Canadian sports were turned on their head during the years between the world wars. The middle-class amateur men's organizations which dominated Canadian sports since the mid-nineteenth century steadily lost ground, swamped by the rise of consumer culture and badly battered and split by the depression. In The Struggle for Canadian Sport, Bruce Kidd illuminates the complex and fractious process that produced the familiar contours of Canadian sport today – the hegemony of continental cartels like the NHL, the enormous ideological power of the media, the shadowed participation of women in sports, and the strong nationalism of the amateur Olympic sports bodies. Kidd focuses on four major Canadian organizations of the interwar period: the Amateur Athletic Union, the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation, the Workers' Sport Association, and the National Hockey League. Each of these organizations became focal points of debate and political activity, and they often struggled with each other. Each had a radically different agenda: the AAU sought “the making of men” and the strengthening of English-Canadian nationalism; the WAAF promoted the health and well-being of sportswomen; the WSA was a vehicle for socialism; and the NHL was concerned with lucrative spectacles. These national organizations stimulated and steered many of the resources available for sport and contributed significantly to the expansion of opportunities. They enjoyed far more power than other Canadian cultural organizations of the period, and they attempted to manipulate both the direction and philosophy of Canadian athletics. Through their control of the rules and prestigious events and their countless interventions in the mass media, they shaped the dominant practices and coined the very language with which Canadians discussed what sports should mean. The success and outcome of each group, as well as their confrontations with one another were crucial in shaping modern Canadian sports. The Struggle for Canadian Sport adds to our understanding of the material and social conditions under which people created and elaborated sports and the contested ideological terrain on which sports were played and interpreted.

Canadian sports were turned on their head during the years between the world wars. The middle-class amateur men's organizations which dominated Canadian sports since the mid-nineteenth century steadily lost ground, swamped by the rise of consumer culture and badly battered and split by the depression. In The Struggle for Canadian Sport, Bruce Kidd illuminates the complex and fractious process that produced the familiar contours of Canadian sport today – the hegemony of continental cartels like the NHL, the enormous ideological power of the media, the shadowed participation of women in sports, and the strong nationalism of the amateur Olympic sports bodies. Kidd focuses on four major Canadian organizations of the interwar period: the Amateur Athletic Union, the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation, the Workers' Sport Association, and the National Hockey League. Each of these organizations became focal points of debate and political activity, and they often struggled with each other. Each had a radically different agenda: the AAU sought “the making of men” and the strengthening of English-Canadian nationalism; the WAAF promoted the health and well-being of sportswomen; the WSA was a vehicle for socialism; and the NHL was concerned with lucrative spectacles. These national organizations stimulated and steered many of the resources available for sport and contributed significantly to the expansion of opportunities. They enjoyed far more power than other Canadian cultural organizations of the period, and they attempted to manipulate both the direction and philosophy of Canadian athletics. Through their control of the rules and prestigious events and their countless interventions in the mass media, they shaped the dominant practices and coined the very language with which Canadians discussed what sports should mean. The success and outcome of each group, as well as their confrontations with one another were crucial in shaping modern Canadian sports. The Struggle for Canadian Sport adds to our understanding of the material and social conditions under which people created and elaborated sports and the contested ideological terrain on which sports were played and interpreted.

"Research Centre for Sport in Canadian Society, University of Ottawa."

In the second edition of this groundbreaking social history, M. Ann Hall begins with an important new chapter on Aboriginal women and early sport and ends with a new chapter tying today's trends and issues in Canadian women's sport to their origins in the past. Students will appreciate the more descriptive chapter titles and the restructuring of the book into easily digestible sections. Fifty-two images complement Hall's lively narrative.

Reclaiming Tom Longboat recounts the history of Indigenous sport in Canada through the lens of the prestigious Tom Longboat Awards, shedding light on a significant yet overlooked aspect of Canadian policy and Crown-Indigenous relations. Drawing on a rich and varied set of oral and textual sources, including interviews with award recipients and Jan Eisenhardt, the creator of the Awards himself, Janice Forsyth critically assesses the state's role in policing Indigenous bodies and identities through sport, from the assimilationist sporting regulations of residential schools to the present-day exclusion of Indigenous activities from mainstream sports. This work recognizes the role of sport as a tool for colonization in Canada, while also acknowledging its potential to become a tool for decolonization and self-determination. "Through considering the Awards in the broader context of ongoing colonial relations in Canada, and bringing to light the voices of the recipients, this study extends well beyond the Tom Longboat Awards history to encompass the complicated place of sport in the Indigenous experience." --Robert Kossuth, Associate Professor of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Lethbridge

The story of Canada’s other game from its invention by a Canadian to its current struggle for popularity. Basketball, the only major world sport undeniably invented by a Canadian, has ironically failed to win Canadians’ hearts more than a century after its creation. James Naismith’s brainchild is a popular recreational pastime in his homeland, but players with bigger dreams had better take their talents south of the border. Canadian hoops has languished in the seemingly eternal shadow of hockey, with its cannibalization of air time, advertising dollars, and corporate capital. Faced with limited opportunities at home, as many as 50 teenagers flock to U.S. prep schools and colleges every year to chase their dreams of college stardom and, much less likely, a shot at glory in the NBA. Against all odds, a skinny kid from Victoria named Steve Nash managed to reach the pinnacle of the sport, with a whirling-dervish style that earned him two MVP awards in the world’s greatest league. Today, a new generation of Canadians stand poised to follow in Nash’s path. But will their success spark a renaissance back home? This book chronicles basketball’s struggle to overcome its history as a poor cousin in a hockey-mad nation.

In the 1960s, Bruce Kidd was one of Canada’s most celebrated athletes. As a teenager, Kidd won races all over the globe, participated in the Olympics, and started a revolution in distance running and a revival in Canadian track and field. He quickly became a symbol of Canadian youth and the subject of endless media coverage. Although most athletes of his generation were cautioned to keep their opinions to themselves, Kidd took it upon himself to speak out on the problems and possibilities of Canadian sport. Encouraged by his parents and teammates, Kidd criticized the racism and sexism of amateur sport in Canada, the treatment of players in the National Hockey League, American control of the Canadian Football League, and the uneven coverage of sports by the media – and he continues to fight for equity to this day. After retiring from his career as an athlete, Kidd became a well-known advocate for gender and racial justice and an academic leader at the University of Toronto. Depicting a Canadian sport legend’s journey of joy, discovery, and activism, this memoir bears witness to the remarkable changes Bruce Kidd has lived through in more than seventy years of participation in Canadian and international sports.