Have you ever dreamt of competing at the Olympics?  I just discovered (in a file at the museum) an unknown story of two unassuming Orillia fellahs who had that dream come true.

Canada's hockey team dominated the 1928 Olympic Games.  In 1932 it looked like they would dominate again in Lake Placid.  Two Orillia men, WC George and EE Webb, decided to head down there and cheer the team on.

Arriving two days before the hockey tournament was to start, the boys settled in to watch the curling tournament that was using the ice rink first, an Olympic demonstration sport.  Eight teams were entered, four from Canada and four from the States.  Each would play the four teams from the other country once and the team with the best record would be awarded the gold medal.

The first games, however, were late starting.  

Suddenly, an announcement came over the PA system asking any experienced Canadian curlers to make their way down to the offices.  With a quick glance at each other, our boys sprang out of their seats and scurried down.

It seems the Northern Ontario rink was a no-show.  Instead of re-working their format into a convoluted playoff system, the Olympic organizers thought it would just be easier to find another team to take that spot in the field.  Of course they'd lose all their games, but the bonspiel would carry on smoothly.  

Well, George and Webb and two other men were selected and escorted down to the change rooms.   They were given a set of generic sweaters and a corn broom and then lined up at the door to the rink with all the other teams.  Holy cow, they were about to join the march in of athletes at the Olympics!

Sure enough, just 15 minutes after leaving their seats the boys were on the ice getting ready to take on the New York State champions.  They barely knew their teammates' names.  George was even made the skip.

Orillia had one of the strongest curling clubs in Canada then.  They were to win the Ontario Tankard the next year (1933).  Neither Webb nor George was a member of that 10 man team, they were just run-of-the-mill curlers from Orillia.

Well, as expected, they got creamed 20-8.  

That evening they played again and the result was worse, Connecticut 18, Northern Ontario Substitutes 3.

But the curlers did get to know the ice and the rocks.  They got the feel of the strange brooms and loosened up throwing the rocks.  Most importantly they got to know their teammates and gained a little self-confidence.  They were determined to make a better showing in the morning.

The next game was against Massachusetts.  Wouldn't you know it, they won, beating the Americans 21-7!  

Later that day they won again, beating Michigan 19-11.

With no warning or preparation these strangers placed fifth out of eight teams at the Olympics with a 2-2 record.  The other Canadian teams took the three medals.

The next day, back in their seats in the crowd, they witnessed the thrilling double overtime hockey game between Canada and the States (Canada won 2-1).  Then their team cruised to the gold medal.

What a week the boys had had.

Now local lore has always said Orillia has only had one Olympian - Walter Henry the boxer at the 1964 and 68 Games.  Brian Orser, that same lore says, is really from Penetang, even though he trained here for eight years.

But now we know WC George and EE Webb were really Orillia's first Olympians, way back in 1932.  They had the participant's medals and the sweaters to prove it too!

As I mentioned in the last post, I've discovered a long-forgotten episode in Orillia's, and Canada's, sports history.  Next week, April 1st, 2015, my 40-page account of this fascinating event will be available at Manticore Books in Orillia, or at my office.

One hundred years ago the typical farmer never travelled 20 miles from his farm in his whole life.  In 1907, in contrast, the Orillia Terriers lacrosse team travelled all the way around the world, playing 25 lacrosse games along the way.  It was the first competitive round-the-world tour taken by any sports team. 

This trip was unprecedented, and audacious.  The manager of the Orillia team, John Miller, with the boundless optimism typical in Orillia then, convinced the Australians who had solicited a Canadian team to come down under, that the whole endeavour could be paid for out of the gate receipts of a series of games there.  The Aussies, with good cause, were skeptical.  They wanted the tour to boost the popularity of lacrosse in Australia, specifically because they couldn't draw crowds.  It is a testament to Millers boosterism and persuasiveness that he convinced them to put up the money.

But the Orillia team did go to Australia, and did draw crowds.  The Aussies got more than double their money in return through the gate receipts.

In an era of spectacular matched competitions (the first "golden age" of sport in Canada was 1900-1910) when huge sums of money changed hands at the outcome of a race or a game, this tour stood out for the scope of it's vision.  This really was audacious.  It was a spectacle.

The players enjoyed a free five-month round-the-world tour, getting to play some intense and challenging games against novel competition, while the Aussies got the high profile they were looking for and a windfall to boot.  Miller's optimistic vision came through in spades.

As I outlined in my last post, the tour quickly devolved from a friendly demonstration of the Canadian game into a do-or-die play-off style game for lacrosse supremacy, not unlike the 1972 hockey summit series.  The gentlemanly Australians were introduced to the pugnacious Canadian game, just as the Russians were in 1972.  Well, they wanted to know how the Canadians filled the stands. Now they knew.

As Canadian sport goes, this was just a sidebar event, an event that is completely forgotten now.  But it did show that big tours could be done, it set the stage for future tours.  It is well worth any sports fan's attention.

 

Some things never change.  Here's a great example in Canadian sport.

The 1972 Summit Series between the Canadian and Russian hockey teams was, perhaps, the biggest sporting event in our country's history.  Life stopped here for that final game in Russia when Paul Henderson scored the iconic goal that won the series for us.  I remember the TV being rolled into our classroom to watch the game.

What is conveniently forgotten in our collective memories was the way that series played out, how the Canadians played the role of aggressors, hacking and intimidating the skilled and disciplined Russians. We were win-at-all-costs individualists, the Russians were the machine.  

No one ever seems to talk about the brutal and blatant slash Bobby Clarke levelled on Kharlamov, the Russian star, that almost took him out of the series.  "He's killing us", was the consensus on the bench, and Clarke took that as his directive to do something about it.

But, as we now know in hindsight, it was really cultures colliding.  The two countries were playing different games.  Yes it was hockey, but the culture of the game had evolved in isolation in the two places and the game was played very differently in Canada and Russia.  

In response to the heavy body-checking, the Russians responded with their own aggression, dirty stickwork, butt ends and spears.  In Canada that was taboo.  In Russia the stickwork was the equivalent to pasting a guy into the boards.  Different cultures.  We were solid guys pasting them into the boards, they were dirty weasels, jabbing us with their sticks.  In Russia the argument was exactly the reverse.

There was an almost identical clash of cultures with Canada in 1907, a direct premonition of this series.  No one remembers it now, though.

In the summer of 1907 a Canadian lacrosse team toured Australia playing a series of 16 games against state all-star teams, and four Test Matches against an Australian National Team.  The Canadian team was from my hometown of Orillia, supplemented with seven more top players from the Ontario amateur league.  It was the first round-the-world tour by any sports team for international competition... and it's totally forgotten now.

Well, talk about a clash of cultures.  Lacrosse had developed totally in isolation in Australia and had become a gentleman's game there, like cricket in England.  No body-checking, no hacking and whacking with the sticks, but fast and hard shooting.  Of course in Canada it was a brutal game, with fights and serious injury commonplace.

Before the tour the organizers from Australia were adamant the Canadians only bring "gentlemanly" players, they asked that "the boozers" be left home.  Accommodating them, 11 of the Canadians ended up being non-drinkers, and all of them, remarkably, were university of Toronto students or alumni.

But no one thought to discuss the rules of the game before the series started.  That first game in Brisbane was eye-opening.  In Canada the playing field was 50 yards shorter, the ball was heavier and harder, using one's stick to impede an opposing player was expected and body-checking was integral to the game.  Not so in Australia.  On the huge Australian fields that spread the players out, long sideline passes and quick darting solo forays to get a scoring chance was the typical play.  The Australians couldn't understand the need for the protective padding the Canadians wore.

Well, naturally the solo dodging Australians were planted on their rear ends by the Canadian defence, who were then soundly booed by the spectators.   

At the other end of the field the Canadians attacked as a phalanx of 7 or 8 players, passing constant short, sharp passes that confounded the defencemen and dazzled the goalie.  The poor Aussies couldn't follow the ball as the army of Canadians forged straight up the middle of the field, with highly skilled passing routines.

It took a few games to sort out the issues between the two styles, and during the rest of the tour there was constant back-room wrangling over what rules should be used.

The end result, especially after the Australians stunned the Canadians to win the first Test Match, was an intense and hotly contested final two games of the Test series.  To win, the Canadians resorted to their familiar win-at-all-costs mentality, damn the penalties.  High elbows, shoulders to the ribs, stick "checks" to knock the ball away that were really just punishing whacks to the arms and legs of attackers who dodged around a defenceman, and then sometimes, just blatant dirty stick work.

In the deciding last Test, which the Canadians were not going to lose, the game descended into a donnybrook.  The poor referees who probably never saw a fight all season in the sedate Australian league, were totally helpless to stop it.  Finally, they called in "mounted troopers" who separated the teams!  The poor Australians who tried to give as good as they got, but weren't nearly as experienced in the Canadian game, limped away battered and bruised.

And, just like in 1972, the Canadians eked out a win in the final game to win the series two games to one.

Is this the Canadian persona?  Do we have to delve into violent and aggressive play to win?  Or is that just the way we raise our players, with rules that encourage that win-at-all-costs attitude?  Do we like and endorse that rugged and individualistic play as a culture?

Long ago, in our formative years, we were a rural society of farmboys and factory workers who were living in a tough world.  The 1907 lacrosse team were those boys, but the ones who had been lucky enough to pull themselves above all that through a university education.  But they were ingrained with that attitude and it reared it's head when the going got tough.

In 1972, that culture was still there.  But today we should know better.  We create the world out boys and girls grow up in, the world of minor sports.  Is that still the Canadian persona?  In the big, epic contests of the last 20 years we don't see that dirtiness any more, at least not as obviously.  Maybe we have learned.

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I have just researched and written the fist detailed history in Canada of that world lacrosse tour.  Doug Fox of the Australian Lacrosse Association wrote a similar history in 2002, but as seen through Australian eyes.  Mine is the Canadian version. It will be available through the Orillia Public Library, and hopefully a few copies will be available at the local bookstore.  It is a fascinating snapshot of our cultural history.   

This was THE big question before WWI.  The administrators of sports decided, yes, money does corrupt sport.  From that point on there were two camps, the pro leagues in hockey, baseball, football and so on, and the pristine amateur sports, mostly the Olympic sports.

Money was allowed to run some sports but not others.

Today, in perusing the CBC web page I was confronted with three separate articles that bluntly demonstrated the reach of that money, now even into amateur sport. These articles make me think those administrators 100 years ago were right, money does have a corrupting influence - but mostly on the administrators!

First, FIFA, the governing body for soccer is considering changing the traditional summer date for the next World Cup of soccer to a winter date.  Why?  To avoid the heat in Qatar.  Qatar?!  Playing soccer in 40+C temperatures in the summer?  Who made that ridiculous decision?  FIFA, of course.  A group of administrators widely accepted as the most corrupt in sport ("they make the IOC look like a bunch of schoolboys").  Qatar has lots of money to "sway" opinion.  Soon after the vote to award Qatar with the World Cup five of the 24 voting officials suspiciously retired.

Anyway, money seems to have created a situation where either the soccer players risk heat exhaustion or every other pro soccer league in the world has to disrupt their season to accommodate a winter World Cup in Qatar.  Ludicrous.

Whose best interests are being served here?

The next article was about, of course, the Olympics.  The IOC is changing their rule that says individual athletes cannot allow their image to be used for advertising in the month leading up to the Olympics, to protect the official Olympic sponsors.  The athletes often have their own contracts with corporations that pay them a lot of money, money they often survive on.  However, The IOC rule barred them from this advertising leading up to a Games on the threat of disqualification.  Seems the IOC wanted all the sponsorship money for themselves at the expense of the athletes. Easy to see where their priorities lay. 

Now the athletes' individual sponsorships can continue, but it took years of lobbying on the athlete's part to get this rule partially changed.

Finally, there's LeBron James.  Junior.  The 10 year old son.  Seems college coaches and corporations are already hounding this kid as a "meal ticket".  He's 10.  Dad is upset, "Let him be a kid".  

Again, what's best for the athlete, being a kid, is superceded by bigger interests.   Luckily Dad doesn't need the money, so he can fight back.  But what about some poor inner city youth.  Does that 10 year old need all this harassment? 

For the monied interests it seems to be a free-for-all.  Where are the rules?

Money in sport is a difficult question.  Sport can generate billions of dollars.  The athletes should get their fair share.  But what is the fair share the corporate interests should get?  Or the sport governing bodies?  

Money has corrupted sport, there is no question.  Hockey players don't want to play as many as 109 games a year.  But they have to.  Tennis players nurse chronic injuries because of the hectic schedule they have to play.  I'm sure the basketball and hockey pros would be happier without all the "thunka thunka thunka" music at every timeout and the incessant commercial timeouts during games.  They just want to focus on the game.

The sport "purists" won in the Athletic Wars of 1907-09 in Canada, and banished the corrupting effects of money from amateur sport.  But today's newspaper taught me that the money ultimately won.  Yes, there's money for the athletes, but there seems to be a growing level of corruption and moral ineptitude on the part of the administrators and corporate interests.

Too bad.  Maybe they were right 100 years ago.    

It never fails.  After you publish a story, someone comes forward with new and interesting material to add to the story.  Now its true with Hot Foot too.

After a successful tour of the Scottish Highland Games where Walter Knox dominated the circuit, he was on the lookout for a high profile matched competition for an all-around championship.  He saw in a Glasgow newspaper a challenge for just that type of event by an Australian, "Weller".  Walter immediately wired to accept his challenge, but only if it was held in Scotland or England.  That was the end of the story in my book.  It never happened.

Well, I have been corresponding with Doug Fox, an Australian lacrosse historian, and asked him who this "Weller" was.  He sent me all kinds of information.

Clarence Weller, or "Weber" as he was known there, was a renown strongman in Australia.  Four years younger than Walter, he was at the height of his powers in 1913 when Walter proposed a matched contest.  Weber had taken up "Sandow's" weight-lifting program in the 1890's and had honed his body into an impressive power machine.

Throughout the years leading up to WWI Weber set dramatic world records in weight-lifting:  251 pound clean and jerk, a 160 pound one-armed lift overhead, holding 60 pounds in each hand straight to the side in an iron cross pose.  He toured Australia doing strength demonstrations and accepting matched strong-man competitions, never losing.

But he was more famous as a wrestler.  He was the director of a physical culture institute where he taught wrestling.  Again he toured the country taking on all comers.

Australian champions wrestler, and Australian champion cyclist too.  He was accomplished at many sports.

At six feet and 168 pounds he was a lean and muscled athlete.  Early in his athletic career he did track and field, being adept at all races from 50-440 yards, the high jump, pole vault and all the throwing events.  He was an all round athlete.

Hence his challenge to anyone in the world to a multi-sport contest for a $500-a-side stake (Walter said it was for $2500).  But, Weber said later, he never issued the challenge.  Someone else sent it out in his name without his knowledge, he said. Possibly a gambler who wanted to see a match like this and was using Weber's honour to corner him into accepting a challenge like Walter's.  Or Weber did issue the challenge and was looking for a way out. Who knows, but when Weber received Walter's acceptance of the challenge he said he intended to accept it, and even planned a trip to Scotland the following year (the year Walter won the World All-around title from Cramb), but never seemed to get there.

All this begs the question, how would that match have turned out?

Walter, in an interview, said, "He has enough athletics on the card for me to win, and in addition I can swim and cycle well, while I doubt he can beat me at weight-lifting."  The card also included "physical culture" but not wrestling, curiously, though Walter probably would have expected to win a wrestling match too.

Obviously Walter had no idea who Weber was.  Weber would likely have out-classed him badly in weight-lifting and "physical culture".  Swimming would not have been included if Weber was not a strong swimmer, Walter never even said if he could swim before.  Cycling?  Walter was notoriously weaker at the longer running distances, he was a sprinter, so cycling, an endurance event, would have been tough.

But 8 or 10 track and field events?  Walter may have swept them.  Weber dabbled in track and would not have had the best technique, Walter's ace in the hole.  With world record marks in the sprints, shot put and pole vault, Walter was top tier in the world in all the track and field events.  That was all he needed to win.

It would have been a fascinating contest between two magnificent and egotistical athletes.  Neither accepted losing well.  

Walter was four inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter.  Then look at Weber below, Walter would have looked pretty ordinary next to him.  But when Walter started performing Weber would have been pretty surprised.  

I'd put my money on Walter.

Recently I've been exposed to the wild diversity of sports in my home town.  It has made me suddenly aware of what and how and why athletes do what they do, it made me realize how different people are.

I'm researching a list of Orillia's greatest athletes, an exhaustive list, all sports, all eras.  Its been great fun.

What a variety.  There are the professionals and the amateurs, the serious and the recreational, the traditional sports and the downright weird sports.  And every one of them, at the elite level, is passionate about what they do.

One athlete in Orillia really opened my eyes.  Was his really a "sport"?  Was it "good" or "bad" to be doing what he was doing.  That is, "healthy" or "obsessed"? 

I know some ultra-endurance athletes in Orillia, like Steve Burrows, who routinely did 24-hour races and 100-mile running races.  Crazy events for the ultra-fit.  But that's nothing, I see now.

John Waite, a friend of mine - we were on the YMCA board of directors together - goes way beyond anything Steve ever did.  John is a Spartan Death racer.

A what?  Who's ever heard of that.  

The Spartan Death race, as John described it after his first (!) one, is a race that is designed to "break" you.  Non-stop for 48 hours, task after task to completely tax you physically and mentally.  Carry this 90-pound log up that mountain, lift these 100 60-pound rocks up onto that pedestal,  solve this pen and paper problem in this time limit 36 hours into the race,  "run" up these rapids for two miles chest-deep, swim across this frozen, slushy pond, and on and on for 48 hours.  Their goal is to have only one entrant finish.

John said that in his first race in 2011 over 200 people entered, but 100 never even started when they heard what was expected of them at the starting line.  Then only 35 people finished, and these were all incredibly fit, mentally tough athletes.  John finished near the top.  Wow.  John makes my list of Orillia's greatest athletes.

But he made me think.  Is it a "sport"?  Does he do it for the same reasons the hockey players and swimmers do it?

The Olympians do it for the achievement, the gold medal.  The pros do it for the money.  Some of the martial artists do it to feel safe or to build their self-esteem.  A lot of athletes do it because its just plain fun to do what you do well, to develop your aptitudes.

I think its different for John.  It is a spiritual thing.  Survival at its basest is all-encompassing - mind, body, spirit all wrapped into one soggy mess.  At a certain point the body is just on remote-control, you are getting brain-dead tired and the only thing keeping you going is your inner spirit.  If you talk to John you can see that in everything he does.  He gets it.  Track and swimming coaches tell their Olympians all the time to just relax and focus, get in the zone.  That's letting your spirit bubble up, your unconscious abilities that you, hopefully, trained all year to develop.  It's toughness, and courage, and confidence, and inner peace.

How do I place John on my list of athletes (I'm trying to roughly rank them by accomplishment)?  Above or below an NHL hockey player?  A World Cup season champion freestyle skier?  Walter Knox, the brazen hustling world champion track athlete?  I dunno.

So I made a special category for John, the "Special, 'You've got to be Crazy"' category.  Or maybe he's the only sane one on the list.  I dunno.

John is now the director of the whole Spartan Death Race program.  He's in Mexico this very weekend running the next event.  Check out the entry information page (here).  Only two rules:  Do not die.  Do not get left behind. 

Yeah, he makes my list, but, like, holy cow...

After reading Hot Foot, it would not be surprising to assume that Walter Knox was Orillia's greatest athlete.  That may not be true.

Before WWI Orillia was known far and wide as "The Town of Champions".  Walter made it clear he wanted to emulate those champions, most notably his neighbour George Gray who held the world record for the shot put for 17 years and was undefeated over that span.  He also admired his older brother Jack who was Canadian pole vault champion.

But Orillia has developed many other athletes who succeeded on the level Walter did.

Jake Gaudaur, in 1896 at the age of 38, won the world professional sculling championship, and proceeded to defend it for 5 more years, when his advanced age finally caught up with him.  He had duelled the best in the world for two decades already winning enormous sums in those matched races just as Walter did.

Harry Gill won the North American All-around title in 1900 and the professional All-around title in 1902.  He also broke the world record in discus and almost broke the high jump world record.  His career was cut prematurely short when he lost his amateur status and, in frustration, retired and took up a coaching career. He was Walter's training partner.

Lovering Jupp, in the four years prior to WWI led Orillia's hockey teams to three Ontario championships in four years, first as a 16 year old phenom.  At the outbreak of war his whole team enlisted in the Sportsman's battalion.  While training in Toronto he joined the battalion hockey team organized by Conn Smythe which was the dominant team in the Ontario Senior hockey league until it was called to France late in the season.  17 years later when Smythe's Toronto Maple Leafs had won the Stanley Cup, Smythe said his old teammate, Love Jupp, would be on his first line today!

And speaking of hockey, Orillia is home to Rick Ley, the great player of the 1970's.  After 4 years with the Leafs, Ley jumped to the new WHA where he was an all-star and once was named the league's best defenceman.  In the 1974 Russia vs the WHA All-Stars series, Ley was assigned the job of shadowing the great Russian, Kharlamov.  Ley was the best defenceman on the team.  He returned to the NHL with the Hartford Whalers playing with Gordie Howe and his sons.

And we couldn't forget the great Brian Orser, the 8-time Canadian champion figure skater who trained in Orillia from his early teens.  He was on the podium for a remarkable 8 consecutive years at the World Championships in the 1980's, winning gold once.  He also contested for two closely fought Olympic medals, both times ending up with silver , mainly because of the out-dated "figures" component that was eliminated in future Olympics.  

Walter Henry was Canadian flyweight boxing champion for 8 consecutive years starting in 1958.  He fought to a career 385-18 record, but many of those were one or two classes above his weight owing to a lack of competition for him in Canada.  He fought for Canada in two Olympic Games.  His was a very long career in a light weight class.

More recently, Toyin Olupona won the Canadian 100-metre sprint title four out of five years starting in 2005.  A stand-out high-schooler in Orillia, she blossomed into an All-American at the University of Tennessee.  Frustratingly for her, the COC would not take her to the Olympics in 2008 because her trials winning time, into the wind no less, did not make their standard, even though she did make their standard just three weeks earlier.  Toyin did get to a World Championships where she was a quarter-finalist.

Yes Walter was a great athlete, but he has competition for the title "Orillia's Greatest".   

I have a list, that's still growing, of Orillia's Canadian Champion athletes (or their equivalent).  It stands at 39 names and is growing as I sort through the files at the library and museum.  Come on out to Doors Open Orillia (linked here) in June to read more about the "Orillia's Greatest Athlete" poll, and vote for your favourite.  We'll even be having a celebrity debate on the issue aka "Canada Reads" show on CBC radio.  That'll settle it once and for all!

Yes, Walter is great, but so is Orillia, "The Town of Champions".      

So, it's super bowl weekend again.  For two weeks there has been constant chatter on the radio and TV dissecting the game, debating the minutiae of strategy, drumming up the gossip.  Naturally, the betting websites are going crazy.  This is the big weekend, the greatest sports spectacular of the year is about to unfold.  

It seems like every weekend is a sports spectacular of some sort:  hockey, basketball, baseball and football have all have staked out their highlight events and playoffs; tennis has it's four majors, as does golf; there are the amateur world championships in all kinds of sports, and of course, the Olympics, Pan Ams, and Commonwealth Games to pay attention to.  There is hardly a break for a sports fan.

Common to all those events are the ubiquitous sports betting opportunities, from office pools to in-your-face website bookies.  There is a large part of society that thrives on betting as recreation or addiction.

It is all so familiar now.  You either tune in and get absorbed or just tune sports right out.  The casual sports fan is becoming a bit of a thing of the past.

But, you know, modern sports are not so different from sports 100 years ago.  Sure, now there are way more "big" events vying for our attention now, but 100 years ago there were events just as big on a local scale.

When Walter Knox would have a high profile matched race in some small mining town in BC, the chatter and excitement was just as all-encompassing as our super bowl this weekend.  The miners had very little distraction from their plodding days. To have this "champion" take on that "champion" was a spectacle only seen once or twice a year.  It was wildly anticipated.

And these miners, holed up in isolated towns with money burning holes in their pockets, were quite willing to put their money where their mouths were.  The gambling was integral to the whole event, it drove up the excitement.

Naturally, the local newspapers beat the drums - it sold papers.  

It was not uncommon for a little town of 500 people to have 500 men lining the two sides of the race course down the main street whooping and hollering when Walter stepped up to the starting line.  Men from miles around gathered for the novelty of a big race. 

And who were the big winners?  The saloons, of course.

These little towns wanted nothing to do with the Amateur Athletic Associations and their codes of conduct and rules against gambling.  These matched race spectacles were good for business, good recreation for the miners and a good payday for sports hustlers like Walter.  

Boys will be boys.

So, today when I'm settling into the couch to watch "the Big Game", I'll be reminded of Nelson, BC or Cory, Pennsylvania or Mexicali, Mexico, towns that got swept up by Walter Knox's sporting spectacles 100 years ago.  Towns that got "worked" in just the same way that ESPN "works" us today on a grander scale.

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...