Canadian sports

Canadian sports attract large numbers of participants and huge audiences, and, especially in regards to hockey, played by 1.4 million Canadians, has become part of the national identity.

The challenges faced by sports in recent decades include violence, racism, illegal drug therapies, ridicule of women, and the increasingly disproportionate salaries of professional athletes. These evils stand in contrast to the fundamental values of sports including personal health, teamwork, striving for responsibility, loyalty, equality, winning, pleasure, and freedom.

Outside the arena Canadians are peaceful, quiet and polite. Inside they scream their lungs out at ice hockey games, known for ferocity, speed, and violence, making it an ambiguous symbol of Canada. Superhero Wayne Gretzky is loved by some and hated by others for his refusal to join in the prohibited violence.

Lacrosse

See also Lacrosse

Lacrosse was invented in the 1850s, when the anglophone middle class of Montreal adopted the Indian game of "baggataway", which was a violent game played by the First Nation teams numbering hundreds of players. The 1860s saw the first powerhouse team, the Montreal Shamrocks; it was Irish, Catholic, and aggressive. During the 1870s and 1880s the Shamrocks had bloody confrontations with the upscale Protestant Montreal and Toronto Lacrosse Clubs. Field lacrosse spread across the country with the tide of anglophone settlers from Ontario and Quebec. By the early 1890s it could claim to be the most popular summer game in Canada; the 1900s were the golden years, as two professional leagues were set up. Escalating violence led to the collapse of the professional leagues in 1914, and the game's base of support shrank to Montreal, Victoria, Vancouver, New Westminster, and small-towns in Ontario. Its failure to gain a firm foothold was due in part to the lack of an organizational infrastructure; for example, it was never adopted by schools or churches.

In 1931, hockey owners and promoters in Canada attempted to introduce a modified version of lacrosse to attract fans in the summer. Played in a smaller space, competitions could be held indoors or in baseball stadiums. The game was especially violent but few cities could support teams, however, and the poverty of the Great Depression reduced the number of fans. Entrepreneurs like Joe Cattarinich and Peter Campbell, while failing at the commercial level, changed the landscape of Canadian amateur lacrosse, isolating it from the more widely contested field lacrosse played in the United States, Britain, and Australia. In 1987 the National Lacrosse League began; it has clubs in twelve cities in the United States and Canada.

Field lacrosse was revived in the late 1990s when some Ontario universities included it in their women's athletic programs; university women now play the game once associated with Canadian masculinity.

Hockey

see also Ice hockey

Stick and ball games on ice had been played for decades before 1875 especially in the Maritimes and at military garrisons. In its modern form hockey was standardizes by McGill students in 1875 under rules brought to Montreal by Haligonian J.G.A. Creighton. The game rapidly spread nationwide. The Stanley Cup was created in 1893 by Lord Stanley, Canada's governor general. Professional teams emerged after 1900, with the International Hockey League (1904), the Eastern Canadian Hockey League (1906), the National Hockey Association (1909), the Pacific Coast League (1912).

The National Hockey League, formed in 1917 became the premier professional league and by 1940 was had strong bases in Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Detroit--the "original six". After 1923 it became a cartel that controlled all aspects of professional hockey. Expansion into the United States, the collapse of other professional leagues, the establishment of a minor league system, and affiliation with the major governing body in Canadian amateur hockey, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA), all contributed to the NHL's control over the distribution of professional hockey games and the player market. The alliances made with the minor leagues and the CAHA, in particular, gave the NHL's market control mechanisms such as the waivers, reserve clause, draft, and territorial right much broader impact.

The extremes of masculinity and violence ignited the Ottawa Silver Seven and Montreal Wanderers rivalry of 1907. Newspapers depicted the game as a combination of "brutal butchery" and "strenuous spectacle," speaking to public perceptions and different ways of experiencing the game. "Ideals of respectable, middle-class masculinity and rough, working-class masculinity co-existed within accounts of fast, skilled, rugged, hard-hitting hockey."

Facing severe economic pressures during the Great Depression, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association was forced to reevaluate its purist position on amateurism in ice hockey and to rethink its relation to the amateur sports infrastructure in Canada, which was headed by the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada. The poor performance of the defending champion Canadian hockey team at the 1936 Olympics, in a context of international dispute over player eligibility and the authority of national bodies to determine that eligibility, crystallized the problems Canadian hockey faced and led to substantial changes in policies and procedures.

Despite being excluded from Winnipeg's senior hockey league for the 1919-20 season, the Winnipeg Falcons, made up of the children of Icelandic immigrants, became Canadian national champions and won the 1920 Olympic gold medal in Antwerp. Combined with their willingness to serve Canada in World War I, their success made this team a symbol of Canadian manhood, unaffected by the ethnic stereotyping and discrimination that affected some other sports teams during the 1920s.

Maurice "Rocket" Richard, (1921–2000) is one of the nation's most important sports icons, especially in Quebec. Playing for the Montreal Canadiens (1942–60) he scored 544 regular season goals and 82 more in playoffs. Famed for his dashing style of play, his intensity, determination, and scoring prowess, Richard the first 50-goal scorer in NHL history in 1944-45, with a 50-game schedule. Richard was named to the All Star team 14 times, won two Hart trophies as league MVP, and led the Canadiens to eight Stanley Cups.

In September 1972, Canada's best hockey players from the National Hockey League (NHL) played the elite amateurs from the Soviet Union in a friendly series. When Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau met his Soviet counterpart, Aleksei Kosygin, in 1971, their discussions included increasing the hockey competitions between the two countries. Soon after, hockey hierarchies of both nations decided on a series of eight games, four to be played across Canada and four in Moscow. For Canadians, the Summit Series was intended to be a celebration of their global supremacy in ice hockey. The architects of Soviet hockey, on the other hand, had designs on surprising Canada and the world with their skill and claiming the Canadian game as their own. Over the course of the month, the games captured the imagination of both nations. Far beyond any hockey match, the series pitted East against West - communism against capitalism - and many of the players were swept away with the extrasporting significance that the games engendered. What was to be a friendly contest became instead a politically charged event with extensive cultural repercussions - quite literally, a Cold War.

Culture of sports

French Canadanians by 1700 were influenced by native culture to the degree that they began to measure themselves and their masculinity against their native counterparts by competing against them in such activities as canoeing, snowshoeing, and tobogganing and in the team sport of lacrosse. The author explores how this sport identity contrasted the Victorian gentility of sports for bourgeois gentlemen during 1850-80 and how this French/native subculture called les Canadiens expressed not only sport masculinity and identity but Canadian nationalism.

Hudon (2005) examines the history of sports education from 1870 to 1940 in Quebec's classic schools for boys from ages 11 to 18. Much of Canadian historiography on the emergence of sports education focuses on the relationship between sports education and the construction of a national identity. Hudon explores the relationship between religious pedagogy and sports education and the religious philosophy behind such education that promoted a spirituality with masculine undertones.

In Anglophone areas the ideas and ideals of English author and reformer Thomas Hughes expressed in Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) and elsewhere, that sport provided moral education and training for citizenship, have long resonated throughout the Canadian sport community. Despite a period when Canada focused on high-performance athletes rather than widespread participation, the principles of Christian socialism continue to inform the development of sports programs, particularly for Canadian youth. Outside of sports the social and moral agendas behind muscular Christianity influenced numerous reform movements, thus linking it to the political left in Canada, contrary to its right-wing reputation in other parts of the world.

Organizations

Created in 1961 to coordinate and regulate college athletics into five regional associations, the Canadian Intercollegiate Athletic Union (CIAU) struggled with differing views on sport of the various regional groups, the autonomy of powerful Ontario universities, and differing goals concerning national championships. Funding was continually problematic, despite assistance from the federal government. Questions related to student-athlete eligibility, appropriate institutional representation, and recruiting regulations also haunted the organization in its early years. In 1971, the CIAU officially agreed that it would represent both male and female athletes. By 1975, the CIAU established uniform rules and regulations and expanded its scope to include fund-raising.

Women

Girls’ and women’s sport has traditionally been characterized by low levels of participation; absence from leadership positions in administration and coaching, at all levels and in every area; inequitable delivery systems; minimal research; and scant, often demeaning, coverage in the media. Because sport has long been a bastion of male hegemony, women's entry into and advances in sport met resistance from the male establishment. Many radical feminists, in turn, dismissed sport as a homophobic area unworthy of support. The notion of biologically restricted bodies was first challenged by the "new woman" circa 1900. These women took up bicycling and rode into new spheres in education, work, and suffrage. The First World War inaugurated a golden age for women's sport, and the 1920s were the heyday of grassroots involvement, often by working-class women. The Edmonton Grads were acknowledged as world champions of women's basketball; the first Canadian women participated in the Olympics; and women sportswriters such as Phyllis Griffiths reported their feats to a national audience of women. Traditionalists, however, including men in the media and physical education, perhaps influenced by trends in the United States, warned repeatedly about the dangers of intensity in female competition. They recommended non-competitive athletic games as suitable recreation. With the economic problems of the Great Depression, followed by the hypermasculinity of the Second World War and the back-to-the-family social conservatism of the 1950s, women's sport receded in visibility for a half-century, although it continued at the community level. Most feminists of the 1970s saw sport as too trivial for their involvement, cultural changes went on without them and created a new way for women to empower themselves through in sports. Despite recurring media stereotypes about restricted bodies, more and more women engaged in aerobics and organized sport.

Change for women in sport began slowly, and progress can be marked by several milestones — the Fitness and Amateur Sport Act of 1961 (Bill C-131) and the report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1970 were important. The key event came in 1974, when Marion Lay and the federal government’s Fitness and Amateur Sport Branch (FASB) sponsored a National Conference on Women and Sport. Athletes, coaches, educators, administrators, and researchers gathered to explore the issues raised by the recommendations of the Royal Commission. The conference produced action proposals and the strategies for change. What was missing, however, was the means to monitor the process and implement the recommendations. The came the launching of Sport Canada’s Women’s Program in 1980; the Female Athlete Conference in 1981 and the establishment by Sport Canada of a Women in Sport program; and the Constitution Act of 1982. Increasing participation rates brought the gender issue centre stage as a political issue by the 1980s. In 1981 Abby Hoffman, a former Olympic athlete, became director general of Sport Canada, which issues a "Policy on Women's Sport" that called for equality. The AAU, which had been hostile to women's participation, was forced to reverse positions. Women went to court to challenge discrimination and either won or saw the capitualtion of their opponents. Provincial human rights commissions addressed at least fifty sport-related cases. Political institutions began to reduce the barriers that had afflicted women's athletics from their inception as seen in the Minister’s Task Force Report in 1992; and the landmark decision of the Canadian Sport Council to include gender equity quotas in their operating principles. By the 1990s women had become more competitive and entered formerly male domains (ice hockey, rugby, and wresting are now sanctioned intercollegiate sports). Their activism and success on the playing field has altered social roles and old stereotypes. To raise the profile of women's sports, however, women have inherited problems afflicting high-profile male sports - winning, raising money, and getting sponsors. In 2001 the Canadian women's cross-country ski team produced its "Nordic Nudes" calendar to gain attention and garner funds.

Harrigan, (2003) reviews the emergence of women's athletics in Canadian colleges and universities during 1961-2001. Although women's athletics dates to the late 19th century, it was the establishment of the National Fitness and Amateur Sport Advisory Council that allowed women's intercollegiate sports to gain momentum. Concomitant with the new organization, a rise in the proportion of women in the student bodies increased the visibility of women's sports. Despite institutional opposition, women continued their efforts to organize their sports and raise consciousness. In 1969, the Canadian Women's Intercollegiate Athletic Union was formed as a body to oversee events and sanction national championships, merging with the Canadian Intercollegiate Athletic Union in 1978. Women's presence in both intercollegiate and intramural athletics continued to increase during the 1980's-90's, and the debate shifted from whether women should participate in high-profile sports to whether men or women should coach those teams.

Fans and media

As the popular daily press developed rapidly throughout Canada in the late 19th century, so too did sports coverage in these newspapers. Beyond brief mentions of upcoming sporting events, coverage soon included detailed results and some reports on entire events. This coverage built a sense of community and of local pride in cities and towns across the country, while also involving Canadians in the national and international "world of sport." Along with the telegraph and its ability to provide near-real-time coverage of sports, newspapers transformed the way Canadians viewed sporting events.

Middle-class reformers promoted baseball, lacrosse, track and field, and cycling to enhance the selfless ideals of amateurism and rational recreation. They sought to inculcate (or enforce) a new sense of social respectability, as well as support for local institutions. Local pride swelled as they sent their athletes into competition against those from other places and celebrated famously when they won.

Hockey fans flocked to large new arenas such as the Montreal Forum (1924) and Maple Leaf Gardens (1931), hoping to see their professional team capture the Stanley Cup. Conn Smythe built Maple Leaf Gardens to replace the Arena Gardens because he understood the need to create a space centered on fans rather than athletes in order to attract the public. Much bigger, more comfortable, and more elegant than its predecessor, Maple Leaf Gardens gave members of Toronto's middle and upper classes a space for fashionable entertainment. Large numbers of season ticket holders and general ongoing success as a sports venue show that Smythe had a winning formula for Toronto and hockey. The opening of a new arena increases attendance 15-20% in the first years of operation; the honeymoon is over after five years. For 1994-2003, 21 new arenas were constructed, the honeymoon lengthened to eight years.

Radio broadcasts, in English and French, in the 1930s became community events in neighborhood bars and small villages, making the sport an important element of Canada's national identity. Fais discovered their love of heroes such as defenceman Eddie Shore of the Boston Bruins, forward Howie Morenz of the Montreal Canadiens, and the Montreal Canadiens' goaltender Georges Vezina, namesake of the Vezina Trophy. Regional and national pride Even more fame accrued to Maurice "Rocket" Richard, Gordie Howe, a rugged right-winger for the Detroit Red Wings, and gentlemanly Jean Beliveau of the Canadiens.

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Online resources

• Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity