Common themes of the week’s readings are nationalism, masculinity, and the managing of societal expectations. Belshaw starts us out by giving a brief history of sports in Canada. This includes how some sports came to be, and how others have remained unique from British or American counterparts. Belshaw also states that the apparent key for a sport becoming successful on a national level was the ability to monezite the event.1 Walmsley & Whitson speak about boxing culture in Canada, and how there was a sense of strain when it came to how much the government should be regulating sporting events. This article also spoke of how boxing and other sports were promoting an unhealthy sense of masculinity based off of violence.2 Kossuth & Walmsley contribute to this idea of healthy versus unhealthy masculinity by outlining the proper and improper behaviour of young men surrounding bicycles. The article also speaks of how bicycle groups managed being labelled as deviant, dealt with stereotypes, and overcame stigmatization from larger society.3 It seems that the middle-class values, dominating society at the time, had very specific expectations of young men which sometimes clashed with the emerging sports culture. The violent manner in which most sports were played went against the apparent moral lessons that sports were supposed to be instilling in the young men.4 Sporting events created a unique opportunity for Canada to do something that was uniquely Canadian. Though sporting events have been largely overlooked as important to Canadian national identity and nationalism until recently, it is an important area to research.5 Canadian history from a sporting perspective gives a unique view of the country through the ages unlike any other perspective. By examining this aspect of Canadian history we can see what sorts of leisure activities were partaken, what messages they sent to the population, and what sort of economic impact it had on regions of the country.

 

 

Sources

 

  1. John D. Belshaw, Canadian History: Post-Confederation, Vancouver: BCCampus, 2015.

 

  1. Walmsley and Whitson, “Celebrating Violent Masculinities: The Boxing Death of Luther McCarty,” Journal of Sport History, 25, 3 (Fall, 1998): 419-431.

 

  1. Kossuth and Walmsley, “Cycles of Manhood: Pedaling Respectability in Ontario’s Forest City,” Sport History Review, 34 (2003): 168-189.

 

  1. Michael A. Robidoux. “Imagining a Canadian Identity through Sport: A Historical Interpretation of Lacrosse and Hockey.”The Journal of American Folklore 115, no. 456 (2002): 209-25. doi:10.2307/4129220.

 

5. Mott, Morris. “Canadian Sports History: Some Comments to Urban Historians.” Urban History Review 12, no. 2 (1983): 25-29. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.tru.ca/stable/43559147.