Imagine that Kelowna supports a National Hockey League team and its new downtown arena, with 22,000 seats, hosts the Okanagan Ogopogos. The Monsters Hall of Fame, inside the arena, draws hockey fans from all over North America and every seat is sold for every game. In front of the arena bronze statues honour team founders and great players of the past. Local restaurants sport names of famous players such as Todd’s Trattoria, Matt’s Montreal Meats and Luke’s Luncheon. On game days all Peninsula hotel rooms are booked and tickets are so hard to get that season seats are passed from parents to children in wills.

A fantasy? How could a town with a bit more than a hundred thousand residents support a multi-million dollar franchise: a franchise that has abandoned cities like Winnipeg and Quebec City?

In Green Bay, Wisconsin, a city with close to the same number of inhabitants as Kelowna, the dream is reality. And it’s an unlikely dream because their franchise in the National Football League is considerably more valuable than one in the NHL, and their Packers football team needs to sell three times as many seats in a big stadium as a hockey team.

As soon as I drove into Green Bay the football madness becomes obvious. The team is immortalized in a major street called Packerland and another avenue is called Lombardi, after coach Vince, so I’m told. Signs supporting the community-owned team are everywhere, including such sarcastic epigrams as “Bret didn’t like sushi anyway,” in front of a Japanese restaurant. Bret is the quarterback who headed for New York, (so I’m told). Hey, I love the Canadian Football League. Season tickets in Lambeau stadium have sold out for the past 60 years and if you find a seat for a game it may cost upwards of $150.

The city, located where the Fox River meets Green Bay, a basin on Lake Michigan, would not be a tourist draw were it not for football. To my eyes the river is murky, industrial sprawl is uncontained and many buildings both downtown and in the surrounding area sit empty and plywood clad. A railway museum and botanical gardens are first rate visitor attractions, but mention the name Green Bay and the conversation is not likely to turn to steam trains or flowers the size of your face.

The stadium, with a breezy atrium of shops and eateries plus the Hall of Fame, is a genuine gem in a Wal-Mart community of costume jewellery. The new retro-look is somewhat authentic as the original seating bowl was preserved in a 2003 facelift.

Green Bay’s advantage in maintaining its NFL team is the surrounding population where urbanization stretches to Milwaukee, a larger city without a team. Another advantage is that the team was founded in 1919 when the concept of buying and selling the right to play did not exist. If you wanted a franchise you just put together a team, started playing with other teams and you had a league. Had there been a Kelowna challenge for the Stanley Cup a century back we might now be cheering for the Kelowna Kanucks.