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...

Last month a class action lawsuit was started against the Canadian Hockey League (CHL), the league for junior players.  It is alleged these high school boys are being forced to play for less than the minimum wage.

The CHL players are paid $50-120 a week for up to 65 hour weeks while "the league’s teams are 'unjustly enriched' with 'hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues annually' based on the services provided by their young players," the suit says.  This is a battle that is 135 years old in Canada.

In 1881, with the formation of the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association (MAAA), the battle was enjoined over the role of money in Canadian sport.  The new MAAA outlawed the growing  trend in hockey, baseball, rugby and football of hiring mercenary "ringers" to help bring championships to a town.  The MAAA and soon the Canadian AAA decreed that money "corrupts" sport.  Their stern rules denied participation by any "professional" athlete, for life, no appeals.

This policy led to two sports worlds in Canada:  the high road and the low road.  

The "high road" of the amateur world eliminated money as a factor in athletics. 
Any player that had played for money, played against players who had played for money, who had used an alias, who had wagered on himself or even had coached for money was soon disbarred from all amateur sports. The AAA of Canada, after 1900, was spending most of it's revenues on investigations of professionalism by their member athletes.  Players were held to very high standards of amateurism, the highest standards in the world.

Meanwhile, the low road was still flourishing.  Outside the Montreal-Toronto corridor where the AAA of C dominated, the traditional workingman's culture of matched racing and tavern sports still survived.  Here sport was business, like everything else in life.  Wagering on the outcome of a matched race between two worthy contestants or a hockey game between rival teams was a popular form of entertainment in rural areas.  Rival town teams naturally sought out mercenary hockey and rugby players to help avenge a loss to a rival town's team.  Money was an integral part of sport.

These rural athletes saw nothing wrong with making money through their physical prowess.  If they played for free the only people who would profit would be the gamblers in the crowd and the promoters.  Why not take your piece of the pie?  You were creating the spectacle.  These professional athletes took all the money they could and often relied on under-handed tactics to get it (using aliases, fixing games, sabotaging their opponents, threatening or bribing their opponents).  The AAAs saw their draconian amateur rules as the only response to this corrupt behaviour.

The high road AAAs routinely professionalized athletes by taking their amateur cards away.  Walter Knox was one of them.  If those athletes still wanted to partake in sports the only game in town was the low road of matched races for high stakes and the pay-for-play rural teams (which evolved into the professional hockey, baseball, football and later, basketball leagues we are so familiar with today).  The Amateur associations actually drove people into those professional circles.

So how does this all relate to the class action lawsuit by the junior hockey players today.  Well, today's professional sports follow the "middle" road for the most part. Revenues generated are shared somewhat equally by the players and the owner/promoters.  It was a long struggle to reach that middle road.  For decades the promoters cried poverty to grossly underpay the players they depended on to create the revenue stream.  All pro leagues now have negotiated agreements, collective bargaining agreements, to ensure a fair sharing the wealth.  

But not the junior hockey players.

Some junior hockey teams truly struggle to stay in the black.  But others are hugely profitable.  The players are treated like amateurs, like high schoolers playing for the love of the game, not the revenue generators they are and are going to be once they make the NHL.  

This classic battle between capital (the owner/promoters) and labour (the players) is no different than any other labour unrest, except it is being staged by under-age workers.  You can rail ideologically against the filthy rich NHL players or the corrupt owners just as you can against the mine owners and the miners, or the postal workers and the government.  Its still the same familiar confrontation.

It's all about tweaking the "middle road".    

After five years of researching and writing my biography of Walter Knox, I’ve become interested in a number of fields of study.  I want to use this new blog to post my thoughts on these topics and share historical anecdotes.
Foremost is the history of sport in Canada, especially the divisive role money played in the development of sport here.  But also, I’ll be commenting on the fascinating evolution of sport itself.  In Orillia, my home town in Ontario, the YMCA was the centre of the sports world up to World War II.  Since my first book outlined the history of the Y in Orillia, I’ll have insights to share locally.  In the larger arena, I’ll be commenting on Olympic history.  My research on Walter Knox led me to some interesting and little known sides of Olympic politics and competition.  He was an Olympic coach three times, and recorded inside details of that world.
 
Walter Knox was also a miner, caught up in the gold mining boom in northern Ontario 100 years ago.  I've found the stories around those wild days in the bush really engrossing.  Right now I'm reading a gem of a little book written in 1947 on the history of mining in Canada, Free Gold, by a man who was there and who met many of the major players involved.  That frontier world, the bigger-than-life personalities, the incredible hardship, the bonanzas – I’ll give you a taste of that side of Canada’s history.  And knowing Walter, it’s not surprising he found that life exhilarating.
 
Finally, the physical education program in the Ontario school system has a very interesting history that I discovered in my research.  Walter was  a big player in both the philosophical development and the execution of that program.  In 1920 there were no physical education classes as we know them in the curriculum and no organized team sports.  Ten years later there were inter-school competitions in a range of sports and gym classes were becoming a common part of the curriculum.  That development had a huge impact on the YMCA too. 
 
There are other topics too - women in sport, the Scottish Highland Games, the elites’ drive to civilize Canadian society – I'm sure I’ll get around them as well.  And of course, current events that relate to these historical topics will draw my attention.
 
I think history is important.  Understanding how events evolved and the forces that drove them long ago, gives up insight as to how our world is working today.  Nothing happens in a vacuum.  History gives us a more objective vantage point to recognize the forces that drive our world.
 
So, I hope everyone will check in here periodically for a little food for thought.