Walter Knox was a feminist, but don't tell him that.  In his heyday women didn't partake in sport, it was a man's world, the natural order.   But by the time he started coaching in 1921 he just couldn't understand why the schoolgirls shouldn't have the same sporting opportunities as the boys.  And not only that, he went out and did something about it!

A newly published book, Playing It Forward:  50 Years of Women and Sport in Canada, provides fascinating insight into the erratically evolving views of a women's place in sport.  It also gives some context for Walter Knox's role in getting the schoolgirls and Olympic women's team established in the Canada.

A chapter by Bruce Kidd was enlightening.  Kidd describes the "first wave of feminism" in Canada, the inter-war years, 1920-39.  When the established sports bodies (Olympic committees, track and field organizations, etc) refused to include women, the women organized their own sporting body in 1921 (the Federation Sportif Feminism Internationale) and set up their own world championships.  Only four years later there was a Women's Amateur Athletics Federation in Canada and in 1928 even the stuffily traditional International Olympic Committee invited women into the Olympics.  It was a remarkably fast evolution.  It was known as, "the Golden Age of Women's sport".

Walter Knox was a big part of that movement.  Starting in 1921, he was setting up his tour of coaching clinics at Ontario public schools: promoting athletics and physical education, training teachers as coaches and lobbying to get physical education included in the curriculum.  His goal was "to develop the schoolboy" as a way to "get better material" for the Olympic team.  It was a massive grassroots identification program.

But after his first year, and only a few months after the French women had formed their FSFI organization, Walter insisted the schoolgirls had to be included in his coaching clinics along with the boys.  That first year the boys, with great anticipation, got the day off class to attend Walter's program while the girls, with decidedly less excitement, stayed in class and likely got some special instruction in home economics or some other "feminine" subject.  

Understand, in 1922 there were not yet any competitions for girls, there was no reason to include the girls, there was no societal pressure for inclusiveness or equality between the sexes, a woman's place was still in the home.  But Walter was adamant they should be included, this was a program about health.  Starting in the spring of 1922 the schoolgirls joined the boys in the gym to watch Walter's training films of Olympic athletes and then raced out to the field with the boys for some personal instruction from the great Olympic coach.

Coaches and medical experts all warned of the girls damaging their reproductive organs, of them becoming "manly".  Walter very publicly disagreed.  Quoted in the newspaper, Walter once commented, "Some people claim that such strenuous athletics unfit a girl for married life and motherhood.  That is not borne out by facts."

In 1922, before there was any Canadian women's sport organization, Walter held his own track meet for the women in Toronto and selected four to enter one of the first big women's track meets in Philadelphia.  Later he coached two of the "Matchless Six" women who dominated the first Olympic women's track meet in 1928, and consulted as a coach with three of the others.  He spent the rest of his coaching career focussing as much on the women as men.

Women in Canadian sport owe a lot to Walter Knox.

But the Golden Age did not last.  In Playing It Forward, Ann Hall and others describe their experiences in discrimination against women in sport in the 1950's and 60's. They were decidedly second class citizens, relegated to inferior facilities and equipment, given far less opportunity to succeed as athletes, limited in the events offered to them at competitions, all in the name of protecting their delicate female bodies.

The second wave of feminism grew out of the revolt in society in the 1960's against the entrenched conservative worldview: anti-communism, anti-civil rights, anti-equality for women.  The status quo for men as the lords of society was just fine, it seemed, at least to the men in power.

Hall describes the struggle that took a determined political and organizational campaign over 40 years to attain a semblance of equality.  Sure girls and women could do sports, but it was really all about the boys, the true athletes, and that's how the money and facilities were allotted.  

I was a high level athlete through the 70's and 80's and was blissfully unaware of the subtle discriminations the girls had to accept.  In my high school there was a big gym for the boys and the small gym for the girls.  The boys had more and better basketballs, volleyballs and so on.  Sure they girls got opportunities to play, but it wasn't always as good an opportunity, and we boys were blind to that fact.  I bet the girls weren't.

Bruce Kidd described his epiphany when, after a long, cold, wet run, he and the boys hit the hot showers, the best part of the workout.  When he discovered the girls in the group had no shower facilities and had to walk home, cold wet and stiff, he was surprised and began listening to the feminist arguments.  He became an outspoken advocate for the women.

After retirement from her academic career, the remarkable Ann Hall devoted herself to writing the definitive history of woman's sport in Canada:  The Girl and the Game: A History of Women's Sport in Canada, a remarkable book I read in researching Walter Knox's story.  She talks about Walter's contributions, one of the relatively few men she talks about.

Walter, in many ways, was a conservative, no-nonsense, self-centred capitalist.  But he was a realist and pragmatist too, and ideological, traditional thought held no value to him when it was weighed against real world observation and experience.  

Should women be able to partake in sport?  Of course they should!  It develops strong, healthy and able people - in both sexes.  Walter could then trot out example after example of fit, athletic women who had healthy babies, and women, like Rosa Grosse, who returned to athletics successfully after having a baby.  Of course they should be included in sport.

Walter was a feminist.  He could even be described as a leader in the first wave of feminism after 1920.  But don't tell him so, it might ruin his reputation as a man's man.      

1881 and 1980 were two years that vested interests made decisions that changed sport in Canada. 

By the 1880's there were two very clear camps in the Canadian sports world:  the traditional rural sports ethic of matched races, gambling and tavern sports, and the amateur ethic of sportsmanship, civil competition and eradication of anything to do with money.  You could be a part-time, come-as-you-are amateur dabbling in sport or a down-and-dirty pro, out to make as much money as you could.  There was no middle ground.

Like so many political movements today, the driving force behind this dichotomy was not clearly evident.

The "elites" of society, the wealthy industrialists, professionals, landowners and politicians, using the support of the churches and many fraternal organizations like the YMCA, pushed the amateur ethic on Canadian society.  A society that, for the most part, liked the excitement of a big money match and the gambling opportunity it created.   

They really did impose it too.  In creating Amateur Athletic Associations the elites took control of the playing fields and facilities, set and standardized the rules of sports, organized the best competitions and leagues and started keeping records for the first time, but only for their competitions, drawing the best athletes to them.  To partake in their sports world an athlete had to be vetted by a local AAA to get an amateur card.  Without that card an athlete was banned for life.

Anyone playing for money was left out - they couldn't use the public sports fields, couldn't set records, couldn't enter the well organized track meets.

What interests me is why all this came about.  Was playing sport for money really that evil?  So evil the elites went to all that political trouble to wrest control of sport from the mobs of working men?   

The elites said it was all about "civilizing society", raising sport to noble values of fair play, civility and chivalry.  

But like many political movements, there was more to it, and it was self-serving.

The elites were the wealthy men who had vast economic interests.  They ran factories, they owned huge retail interests, they owned huge estates that hired many workers, they had investments in companies that drove the stock market.  Their vested interest was to keep the economy rolling so their business interests would keep growing.

What they saw in the traditional sports world of matched racing and tavern sports were two things:  gambling and drunkenness.   The sports spectacles drew thousands of spectators, all out for some excitement and recreation.  Naturally, that included tipping a few steins of beer, just as it does today.  Sounds like fun for the working man.

But the elites just saw their workforce, the men who had to show up the next day to run their factories, besotting themselves.  How many absentees would there be at work the next day? 

They also saw poverty, men who gambled and drank the food money away.  Impoverished households bred social problems, disinterested workers and unreliable workers.

In short, the elites saw the gambling sports spectacles as bad for business, well, big business anyway.  They didn't care how well the taverns did, only how well their factories did.

So, in the 1870's they saw a problem, and by the 1880's they devised a solution:  Get rid of the sports spectacles so there would be less drunkenness and poverty.  Their organization of Amateur Associations and their political man-handling of the traditional sports culture worked, but it took 30 years to fully succeed.  By 1910 the traditional sports were in serious decline, Walter Knox was the last of the great professional all-around champions in 1914.  After WWI the Amateur Associations were in complete control of what became known as the amateur sports.  

You can see this same political process at work today.  Scientists are almost unanimous that there is global warming and it has man-made origins.  However, there is a serious and vocal opposition to that belief, the so-called "climate deniers".  If you look carefully (and you don't have to look very hard), you can see the advertising campaigns that have been mounted by the biggest corporations in the history of the world, the fossil fuel giants, in support of the deniers.  What we don't see very easily is the back-room campaign they have also mounted to influence politicians and manipulate public discourse to their own ends.

The elites in 1880 saw a problem for their interests and mounted a difficult and belligerent campaign to defend their interests.  The "elites" do the same things today.

The amateur campaign to control sport lasted 100 years (see previous post "the End of Amateurism in Canada").  After 1980 the elites changed their minds.  The spectacles like the Olympics didn't seem to be affecting their workforces any more. They saw their interests were better served by jumping on the money-making bandwagon that is sport.  Letting the athletes make some money, and creating sports icons like Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt only created more opportunities for big corporations to cash in too.  The media giants began covering the Olympic sports differently, it became more about heroes and superstars than the ideals of amateurism (go watch an Olympic broadcast from the 1960's and compare to coverage today to see what I mean).  

In the end, it's just business as usual.  But think of the effect their decisions made on four generations of athletes, Walter Knox being a prime example...

In 1912 Walter Knox, the great professional track and field star, was selected to be Canada's Olympic Head Coach.  In that age of over-the-top amateurism, it was a curious choice.  

The Canadian Olympic committee held their athletes to the very highest standards of amateurism in the world, to the point where they were encouraged to see athletics as a "hobby" to be done in one's spare time while preparing for a "real" career.  To bring in a dreaded professional, someone who had succumbed to the corrupting influence of money, had to have been a difficult decision.

Five strong candidates applied for the job.  Three experienced coaches in Dr. Barton of U of T, Professor Williams, who had coached Canadian athletes overseas already and Tom Flanagan, a busy track promoter and coach in Toronto, had applied for the job, as well as a high profile athlete and fledgling coach in Bobby Kerr, Olympic gold medallist in the 200 at the London Olympics.  Any one of them would have been a reasonable pick.

But the committee chose Walter Knox.  Walter had been declared a professional in 1907 two days after winning five events at the Canadian Track and Field championships.  It seems coaching a college team for four months was serious enough to have your amateur card rescinded for life.  They didn't even know about his five years of hustling and con games out in the wild west that would have really ruined his amateur credentials.

The committee surely were aware of the rumours that Knox was a professional sports hustler, the skuttlebutt around the athletics world was full of them.  But no proof was ever presented to officials so they used his coaching as a reason to oust him from the pure amateur ranks.

So why was Knox their choice five years later?  

Simply put, he knew more about technique and the science of sport than the other four combined.  Those four, and all the other amateurs, were a part of the culture that sport is something that you just went out and did.  Practice and the study of sport was time wasted from moving on with your life and career.  In many respects athletics was a come-as-you-are party with the minimum of preparation.

Not so for Knox and the professionals.  His livelihood depended on his ability to win races.  He had learned that fitness and practice were vital to survival.  Knox trained every day, he honed his technique, he studied the technical advances other athletes made, he was a student of sport.  As a youth Walter had retrieved shot puts for the great George Gray, world champion shot putter for an amazing 17 years.  Gray was the first shot putter to rely on technique rather than brawn, and freely shared his learnings with anyone interested.  Walter was a good student.  He applied Gray's analytical approach to every event and mastered them all.

So when the Olympic committee was choosing a head coach they decided to go with skill and knowledge over experience and reputation.  It should have been a good choice.

The 1912 Olympics turned out to be a personnel fiasco for the Canadian team.  Knox tried to apply his professional work ethic to the amateurs, who revolted.  The team contained several very opinionated athletes so there were ample ring-leaders for the revolt.  The two managers were AWOL for the most part.  Most importantly, the team had a flashpoint in "Army" Howard, a very obstinate black sprinter who always seemed to be a source of commotion.  It was turmoil from start to finish.  

In spite of all the ruckus, the track team did manage to win five medals.  Walter had them well prepared physically and  many of them were performing better than ever thanks to Walter's technical coaching.

With the appointment of Knox as Head Coach, the amateur athletic world was admitting their limitations as a sports culture.  The pros were smarter and better prepared, they knew.  But they didn't let that knowledge deter them from their ideological pursuit of pure amateurism though.  It would be decades before the "train every day" culture would be accepted into the amateur athletic world.     

To live the life Walter Knox did, he had to be a maverick.  Tough, shrewd, brazen and arrogant.  His life as a hustler is evidence of of that.

But even after writing his biography, I've just gained a new comprehension of what it took to be that maverick in a little book that I just finished reading.  It describes the lesser known side of his life, his life as a miner in northern Ontario.

Walter and his brother Jack were able to retire comfortably in their later years because they owned a gold mine.  Jack prospected for ten years with financial backing from Walter, before he staked that fortuitous claim in the North Shining Tree Lake district north of Sudbury, the place he found loose gold nuggets on the ground.

This little book, Free Gold, by Arnold Hoffman, written in 1947, describes the story of the mining boom between 1906 and 1945 across the two long faults bridging Ontario and Quebec that made fortunes for many men, but also wore many more out, leaving them broken and penniless. 

Walter and Jack's mine was at the far western fringe of that fault line.

What struck me was the hardship, both physically and emotionally, that the prospectors endured.  

Prospectors routinely trudged 15 miles a day on snowshoes in minus 40 degree weather, for days on end, carrying just enough food to survive.  One bad decision and you were done.  Most prospectors went in pairs or small groups for mutual support. Jack, though, was a loner, never mentioning a partner other than Walter, who was busy making money hustling runners to support him.  Jack earned the hard way every single thing he eventually enjoyed.

Jack would have agreed with Jack Munroe, one of the great success stories in the camps, when he said, "The world belongs to the energetic!"  

But the story really hit home with Walter's personality when it talked about what you did after you staked your rich claim.  That's where the hustler thrived.

When word got out that you struck it rich, the world came to you, offers to partner, schemes to snatch up neighbouring claims and the inevitable offers to buy your claim.  For many a poor miner the offer of $50,000 or $300,000 was irresistible.  As Hoffman says, "We took the cash... the people who came along later, when we had made things easy, they were the buzzards who made the big money".

It was all a gamble for these humble men.  Who knows what you were really sitting on.  It was going to take a big investment just to find out, an investment you couldn't cover.  Most prospectors had to take on investors, partners with money, just to get some cores drilled and assays done.  And there were con men and shysters everywhere knocking on your door.  The worst were the big money men out of the States, the financiers who knew how to make money. They were hesitant to dip their toes into this free-for-all, but when they did, they took over.

Hoffman describes the situation:  "The multiparity of camps, the 'wild' methods of finance, and the fierce independence of the Canadians seemed too much for the American companies, accustomed as they were to dominating their respective bailiwicks."

Walter and Jack were shrewd enough and tough enough to negotiate their path through these pitfalls.  They were the quintessential mavericks.  They took on no silent partners, they dug the ground themselves and learned the mining business as they went.  They dug 25 feet down into the granite rock with pickaxes and a crew of men, using the easy surface gold to finance their operation as they investigated what they actually owned.  The vein got thicker the deeper they went.

Again Hoffman speaks right to the situation the Knox brothers faced.  "It takes a silver mine to make a gold mine."  Silver was easy to scrape out of the ground, gold requires prolonged surface and underground development.  The Knox's may have owned a rich gold mine, but they couldn't afford to get the gold out of the ground. 

The Knox brothers invested 10 long years of their lives getting a handle on the value of their holdings.  All the while the seven neighbouring mines in this gold deposit constantly harassed them, badgering them to sell out or partner up to consolidate and benefit from the economies of scale. One big mine is more profitable than two little ones.

The boys took 10 years to make their move, and when they did they did it right.  They sold two thirds of their mine to a New York investment company who promptly made the capital infusion needed to exploit the deeper gold.  Walter and Jack by then knew the value of the mine.  They were in a strong bargaining position.  They were also smart enough to keep a third interest for themselves and had themselves named company executives.  

These were two men with sixth grade educations.  Their intelligence was more shrewd business sense than academic training.  After growing up in the rural horse-trading working man's world, they were now veterans of the gold fields and had seen where other greenhorns had ended up.  It must have taken some fortitude to see their project through to the end, to grind through 10 years of hardship with huge financial offers dangling in front of them.

Walter Knox was a fascinating man, a man who was hard to get to know.  This little book I read gave me a rare insight into his maverick world, a world he thrived in.

I found my copy at a used book store in Toronto.  

Arnold Hoffman, 1947.  Free Gold.  Rinehart Press, Toronto.