Would you like to look forward to Mondays?

The Toronto Pinball League was started back in 1996 by Eugene Gershtein.  Eugene at the time was attending shows in the US and enjoying the hobby at home but wanted something more.  After hearing about the BAPA and thinking it would be great to have a league in Toronto he started to form up the basis for the league.

A few weeks after returning from the inaugural Pinball Fantasy show in Vegas during July of 1996, Eugene met Sarah Brown at a local arcade.  Sarah shared the same passion for pinball that Eugene did and the topic of a Pinball League in Toronto came up.  With now 4 people it seemed like a good base in which to start a league.  The first season ran 17 weeks which saw attendance of only fourteen people over the seventeen weeks with really only a core of about five to six people showing up week after week.  Eugene moved to California and ironically now helps run the BAPA and Sarah has since opened up her own family fun center called ‘In Play’ in a town north of Toronto.

Since that first season back in 1996, the Toronto Pinball League has grown and changed quite a bit to its current state.  The league has established its leadership into three parts:  President, Treasurer, and Scorekeeper.  We now see an average of more than thirty five people a night on any given Monday and we run 3 thirteen week seasons each year.  The regular season is culminated in a special event with food and drink on the 14th week – The Playoffs!  Eligible members can vie for the ToPL Playoffs Champion trophy!

We’ve managed to organize a great group of women and men that come from all different walks of life and all different skill levels from the highly competitive to the casual player, all with one common interest: a passion for pinball.  We even make a point of trying to organize groups of us to attend shows down in the US and participate in tournaments all around North America.

TOPL has become the heart of the pinball community in Toronto.  As a league we’ve helped organize local shows such as the Toronto Gameroom show, helped run tournaments such as the Canadian Pinball Championship and Toronto Pinball Championship.

If you ever find yourself in the Toronto, Ontario area on a Monday and need your pinball fix, the league will be playing somewhere and you are more than welcome to join in the fun!