I've only just begun to watch the sport - but it appears there are an enormous number of people who participate -even at the elite level.
There are many tournaments and the tournaments span at least a week - usually ten days. Canada is currently hosting the Women's Worlds in St. John, NB, and the overage has been pretty good, up till today, when I can't find Canada vs. Korea. I'm sure it will turn up, but not live. Each team plays 9 or 10 times before the semi finals - for which there may be tie breaking games.
The competition is Canada is fierce in both men and women. Since we've had quite a few World and Olympic Champions, it's very popular indeed, and since so many people play for recreation, there's a big fan base.
A lot of Scots settled this country in the early days, and Scottish place names abound, so the game is well established here. We're beating the pants off Scotland in recent tournaments.
So that we are entirely diverted from the title of this thread, Patrick was working on his new programme at a rink in the north of Toronto, actually Vaughan, this morning... according to a tweet from someone at the rink.