
The Air Canada Centre:
40 Bay St., 416-815-5500, Torontotheaircanadacentre.com.
Toronto Maple Leafs: www.nhl.com/mapleleafs. visit Track & Field Bar. The neighborhood tavern is dark, dank and brimming with no-frills, old-school charm. Its cocktail list is interesting and playful. (Try The Old Kanye, which makes use of coffee-infused Campari. It’s delicious.)
More importantly, it offers space to play shuffleboard, bocce ball and what is apparently a real Canadian staple,
Hockey Hall of Fame: 30 Yonge St., Toronto, 416-3607765, hhof.com.
Toronto Raptors: nba.com/raptors.
Rogers Center: 1 Blue Jays Way, Toronto, 416-341-1000, m.mlb.com/bluejays/tickets/info/rogers-centre-events.
Track & Field Bar: 860 College St., Toronto, trackandfieldbar.com. For a convenient hotel especially close to the Air Canada Center and a 10-minute walk to the Rogers Centre, you may consider Le Germain Hotel Toronto Maple Leaf Square (legermainhotels.com/en/torontomls). It offers a few different room/suite options, ranging from fairly luxurious to quite luxurious. The modern traveler may appreciate touches such as the big work spaces in the rooms, the filtered water from a Quebec-based company available in the hall and fresh apples on the wall near the elevator. Obviously, this is no bargain choice, with the website stating rooms start at $289 Canadian.
Crokinole. A Canuck in the group took it upon himself to teach several writers how to play the odd-looking round board game. If you paid attention to matches only intermittently, it was tough to figure out the rules, but players were using their fingers to flick small discs toward a hole in the center.
It’s no axe throwing, but it seemed to have its appeal.