This week as we began our new case study concerning the public and private life in Canada, we focused in on recreation and sport.  Throughout the readings it is apparent that sport and recreation has been used as a tool of teaching and endorsing “Canadian values” and creating a national identity around these values.  Everywhere from ideas around masculinity to assimilation was done through sport and recreation to normalize and unify people under the same values.  In Celebrating Violent Masculinities: The Boxing Death of Luther McCarty, defense of the confrontational sports came from the male population.  However, more interesting is the way that violence and the normalization of violence is acculturated as a masculine trait.  Men are considered to be tough and mean, as these values of masculinity are to be conveyed and indoctrinated through sport. Boxing standardized Canadian masculinity ideas to the whole Canadian population, helping create a society of unified ideals.[1]   In Raven Plays Ball, the same type of indoctrination of Canadian values is done through “Indian Sport Days”.  These sport days where intended to ingrain values of leisure, which were a universal Canadian idea, into Aboriginal culture.  Even though it is debated around the success of acculturating these people through sport, the government still used and presented sport as a way to teach and endorse these Canadian values.[2]  Finally, in recreation Canadianized values and expectations again were promoted through activities such as biking. In Cycles of Manhood: Pedaling Respectability in Ontario’s Forest City, biking had endorsed “middle class’s notion of manhood that was particularly apparent in sport and physical recreation activities.”[3]  The masculinity surrounding the bikes further advanced and ingrained “proper” values that Canadians were supposed to live by.  Sport and recreation was a place where values were exhibited and encouraged, in order to foster assimilation and acceptance of Canadian ideals as normal.  This outlet used to teach values and expectations was apparent in this time period, from biking to boxing.

[1] Walmsley and Whitson, “Celebrating Violent Masculinities: The Boxing Death of Luther McCarty,” Journal of Sport History, 25, 3 (Fall 1998): 419-420, 425, 428-429.

[2] Wney, Allan, and Susan Neylan. “Raven Plays Ball: Situating “Indian Sports Days” within Indigenous and Colonial Spaces in Twentieth-Century Coastal British Columbia.” Canadian Journal Of History 50, no. 3 (2015).

[3] Kossuth and Walmsley, “Cycles of Manhood: Pedaling Respectability in Ontario’s Forest City,” Sport History Review, 34 (2003).