"Education, Faculty of"@en . "Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of"@en . "DSpace"@en . "UBCV"@en . "Laubman, Katherine M."@en . "2010-11-26T18:43:35Z"@en . "1991"@en . "Master of Human Kinetics - MHK"@en . "University of British Columbia"@en . "This study attempted to discover and describe the cultural knowledge and understandings that Margaret (Bell) Gibson derived from her performance as a highly successful athlete in Canadian women's sport during the 1920s - 1930s. A case study approach was used that employed qualitative research strategies. This approach was considered appropriate as prominent issues in women's lives are subtle and context-bound.\r\nA series of five informal interviews was conducted with Bell, using an ethnographic approach developed by Spradley (1979). Each interview was recorded and transcribed into text. The text was then validated by Bell, prior to analysis by the researcher. An inductive-reflexive analysis of the text was employed, as much of the information emerged as Bell recalled her experiences in sport. This involved the use of an evolving methodology, which identified classifications of knowledge and structures of thought as they were revealed. Bell's narrative was contextually-grounded in a review of Canadian history from 1920 to 1938, as this seemed to connect Bell's experience as a sportswoman to the broader socio-historical milieu. Findings were substantiated through a process of triangulated inquiry wherein verification was sought from newspaper clippings, official records, and historical documents.\r\nThe analysis of Bell's narrative revealed a complex system of knowledge based on categories of information related to the structure of sport, social network, jumping, cultural activities, concepts of space and timing, and role definition. Documentation of the major sporting events Bell experienced, as an athlete, was also recorded. Implications for future research were discussed."@en . "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/30152?expand=metadata"@en . "A Historical \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 Ethnographic Account Of A Canadian Woman in Sport, 1920 -1938: The Story of Margaret (Bell) Gibson by Katherine M . Laubman B.P.E., The University of Alberta, 1968 A Thesis Submitted In Partial Fulfillment Of The Requirements For The Degree Of Master of Physical Education in The Faculty of Graduate Studies (School Of Physical Education and Recreation) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard The University of British Columbia August 1991 Katherine Laubman, 1991 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date A & L f j r l , m i DE-6 (2/88) ABSTRACT This study attempted to discover and describe the cultural knowledge and understandings that Margaret (Bell) Gibson derived from her performance as a highly successful athlete in Canadian women's sport during the 1920s - 1930s. A case study approach was used that employed qualitative research strategies. This approach was considered appropriate as prominent issues in women's lives are subtle and context-bound. A series of five informal interviews was conducted with Bell, using an ethnographic approach developed by Spradley (1979). Each interview was recorded and transcribed into text. . The text was then validated by Bell, prior to analysis by the researcher. An inductive-reflexive analysis of the text was employed, as much of the information emerged as Bell recalled her experiences in sport. This involved the use of an evolving methodology, which identified classifications of knowledge and structures of thought as they were revealed. Bell's narrative was contextually-grounded in a review of Canadian history from 1920 to 1938, as this seemed to connect Bell's experience as a sportswoman to the broader socio-historical milieu. Findings were substantiated through a process of triangulated inquiry wherein verification was sought from newspaper clippings, official records, and historical documents. The analysis of Bell's narrative revealed a complex system of knowledge based on categories of information related to the structure of sport, social network, jumping, cultural activities, concepts of space and timing, and role definition. Documentation of the major sporting events Bell experienced, as an athlete, was also recorded. Implications for future research were discussed. i i T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S Page ABSTRACT. - i i TABLE OF CONTENTS i i i LIST OF FIGURES v i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v i i CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Background to the Study . 1 The Research Question 2 The Nature of the Study 2 The Significance of the Study 3 Definition of Terms 4 Underlying Assumptions 6 Limitations of the Study 7 CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 9 CHAPTER 3: PROCEDURE 16 The Research Design 16 The Research Methodology 19 i i i Page CHAPTER 4: CANADA BETWEEN T H E WARS: DECADES OF DISCONTENT 2 4 Introduction 24 Patterns of Change 24 An Uncertain Canada 32 The Age of Mackenzie King 35 Nationalism and the Emergent Canadian Culture 37 CHAPTER 5: T H E WOMAN'S MOVEMENT BETWEEN T H E WARS .... 40 Women in the Public Sphere 40 Women at Work 51 Women in the Private Sphere 55 CHAPTER 6: PLAY LIKE GENTLEMEN: BEHAVE LIKE LADIES 59 Introduction 59 Women's Sport Between the Wars 60 CHAPTER 7: FAIR AND FLYING: T H E STORY OF MARGARET (BELL) GIBSON 75 Introduction 75 The Road to Success ; 76 The Sports Scene. 82 The Structure of Sport - - 82 Cultural Activities Related to Sport 94 i v Page CHAPTER 8: DISCUSSION \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 1 0 5 Introduction \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 Summary of Findings Implications for Future Research H 2 BIBLIOGRAPHY 115 APPENDIX: TRANSCRIPTS OF INTERVIEWS WITH MARGARET (BELL) GIBSON 122 L I S T O F F I G U R E S Figure Page 1. Spradley's Development Research Sequence 1 7 2. Population Growth of Metropolitan Areas, 1930-31 and Percentage of Urban Population by Province, 1911-41 25 3. Reference List for Dates for the Achievement of Political Equality 42 4. The Canadian Population and Labour Force 52 5. Distribution of the Male Labour Force, 1921-41 and Distribution of the Female Labour Force, 1921-41 54 6. Componential Analysis of Sport Conceptualized by Margaret (Bell) Gibson 34 7. Taxonomy of the High Jump Conceptualized by Margaret (Bell) Gibson 9 1 8. Taxonomy of the Structure of Sport Conceptualized by Margaret (Bell) Gibson ^2 9. Taxonomy of the Structures of Sport Conceptualized by Margaret (Bell) Gibson ^ 10. Taxonomy of Cultural Activities Related to Sport Engaged In by Margaret (Bell) Gibson 95 11. Margaret Gibson's Social Network 1 0 1 v i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research project would not have been realized without the support of more people than I can individually thank. To these people I am very grateful. There are a number of people whom I would especially like to thank: Margaret Gibson, a very dear friend, who so generously shared her time, trust, and a wonderful portion of her life with me. My husband, Rob, and my children, Shaun, Robyn and Kent, for their love and understanding when my studies meant I was not there for them. My thesis committee - to Dr. B. Schrodt, Dr. P. Vertinsky, and Dr. J. Powell, for their faith in me and in this research project; for the generosity and wisdom they so kindly shared. My sister, Barbara, and friends who offered advice and encouragement when I was feeling discouraged. To Justine Stull, whose patience and perseverance with the word processor made this possible. To my fellow staff members at North Shore Continuing Education for their support and understanding. vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY This research endeavor evolved from a review of the literature of women's history in North America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A number of issues were identified. Because of the social, economic and political norms and barriers women faced, both in sport and in the broader cultural context, women often played different roles and had different experiences from men. Scholars also found that women often expressed perceptions of their experiences differently. When historians analyzed sources of information on women such as legal documents, medical textbooks, magazine articles, and newspaper reports; they found that most of the records were generated by men [59]. The researcher concluded that research efforts in women's sport history \"... must begin from women's experience as women describe it\" [40, 384]. This involves learning about the meanings of sport from the women who played them. It also entails an examination of the interrelationships between women's involvement in sport and other aspects of their lives. While the literature has documented the growth of sport for the middle and upperclass athlete who lived in Ontario and for the English living in Quebec, there remains a need to study the sporting experience of the female athlete who did not attend university and who grew up in the Western and the Maritime regions. This research looked at the sports experience of Margaret (Bell) Gibson. Bell, who grew up in British Columbia, competed in the high jump event at the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympic Games. She was a very active sportswoman who participated at Canadian and international levels of competition from 1929-1938. 1 THE RESEARCH QUESTION The purpose of this study was to discover and describe the cultural knowledge and understandings that Margaret (Bell) Gibson derived from her performance as a highly successful athlete in Canadian women's sport, during the 1920s-1930s, and what these revealed about women's experience with sport in Canada. THE NATURE OF THE STUDY The essential core of this research was to describe Bell's sense of what was happening while she was an active participant in the sports culture. It is the internal view that human beings have of their own actions, values and feelings that is the overriding prerequisite for understanding what they actually do [98]. The study took the form of a case-study and employed qualitative research strategies. A series of informal interviews using an ethnographic interview approach [84] and an inductive-reflexive analysis of the data was used. Bell's narrative was contextually-grounded in a review of Canadian history from 1920-1938. Such an approach enabled one to understand Bell's sport experience in its full complexity and facilitated the best possible reconstruction of Bell's subjective sense of meaning. The researcher recognizes that as part of the world being studied, one must be aware of the effects of one's participation in this study. A co-operative, inter-subjective dialogue was engaged in from which Bell and the researcher came to a deeper understanding of the meaning of the events experienced in their areas of mutual interest. 3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY From a historical perspective, the recounting of Bell's story was significant. Bell was the only female athlete from British Columbia to represent Canada in track and field in the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympic Games. It was important to document her story while she was still well enough to tell it. The determinants of human behavior are extremely complex and difficult to ascertain. Use of the ethnographic method in this study allowed the researcher to more fully comprehend the nature of that complexity. The freedom and flexibility associated with this method increased the potential for revealing new insights that might have been overlooked with a method that used a narrower focus. This study provided an insightful, holistic description of a cultural scene that can be used to: (a) provide a personal and vivid account of the sports culture as understood by a participant in that culture, (b) represent the image that Bell holds of herself, thereby enabling the researcher to comprehend the world from Bell's point of view, (c) yield information about what Bell had in common with other female athletes and how she used cultural knowledge to maintain relationships, (d) provide a better understanding of the role of female athletes, (e) yield new cultural frameworks that will enable a fuller understanding of the structure of sport, (f) indicate how cultural patterns were established in Bell's sport experience and how they may have impacted other areas of her life, (g) relate themes found within the sports culture to more abstract theoretical constructs, and (h) define new topics for study. 4 Placing the ethnography in a historical context was important. Understanding the broader context served to defer the isolation of sport from other important social, historical, and intellectual issues [63]. A review of the historical context also served to answer the following questions: (a) What historical events may have contributed to the emergence of what has been termed the \"Golden Age of Sport\" [16, 35]? (b) What effect, if any, did the Depression have on the participation and organization of Canadian women in sport during the nineteen thirties? DEFINITION OF TERMS Unless otherwise specified, the definitions of the following terms were found in: Spradley, J.P. and McCurdy, W. (1972). The Cultural Experience. Kingsport, Tennessee: Science Research Assoc., and Spradley, J.P. (1979). The Ethnographic Interview. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Componential Analysis - the analysis of relevant aspects of culture as semantic dimensions or selected sets of attributes; also the components by which semantic categories of classes are differentiated [19,17]. Contexting - the process wherein determinants of cultural behavior are understood in terms of their broader cultural framework [63, 55]. Culture - the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate socially-accepted behavior. Emic - the view from within a culture that assumes that information concerning the actor's inner state is essential for an understanding of his/her behavior and for proper description of the behavioral events in which he/she participates [37, 34]. Ethnography - the work of studying a way of life or a culture and the end product of the study, an ethnography. As a way of studying a culture, an ethnography is committed to the understanding of human experience. It examines the surrounds the human experience, the history that precedes it, the understandings of the persons who created it, and the patterns that give it form. It is concerned with the meaning of action and events to the people we seek to understand [27, 24]. Ethnographic Semantics - the careful study of language that seeks to describe a culture in its own terms with the aim of discovering the characteristic ways a people categorize, code, and define their own experience. Etic - the analytic view of an outside investigator based on categories that are used to make cross-cultural comparisons. Feminism - the emerging framework in the women's movement that reflects the contemporary advocacy for equal rights for women [31, 28]. Inductive - a form of reasoning that develops from examination of the specific to the formulation of broad understandings or generalizations [23, 20]. Informant - a person who acts as a source of cultural information. Qualitative - a non-quantifiable approach to research that deals with the discovery of the mental substratum of which social life is the embodiment. The relevant components are the structures of thought [37, 34]. Reflexivity - the recognition that one is part of the social world one studies. It includes a reliance on common sense knowledge and an awareness that the researcher has an effect on the phenomena studied. It recognizes that the researcher's knowledge may be erroneous and therefore should be subject to systematic inquiry where doubt seems justified [33,14]. Sport - a diversity of physical activities that range from simple recreational pursuits of a physical nature to highly competitive contests oriented to specific ends (Park, 53). \"Social practices whose meanings, metaphoric qualities, and regulatory structures are indissolubly connected to the making and remaking of ourselves as agents (individual and collective) in society\" [28, 50]. 6 Symbol - any object or event that acts as a referent. It consists of any phenomenon we can perceive or experience and involves three elements: the symbol itself, one or more referents, and a relationship between the symbol and the referent. UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS The researcher has formulated several assumptions on which this ethnography was based. Additional assumptions that underlie the ethnographic perspective have also been included. The assumptions are: (a) There is no single truth but rather there are many truths depending on one's perspective. (b) This research studied Bell's life and in the process it became part of that life. Both this research process and the cultural phenomena studied involved selection and interpretation by the informant and the researcher. (c) Bell had cultural knowledge that she learned as a participant in the sports scene. The researcher assumed that there was value in studying Bell's cultural knowledge. (d) The researcher assumed that Bell's cultural knowledge would be accurately reflected by the flow of her memory. The researcher also assumed that Bell's knowledge was \"... integrative, differentially shared, and cannot be directly observed\" [84, 7]. (e) \"Language is the primary means for transmitting culture. Much of any culture is encoded in linguistic form as both tacit and explicit culture are revealed through speech\" [84, 8-9]. (f) By studying the text of Bell's narrative, it was possible to reveal Bell's system of meaning and to attain results that had cognitive validity [27,195]. The results of this ethnography generated understandings about how Bell successfully made use of complex meaning systems to organize her behavior, to understand herself and others, and how to make sense out of the sports scene. (g) Cultural meaning is encoded in symbols; the meaning of a symbol can be determined by looking at its relationship to other symbols in a culture [84]. This ethnography decoded Bell's cultural symbols and identified the underlying relationships among the culture symbols. \"Forms of athletic performance are laden with symbolism and may themselves be extended cultural performances of a symbolic nature\" [61:36]. (h) Formulations of structures depend upon categorizations; that is, culture can be understood in terms of what was or was not included in Bell's description of her cultural scenes. Placing the categories that reflected Bell's cultural knowledge in the context of a life history eliminated the isolated selection of formal categorizations and placed the recovered narrative into an evolving historical account. (i) Inquiry can never be regarded as value free. As long as social science is done by people, research must be value-bound, and the notion of detached objectivity must be regarded, at best, as an illusion. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY (a) The time period of this study was from 1920 to 1938. This period represented a unit of time set between the two World Wars. It also reflected a period that saw many turbulent social, political,and economic changes in Canada which may have had an influence on Canadian sport. The 1920s-l930s also reflected the period when Bell most actively participated in the Canadian sports scene. (b) When using a single informant, a description of selected aspects of a culture was made. More informants could have been interviewed, including 8 other female team members from the 1936 Summer Olympic Games team; however limitations of time and finance curtailed this aspect of the research. (c) Most of the biographical information that was included in the study was provided by the informant. Some events were more likely remembered than others; some may have been intentionally suppressed. There frequently was no simple way to check the accuracy of these memories of prior events. (d) A certain level of understanding and meaning was lost with the transcription of oral history into text. Written transcription cannot fully convey the meaning conveyed by inflections of the voice, intensity and speed of delivery, and facial expressions conveyed by the informant. CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Turbulent social, economic and political conditions were characteristic of the world between the great world wars. Canada. 1922-1939. by J.H. Thompson and A Seager served as a primary reference for providing an interpretive and comprehensive historical account of the national and provincial socio-political history of Canada during this period. The narrative reflected on the complexity of Canada by looking at, \"...the limited identities' of class, region, ethnicity and gender\" [91, xiii]. The chapters were written in a clear, narrative style with well-documented facts and extensive tables that examined national statistics such as federal election results, levels of industrial production, and demographic data. Several chapters in Canada: A Story of Challenge, by J. M. S. Careless, served as a secondary reference. Careless examined the major historical forces at work in the creation of the nation of Canada and looked at the problems of developing national unity, given the vastness of Canadian geography and the separate influences of Britain and the United States. While Careless provided a readable overview, the chapters were not well-referenced and the focus was restricted to a summary of political and economic history. P. Berton and M. Braithwaite were reviewed in order to develop supplementary understandings of what was happening in Canada, specific to the Depression years. Berton's book, The Great Depression. 1929- 1939. was written in an informal, narrative style. Berton concentrated on people; including extensive reflections on the diaries of Mackenzie King. His characters included prime ministers, labor leaders, and unknown Canadians who rode boxcars across the country searching for employment. It was a well-documented reflection on the ineptitude of the Canadian government to face the tragic realities of the Depression. The Hungry Thirties 1930-1940. by M. Braithwaite, offered a brief look at the major social, historical, and cultural events of the decade with a focus on the impact of the United States on 9 Canadian culture. Numerous photographs of major events and figures of the period were included. A major limitation of these references (because much of their focus emphasized the national and provincial political arenas) was that very little reflection or documentation of women's history during this period was included. History of Women in North America. 1830 to the Present, by A.C. Fellman, and Women of America. A History, edited by CR. Bekin and M.B. Norton, provided a window into the world of women's experience. Both histories were a compilation of essays, documents, life histories, biographies, and chronological narratives that touched on four topical areas of significance: women's place in the home, in the labor force, in politics, and in feminist ideology. Written from a feminist perspective, both books examined the status of women in juxtaposition to the prevailing ideologies that prescribed and frequently determined woman's role. Canadian Women: A History, by G. Prentice, P. Bourne, and G. C. Brandt,et al., examined women's experience during the inter-war period with detailed accounts of the activities and issues that women's organizations pursued, the impact of technological changes that were introduced into the home and work place, and how major economic changes effected the place of women in Canadian society. The history was based on traditional written sources and on oral accounts. It was very well-referenced and researched, although the level of detail was at times overwhelming. The collected essays of Joan Kelly in Women. History, and Theory offered an historical and theoretical analysis of the conditions that allowed feminist theory to emerge and advocated the development of what Kelly termed \"doubled vision.\" This involved developing a feminine consciousness that would enable women to participate in patriarchal society in order to change it and at the same time, to stand outside it, in order to perceive what needed to be changed. She concluded her essays with a call for women to recognize the importance of their own experience and to use sex and gender as analytical categories when examining the dominant culture. Supplementary readings included the autobiography, Clearing in the West, of Canadian feminist and progressive 11 reformer, Nellie McClung, and Veronica Boag-Strong's \"Canadian Feminism in the 1920s: The Case of Nellie McClung \". The autobiography of Nellie McClung provided a valuable account of the life of the Canadian feminist and progressive, based on her experiences as a young woman growing up in Western Canada. Boag-Strong's article traced the development of McClung's political activism and struggles for social reform. Women at Work. 1850-1930. edited by J . Acton, P. Goldsmith, and B. Shepard, reviewed the effect of industrialization in North America on women's position in the home and on their participation in the public sphere. Narrowing the focus to the history of women's participation in sport during the 1920s-1930s, a number of books, articles and anthologies were reviewed. From Fair Sex to Feminism, edited by J A . Mangan and Roberta Park, consisted of a collection of articles and essays written by researchers from Britain, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Written from a socio-historical perspective, the role of women in sport and physical education in the industrial and post-industrial eras was examined to determine the cultural expectations that Western society had of women as they emerged as active participants in sport. The book was well-documented, frequently used original sources, and provided excellent analyses of socio-historical determinants. While tracing the history and development of women's sport in North America and Canada in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, several books were referred to. They were The History of Sport in Canada, by M.L. Howell and R. A. Howell, and Her Story in Sport: A Historical Anthology of Women in Sports by Reet Howell. Both books presented a scholarly overview of sports history as reflected in recent studies conducted in sports history and in a number of published articles. The History of Sport in Canada traced the chronological development of sport. Included in it was a chapter by Ron Lappage, \"The Canadian Scene and Sport: 1921-1939\", which proved helpful in providing an overview of the development of male sport in Canada. Unfortunately, very little attention was devoted in Lappage's work to women's sports experience. Her Story in Sport: A Historical Anthology of Women in Sports looked more exclusively at the development of women's sport in the United States and Canada. Points of divergence in the history of male and female participation in sports were reviewed, and the struggles of outstanding sportswomen to gain equality of opportunity in the sports world was documented. Canada's Sporting Heroes, by S.F. Wise and Douglas Fisher, briefly summarized Canadian sport development and offered a number of vignettes of outstanding female athletes from Canada's past. A Concise History of Sport in Canada by Don Morrow and Mary Keyes, et al.; Women in Canadian Life. Sports by Jean Cochrane, A. Hoffman, and P. Kincaid, et al.; Out of Bounds by Helen Lenskyj, and Fair Ball: Towards Sex Equality in Canadian Sport by M.A. Hall and D. Richardson, provided additional insight into the emergence of Canadian women in sport. Several chapters, including \"Sport Between the Wars\" and \"Women in Sport,\" in A Concise History of Sport in Canada provided brief summaries of factors operating in Canadian society that acted as opportunities or limitations to the broadening of sport and women's sphere in athletics during the inter-war period. A number of articles, essays, theses, and dissertations written by Canadian sport researchers including Barbara Schrodt, Ann Hall, and Bruce Kidd served to enlarge the scope of the literature review. B. Schrodt has examined the performance of Canadian athletes in the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, as well as the demise of Sabbatarianism and its impact on the development of Sunday sport in Canada. She has also reviewed Canadian newspaper articles to determine if significant developments in women's sport were revealed by the press. In her unpublished doctoral dissertation, \"A History of Pro-Rec: The British Columbia Provincial Recreation Program 1934 to 1953,\" Schrodt looked at the economic and political forces impacting on British Columbia during this period and at the efforts of the British Columbia government to counteract these forces through the implementation of a government-initiated, provincial recreation program. Several articles by M. Ann Hall have looked at the nature of women's experience in sport from a feminist perspective and have asked whether there can be a distinctive feminist theory of knowledge. Hall maintains that it is necessary to understand women's perspective so that women can reconstruct the world of sport, thereby allowing their interests to assume a position of equality with men. \"Girls Sports Run By Girls: The Women's Amateur Athletic Federation of Canada 1925-1941\" by Bruce Kidd, served as a major reference that traced the early development of the governing body for women's track and field in Canada. The article combined traditional written sources with personal interviews and provided an interesting account of the differing forces and key figures who played a part in the establishment of the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation. The primary source of information used in the literature review of qualitative research methods and ethnography was James P. Spradley's, The Ethnographic Interview. Spradley outlined an ethnographic semantic methodology for the purpose of conducting and analyzing ethnographic interviews and completing a written ethnography. A criticism of Spradley's book was that the model of culture and social-life underlying Spradley's model was somewhat over-simplified. Additional readings concerned with ethnography included Systematic Fieldwork. by O. Werner and G. M. Schoepfle. Written by former students of Spradley, the book attempted to describe the best possible approach to ethnography, ethnographic analysis, and the presentation of the ethnographic reports using concepts such as \"first-level knowledge\" and \"meta-knowledge.\" This was supported with an emerging theory of ethnography that drew from such diverse fields as cognitive psychology, logic, linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and anthropology. Ethnography. Principles in Practice, by Martin Hammersley and Paul Atkinson, also served as a very readable and valuable sourcebook that stressed the importance of reflexivity. That is, the fact that social research is part of the social world it studies and that how informants respond to the presence of the researcher may be very informative. Research Interviewing, by E.G. Mishler, reflected on the proposition that an interview is a form of discourse that is a joint product of what the interviewers and informants talk about together and how they talk with each other. The chapter on \"Language, Meaning and Narrative Analysis\" looked at how descriptions of, explanations about, expressions of, persuasions to, logical arguments, and narrations of, each have a different structure. Additional review of the literature included the reading of a number of ethnographies that included J. P. Spradley's, The Cocktail Waitress: Woman's Work in a Man's World. Jo-Ann Zyla's, \"Measuring Up: Status and Stigma Within A Special Olympic Floor Hockey Team,\" and Derek Swain's ethnography, \"The Experience of Withdrawing from Professional Sport.\" Unfortunately, qualitative research in the sports arena is still in its infancy. As a result, very few ethnographic studies were available in the sport-related literature. An especially useful article by Lawrence Locke, \"Qualitative Research as a Form of Scientific Inquiry in Sport and Physical Education\" examined the strengths and weaknesses of the qualitative perspective in terms of its application in sport and physical education. Additional articles by Linda Bain, George Sage, Robert Schutz, Nancy Struna, and Roberta J. Park discussed related concerns about the need for and value of qualitative research in physical education. Several books were reviewed to assess whether or not acuity of memory is effected by the aging process. According to Salthouse in A Theory of Cognitive Aging it has not been possible to reach a definitive conclusion with respect to the influence of life experiences on patterns of cognitive aging in most instances. There is some indication however, that crystallized intelligence, or the ability to retain general facts, knowledge, and vocabulary, is believed to retain its acuity to a high level in persons over sixty-five years of age. It is the fluid abilities, or the ability to acquire and retain new knowledge, that exhibits the greatest decline with age. There has also been some evidence to suggest that the rate of scanning memory decreases with increased age. That is, some 15 loss in measures of memory functioning may be attributable to a slower rate of processing information that is associated with growing old. CHAPTER 3 PROCEDURE THE RESEARCH DESIGN Given the interpretive nature of the research question, a qualitative method of study was selected. Qualitative methods have proven to be particularly appropriate where gender and women's issues are topics of inquiry because prominent experiences in women's lives are subtle and context-bound. Thus, from symbolic and interpretive perspectives, feminist scholars have emphasized the central elements of social life, i.e. identities, roles and institutions that are socially-construed and are capable of continuous change by the humans who create them [26]. This research, in the form of a life history, employed inductive research strategies. As this life history was strongly influenced by the informant's cultural background and by the fact that much of the informant's framework for meaning was not consciously known, it was necessary to use inductive inquiry. A characteristic of this mode of inquiry is its flexible, evolving nature. Through a recurring cycle that included reflexivity, gathering data, forming tentative understandings, cross-checking data, confirming, and validating understandings: the study progressively refocussed and narrowed. There was a constantly evolving methodology in which themes and strategies emerged as the study progressed [33]. A preliminary ethnographic interview with Bell was conducted as a pilot study. As this proved successful, the researcher decided to use a series of in-depth ethnographic interviews utilizing Spradley's [84] Developmental Research Sequence (Figure 1). Use of the Developmental Research Sequence provided an enabling, step-by-step approach that assisted in fulfilling the aims of the research. This involved an interest on the part of the ethnographer in taxonomizing or categorizing cultural perceptions in the ethnographic account. Use of this methodology was appropriate because, as stated by Spradley [84, 9]: 16 FIGURE 1 Sprad ley ' s Developmental Research Sequence - THE ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW 12. Writing th\u00C2\u00AB athnograony t 71 11. (Discovering cultural ihemt] 10. Making a comoonential analysis t 9. Asking contrast questions t 8. Making a taxonomic analysis / 7. Ask ing \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 structure* quamtons / / / / / t / 6. Making a domatn analysis 7 t 5. Analyzing ethnographic interviews t 4. Asking descriotive auestions t 3. Making an ethnograohic record \ 2. Interviewing an informant t 1. Locating an informant \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ 18 Every ethnographer makes use of what people say in seeking to describe their culture. Both tacit and explicit culture are revealed through speech, both in casual comments and in lengthy interviews. Because language is the primary means for transmitting culture from one generation to the next... The aim of the in-depth interview was to encourage Bell to develop her answers in a personal manner, while providing the researcher with the opportunity \"to probe deeply, to uncover new clues, to open up new dimensions of a problem and to secure vivid, inclusive accounts from informants that are based on personal experience.\" [13, 107]. A rich ethnography describes a cultural reality in such a way that a non-member of the culture could pass as an insider (emic viewpoint) in that culture if he or she had internalized the cultural features of a particular setting [93]. Thus, the desired end of ethnographic research is thick description - a term made popular by Geertz (25). Thick description provides an account that not only presents and organizes the stories as Bell related them, but also explores deeper meaning structures which members of the cultural group may not be cognizant of. A process of \"triangulated inquiry\" was used to collect data and substantiate findings. This involved seeking verification from a number of different sources and using a number of different techniques for collecting data [92]. The researcher's field notes, memorabilia (medals, trophies, souvenirs) Bell had collected, a film of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, and newspaper articles that related to the sports culture of the 1920-1930's were examined with a view to validating information revealed by the informant. Analysis of the transcript generated in the interviews with Bell provided the researcher with a detailed description of the sports scene experienced by Bell. Through an inductive narrowing of the focus, inferences were made about Bell's system of knowledge; that is, how she made sense of her world. Cultural inferences were contextually-grounded in a review of the literature pertaining to developments in the women's movement, sports scene, and broader socio-historical milieu in Canada during the period between the great wars. THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Locating an Informant This first step of the research process involved identifying the characteristics of a good informant and then locating the best possible informant. \"One of the great challenges in doing ethnography is to initiate, develop, and maintain a productive informant relationship \" [84, 45]. Dexter [17, 8] has commented on the importance of the selection of the \"key informant\": Concentration on a key informant may ... help the investigator to acquire a better picture of the norms, attitudes, expectations, and evaluations of a particular group than he could obtain solely from less intensive observations or through conducting a greater number of less intensive interviews, by themselves. Margaret Bell Gibson acted as the informant in this research project. She was selected on the basis of: a) the established relationship between Bell and the researcher in which Bell appeared to be a very interesting, willing, and able conversationalist, b) the thorough enculturation and long-term involvement of Bell in the sports culture, c) the high-level of success Bell achieved in competitive athletics, and d) the availability and willingness of Bell to act as an informant. Bell was initially contacted by telephone and asked if she would act as an informant. The interviews were conducted in Bell's personal residence in North Vancouver. Prior to each interview, a telephone call was made to confirm with Bell that the arranged interview time was convenient. 20 Interviewing the Informant Bell was asked to sign a letter of consent and was asked for permission to record the interviews. Each interview was recorded on a cassette tape, using a portable SONY tape recorder. The ethnographic interviews were viewed as a series of friendly conversations in which the researcher introduced elements that facilitated the narration of Bell's story. Three very important elements that the researcher attempted to address when conducting the interviews were: a) explicit purpose - it was necessary for the ethnographer to explain to the informant the purpose and direction of each interview, b) ethnographic explanations - these included general statements about what the project entailed, the reasons for recording the interviews, and how the recording would be accomplished, explanations regarding the format of the interview; and c) ethnographic questions - these included structural questions, descriptive questions and contrast questions [83]. Interviews and Field Notes While the interviews were conducted, brief field note entries were made in order to emphasize portions of the interview that the researcher felt required closer examination, and to indicate the emotions Bell seemed to convey when relating significant aspects of her experience. Immediately following each interview, a transcription of the discourse into text was made using a dictaphone. Additional Data Additional data consisted of the collection of medals and prizes that Bell had won in track and field competitions, and several volumes of Bell's scrapbooks which were filled with newspaper clippings of the major track and field events of the 1920s-1930s. Leni Riefenstahl's documentary film of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympic Games was 21 filled with newspaper clippings of the major track and field events of the 1920s-1930s. Leni Riefenstahl's documentary film of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympic Games was also reviewed. This data was included as part of the ethnographic record and was used to validate dates and details identified in Bell's discourse. Analysis of the Interviews Preliminary analysis of the collected data followed the transcription of each of the interviews. According to Spradley [84, 93]: ... ethnographic analysis is the search for parts of a culture and their relationships as conceptualized by informants. Most of the time this internal structure, as it is known to informants, remains tacit; outside their awareness. The ethnographer has to devise ways to discover this tacit knowledge. This step involved the review of field notes and transcripts in a search for cultural symbols and the relationships among these symbols. To study the relationships among all of Bell's terms in the sport's scene represented an enormous task. Because of time limitations, a few selected domains were studied in-depth, while an attempt was made to develop a holistic understanding of the cultural scene as a whole. This meant that some of the interview questions ranged widely over many topics while other questions probed more deeply into selected domains. Bell validated the information contained in each interview transcript and the initial analysis that immediately followed the completion of the transcripts. This assisted in maintaining the focus that reflected Bell's views. Discovering Cultural Themes While an adequate ethnographic description includes a detailed analysis of selected domains, it also includes an overview of the cultural scene and the statements that convey a holistic perspective. The concept of theme is grounded in the idea that culture consists of a system of meanings that is integrated into some kind of larger pattern. Spradley [84, 186] has defined cultural theme \"... as any cognitive principle, tacit or explicit, recurrent in a number of domains and serving as a relationship among subsystems of cultural meaning.\" That is, themes recur in more than two domains and serve to link a number of symbols into meaningful relationships. Most themes remain at the tacit level of knowledge even though most people use them to organize their behavior and interpret experience. In order to discover cultural themes, a number of strategies were employed for conducting a theme analysis. These included: 1. immersion in the cultural scene by reviewing the literature, by listening to Bell for an extended period of time, and by spending considerable time reflecting on the data, 2. making a cultural inventory that included lists of identified and possible unidentified cultural domains, 3. making a componential analysis of the various cultural domains and searching for dimensions of contrast for all the domains that were analysed, 4. identifying organizing domains, and 5. making schematic diagrams of cultural domains. At some point a decision was made that the collection and analysis of the data was relatively complete. This decision recognizes that no discovery procedure can provide a perfect replica of another person's knowledge system. Writing the Ethnography Writing this ethnography involved a process of translation wherein the language and thinking of Bell had to be comprehended and then communicated to others who were unfamiliar with her cultural scene. The ethnography began with the particular, concrete experiences of everyday life and then moved to more general cultural statements. \"In writing an ethnography as a translation, the concern with the general is incidental to the particular. In order for a reader to see the lives of the people we study, as they see themselves, we must show them through particulars, not merely talk about them in generalities.\" [84, 207]. Agar [4] has stated that a translation of a culture can be examined in terms of the extent to which it contains meanings that facilitate the interpretation of the cultural activities of a person or group within a particular culture. He states that an ethnography can employ the following analytic levels: (a) it can include meanings which members of a culture attach to their own actions, (b) it can include interpretations which members of a culture attach to particular events when the group member is outside the context of those events, (c) it can seek common themes and patterns which recur in more than one situation within a culture, and (d) it can relate common themes and patterns found within a culture to more abstract theoretical concepts. Ultimately, this ethnography must strive by use of data to convince and persuade. The reader must be convinced that given the evidence presented in the ethnography, this is an acceptable and revealing analysis of what has been going on. CHAPTER 4 CANADA BETWEEN THE WARS: DECADES OF DISCONTENT INTRODUCTION The Canadian experience between the end of the Great War and the beginning of World War II can best be described as turbulent. According to Thompson and Seager [91], the two decades prior to World War I had seen the nation transformed by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and westward expansion. Encompassing immense diversities - demographic, economic, political and social - Canada of 1920 was faced with post-war grievances. These included divisions between the French and the English, the East and the West, and labour and capital. During the ensuing period of discord, Canada's political parties appeared unable to resolve the challenges created by these divisions. PATTERNS OF CHANGE Evidence of change can be found by examining basic patterns of birth, marriage, life span, employment, and migration. Enumerators of the Sixth Decennial Census in 1921 counted 8.8 million Canadians. Immigration and internal migration, largely from East to West, produced significant population increases in the Western provinces; moderate growth in Ontario and Quebec; and very modest increases in the Maritimes, with the exception of Prince Edward Island, which experienced a population 'decrease. However, Ontario and Quebec remained the hub of the nation as sixty percent of the Canadian population lived in these two provinces. Although where Canadians lived was almost equally divided between urban and rural centers, an important trend noted in the 1921 census was the increasing urbanization of Canada (Figure 2). Montreal had over 700,000, people which represented a larger population than that of six of the nine provinces [91]. 24 FIGURE 2 Population Growth of Metropol i tan Areas, 1930-31 and Percentage of Urban Populat ion by Province, 1911-41 Population Growth of Metropolitan Areas, 1901-31 - Within City Limits \"Greater Cities\" 1921 1931 1941 1931 1941 Montreal 618,506 818,577 903,007 1,023,158 1,139,921 Toronto 521,893 631,207 667,457 810,467 900,491 Vancouver 163,220 246,593 275,353 308,340 351,491 Winnipeg 179,087 218,785 221,960 284,295 290,540 Hamilton 114,151 155,547 166 ,337 \u00E2\u0080\u0094 ' \u00E2\u0080\u0094 Ottawa 107,843 126,872 154,951 \u00E2\u0080\u0094 \u00E2\u0080\u0094 Quebec 95,193 130,594 150,757 \u00E2\u0080\u0094 \u00E2\u0080\u0094 Sources: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Rural and Urban Composition of the Canadian Population, Census Monograph 6, 1931 -Census of Canada, 1941, Vol. II, Population by Local Subdivisions. Percentage of Urban Population by Province, 1911-41 1911 1921 1931 1941 Prince Edward Island 16.0 18.8 19.5 22.1 Nova Scotia 36 .7 44.8 46.6 52.0 New Brunswick 26.7 35.2 35.4 38.7 Quebec 44.5 51.8 59.5 61.2 Ontario 49.5 58.8 63.1 67.5 Manitoba 39.3 41.5 45.2 45.7 Saskatchewan 16.1 16.8 20.3 21.3 Alberta 29.4 30.7 31.8 31.9 British Columbia 50.9 50.9 62.3 64.0 Canada 41.8 47.4 52.5 55.7 Source: Leroy O. Stone, Urban Development in Canada (Ottawa, 1967), 29. based on 1956 Census definition. 26 The median age of Canadians increased to just under twenty-four years, the result of two important developments: the implementation of public health schemes and an increase in immigration, especially of young adults. The Eastern regions had older populations than the West. Almost everyone in Canada between the ages of thirty-five and fifty was married. Marriage provided the foundation upon which Canadian society was constructed and the lowest divorce rate in the Western world was cited as evidence of the happiness of Canadian families [91]. In Quebec, seventy-five per cent of the families reported having children at home, while British Columbia represented a low of sixty per cent. With the exception of Quebec, family size declined throughout the period, especially among the middle and upper classes living in urban centers [91]. Prentice, et al.[68] has stated that, by 1921, the fertility rate of urban couples was approximately twenty per cent lower than that of rural couples. Reasons for declining family size included reduction of birth rates, limited use of children as units of economic production, child labour laws, and compulsory education laws. Smaller families meant that women devoted fewer years in their total lifespan to rearing children at home. Despite their high birth rate, French Canadians declined slightly in terms of overall population, to form 27.9 per cent of Canada's population. Those of British origin recorded a slight increase to 55.4 percent of all Canadians. Persons of German origin formed the largest group, at 3.3 percent of the remaining twenty-two different races whose origins were neither French nor British. Thus, outside of Quebec, Canada still thought of itself as British. Religious affiliation indicated 97.6 percent of all Canadians belonged to some Christian denomination, with the majority belonging to the Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican and Methodist Churches. Most of Canada's young people attended school as all the provinces, except Quebec, had enacted legislation enforcing compulsory school attendance. The Roman Catholic and Protestant Committees for Public Instruction retained provincial responsibility for education in Quebec. Few students completed their secondary schooling and enrolment in post-secondary institutions numbered less than 50,000 in 1921 [91]. Fluctuations in population growth occurred with altering cycles of economic prosperity and restraint throughout 1920-1939. The population of Canada did increase from 8.8 million in 1921 to 11.5 million in 1941; however, the pace of growth decreased, especially following the onset of the Depression. As economic conditions in the Dominion deteriorated during the 1930s, the Canadian government severely restricted immigration [68]. The birthrate, by 1937, fell to an all-time low of 2.6 births per woman from 3.2 in 1930, as twenty-one percent of the women who were in their prime reproductive years during the Depression chose to delay their marriages or remain childless [68]. The Depression left the province of Saskatchewan with 25,000 fewer inhabitants in 1941 than in 1931; while in British Columbia, thousands of homeless unemployed young men drifted in, searching for a warmer climate to sleep outside in winter and searching for employment opportunities. According to Schrodt [75], in August, 1931, over 6,500 interprovincial transients were registered in British Columbia. Growth of urban centers slowed during the Depression, although there continued to be more women residents than men living in the cities. This reflected increased employment opportunities for women in the cities. By recording the distribution of Canadian workers, the census of 1921 looked indirectly at the Canadian economy. Agriculture remained the largest employer of men in all the provinces with the exception of British Columbia. The province was primarily dependent on extractive industries, so that one-third of its male workforce was employed in logging and one-fifth in mining. Across the Prairies, seven out of ten male workers were engaged in agricultural endeavors. Ontario and Quebec recorded having 60 percent of the jobs in secondary manufacturing, Canada's second largest employer. Trade and merchandising ranked as the third most significant employer in Canada in 1921, followed by the transportation sector. Lagging far behind, additional employers were all 28 three levels of government, professional occupations, domestic service, mining, logging, fishing, and hunting [91]. The tremendous economic and social dislocation that Canada experienced immediately following the end of the Great War reinforced the notion that women should not compete for men's jobs. Massive unemployment and labor unrest characterized the immediate post-war years as the era of easy growth was ending. Western farmlands were not limitless. Emergency tariff increases inacted in 1921, and the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922, had severe consequences on Canadian exports, which fell rapidly. As farm prices collapsed, farmers suffered the most severely [91]. By 1923, the Canadian economy had begun to recover. The most striking advances were not made in the Prairies but in the North, where a great mining empire was created in the Canadian Shield. Additional important advances were the development of the lumber, pulp and paper industries, and the development of hydro-electric power, which gave Ontario a cheap and efficient supply of energy. Transportation was vastly improved as a system of highways was built and airplanes opened up travel and air freight into the Far North. The Arctic became a very viable part of the Canadian economy with its vast riches in fur, oil, gold, and other minerals [15]. The Canada of pioneers and frontier settlements ceased to exist as the majority of Canadians were living and working in the mining settlements and urban centers of the Dominion. The newly-found prosperity had its price. The rapid development of the paper and mining industries required heavy capital investment. Unco-ordinated provincial development policies were helped along by financial promoters so that businessmen and provincial politicians became partners. The uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources during the 1920s has often been blamed on the allocation of the resources to the provincial governments by the federal government. Historians have noted, however, that federal-provincial disagreements about resource development were frequently concerned with the distribution of profits rather than with the policy of rapid development by large, private corporations. Corporate mergers, as evidenced in the automobile industry, were characteristic of the period. Numerous small Canadian manufacturers were swallowed up by their American counterparts as they encountered insurmountable difficulties in their attempts to distribute their products to a small and widely-scattered market [91]. As stated by Thompson and Seager [91], conflict of interest between the public good and private profit was not an issue with the provincial premiers. The fact that over one third of the pulp and paper industry and forty percent of mineral production in Canada was in the hands of American-controlled or American-affiliated companies caused little concern amongst Canadians. By 1930, British investment in Canada had dropped to thirty-six percent while American investment had increased to sixty-one percent of the nation's total foreign investment, so that the United States exerted an ever-increasing influence on the Canadian economy. The heavy reliance on American investment had several negative effects on the Canadian economy. American companies sought to export resource materials from Canada and paid little attention to investment in secondary manufacturing industries. Without a well-developed secondary manufacturing sector, many Canadians, especially those trained in industrial research, moved to the United States to seek employment. The rapid industrial development chiefly benefitted Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia. In these provinces a number of single-enterprise resource communities were established to service the new industries. Meanwhile, the Prairies and the Maritimes were experiencing little of the post-war development, thereby creating tension between the \"have\" and \"have-not\" regions of the country. Lines of communication and transportation were increasingly oriented towards North-South development, which served to exacerbate regional resentments. Urbanization also reinforced regional identities as large cities provided a base from which provincial legislatures sought to extend their influence [15]. Canadians, buoyed by the prosperity of the mid 1920s, were not prepared for the events of 1929. In October, 1929, stock prices on the New York Stock Exchange plummeted, an event which indicated the instability of the American and world economies. Canada's dependent resource economy, with eighty percent of its products in forestry, mining, and agriculture sold abroad, was especially vulnerable to declining foreign demand [91]. The Great Depression that ensued over the next decade wrought devastation to the Canadian economy and to the lives of thousands of Canadians who lost their jobs. Combined with the effects of the depressed export market, international wheat prices collapsed in 1929, as there was a surplus of wheat on the world market. The falling price of wheat affected not only the Prairie farmers but also the railways and those industries that supplied producers' goods to farmers. A domino effect was felt throughout the Canadian economy as businesses rapidly decreased their spending in response to the declining commodity prices. The collapse of wheat prices was coupled with a period of prolonged drought, accompanied by dust storms and plagues of grasshoppers throughout the southern Prairies. Beginning in 1931, prairie crops failed for the next seven years, with especially devastating effects in Saskatchewan [75]. From 1930 to 1939, the number of unemployed in Canada never dropped below ten percent of the work force and in 1933, over one quarter of all Canadian workers were unemployed [11]. Unemployment forced thousands of families to exhaust their savings and apply for public relief. By 1933, approximately fifteen percent of the population of Canada depended upon the \"dole\" or \"pogey\" for physical survival. To the thousands of unemployed who had grown up believing that to be idle was to be shiftless, the experience of having to go on the \"dole\" was a humiliating and final admission of defeat [11]. As stated by one relief administer, \"I've seen tears in a man's eyes as though they were signing away their manhood, their right to be husband and set at the head of the table\" [91,211]. The influx of thousands of unemployed young men into Vancouver was one of the most obvious manifestations of the Depression in British Columbia. By January, 1935, twelve percent of the people on relief in Vancouver were classified as transients. Until 1936, the Department of National Defence operated approximately two hundred isolated relief camps across Canada. Relief camps were the federal government's response to the growing menace presented by thousands of unemployed young men who illegally travelled the country on top of freight trains and then congregated in \"hobo jungles\" in urban centers [75]. During four years of relief camp operation, British Columbia enrolled one-third of the total camp population. Led by the Relief Camp Workers Union in 1935, eighteen hundred men from the British Columbia relief camps peacefully occupied Vancouver in a protest for better working conditions and wages. Although the federal government and Mayor Gerry McGeer viewed the protest as a Communist-instigated revolution, many of the local citizens sympathized with protestors. The protest, which had begun with high expectations in Vancouver, ended as a blood-stained riot in Regina on July 1st. The RCMP had been ordered by the federal government to halt the \"On-to-Ottawa Trek\" of over one thousand men. Following a day of violence that left Regina in a state of shambles, many of the protestors accepted Saskatchewan's offer of passage home, while others returned to the relief camps. RCMP suppression of the trek was widely-condemned in editorials across the country [91]. The scene was repeated in Vancouver in June, 1938. Demanding work or relief, twelve hundred members of the Relief Project Workers Union staged sit-down strikes in the Post Office and Art Gallery. After a month of relative calm, both the RCMP and the Vancouver Police were ordered by both the provincial and federal governments to evict the strikers. Tear gas was used against the strikers occupying the Post Office. A violent riot ensued during what came to be known as \"Bloody Sunday.\" Once again, the situation was defused when the federal government offered the strikers free transportation home [91]. Throughout the Depression years, the federal government clung to a non-interventionist economic policy that advocated the importance of the balanced budget. Between 1930 and 1932, R. B. Bennett enacted three Reliefs Acts which accomplished very little in easing the plight of the unemployed [91], It was simply easier to wait for the Depression to end. In 1939, as Canadians prepared for World War II, military service provided thousands of Canadians with their first jobs. Money was suddenly found to wage war at a rate that both prime ministers, R. B. Bennett and Mackenzie King, had thought immoral to spend for relief of the unemployed and dispossessed. AN UNCERTAIN CANADA Fluctuations in the nation's economy and population during the twenties and thirties created conditions that were conducive to political change. Discontent with wartime policies, such as the enforcement of conscription in 1917 by the Union government, led to the creation of new political movements and parties. Farmers deserted the Liberals and Conservatives to support emerging organizations such as the National Progressive Party in the West and the United Farmers in Ontario [15]. Workers, returned veterans, and other disaffected groups supported labour and independent candidates in federal and provincial elections. Labour militancy intensified as workers sought to improve their living conditions, especially in the one-company coal-mining settlements. The formation of the Communist Party of Canada, at a secret meeting in 1921, provided another avenue for political protest [68]. Formation of the party created an unwarranted fear of Bolshevism's rapid spread throughout Canada amongst the Dominion's political leaders. The Communist Party of Canada's chances of becoming a formidable political force were remote. The party's organization was highly decentralized and its leadership was split over the question of whether there were to be distinct national identities or subordinate sections of the Stalinest Comintern. Had it not been for the Depression, when government-sanctioned attacks upon the Communists created a group of highly-visible martyrs, the Communist party probably would have sunk into oblivion. Instead, a powerful civil liberties lobby was built around the Communists, who advocated the traditional freedoms of speech and assembly. Although skilled as labour agitators, the Communists lacked a coherent political program and the majority of Canadian people continued to place their trust in the parliamentary system. As a result, a new coalition of the Canadian left emerged which eventually eclipsed the Communist party [91]. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was formed in 1932 under the leadership of J. S. Woodsworth [91]. The new party was comprised of an alliance of the non-Communist labour parties in all the provinces west of Quebec and was built on old Progressive foundations. In the words of Woodsworth, The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation represented, \". . . a distinctly Canadian type of socialism\" [91,235]. Apian for social ownership and public management of the Canadian economy was articulated, wherein transportation, communications, electric power, and all other essential services were to be nationalized and then managed by public servants. A national labour code was formulated that was to assist in the formation of trade unions, and universal systems of health care, unemployment insurance, and pensions were proposed. Party membership largely consisted of church workers, leaders of farm communities, disenchanted intellectuals, co-operative organizers, and people who practised self-help and democratic association. The influence of the Social Gospel on J . S. Woodsworth, a Methodist minister, and party members was evident [91]. The roots of the Social Gospel lay embedded in a doctrine that attempted to apply the principles of Christianity to the problems of industrial capitalism. Visible social suffering resulting from rapid industrialization, urbanization, and immigration accounted for the influence of the Social Gospel in the Protestant churches of Canada. Leadership was provided by ministers and church members who spearheaded programs for social and economic reform, ranging from prohibition to urban sanitation. The good of the community was held foremost and the use of government as a vehicle for reform marked an important departure from individualism [91]. Under Woodsworth, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation achieved limited success in national politics. One reason for this slow growth was the attack made on the party by the anti-socialist Roman Catholic Church. Such opposition had a significant effect on the fledging party, especially in Quebec [91]. French Canada was producing a new provincial party during the Depression, with an upsurge of French-Canadian nationalism that led to the creation of the Union Nationale in Quebec [15]. Yet another regional party emerged in Alberta in 1935. The charismatic William Aberhart used the organizational structure of his evangelical network to become the first premier of a Social Credit government in Alberta in August, 1935. Aberhart's election platform called for a \"new social order\" based on reformed banking and education systems, aid to co-operatives for agricultural marketing, occupational health and safety, state medicine, and a more independent role for women [91], British Columbia, in 1933, elected a Liberal government led by T. D. \"Duff' Pattullo, to replace the Conservatives. Pattullo also promised a \"new social order\" based on his belief that in troubled economic times, government was morally responsible for the welfare of the people [91]. According to Schrodt [75], Pattullo's programme included, \"public works projects, health plans, marketing controls, and tax cuts. The programme had far-reaching effects and helped moved Canada forward on the path of state-planning for economic and social benefit\". Clearly, the trying years of the Depression encouraged a number of sectional movements that advocated new social responsibilities for provincial governments. This in turn tended to threaten national unity. The balance of power between the federal and provincial governments shifted significantly in favor of the provinces during the inter-war period. When governments were called on to undertake a variety of social measures which affected the personal and properly rights of the people, the federal government could only proceed when acting in agreement with the provinces. Meanwhile, the provinces were broadening their own horizons in the field of social services, transportation, and hydro-electric development. This led to uneven standards of government service as dictated by the relative prosperity of each of the provinces. With the onset of the Depression, all the provinces found themselves committed to social reform programmes they really could not afford, while the federal government had the funding but not the power to assume control of these activities. The growing unease in Dominion-provincial relations led Mackenzie King to appoint a Royal Commission in 1937 to investigate all federal-provincial problems of jurisdiction. By appointing the Royal Commission, Mackenzie King successfully prevented the issue of powerful regional forces from coming to a head and was able to lead a united Canada into the Second World War in 1939 [15]. THE AGE OF MACKENZIE KING William Lyon Mackenize King and the Liberal Party governed the Dominion of Canada from 1921 to 1948, with the exception of the years 1930 to 1936, when the Conservatives under R. B. Bennett were in power [15]. Acting as his own Minister of External Affairs, King dominated Canadian external affairs where he consciously followed a policy of \"passive resistance to involvement in British Councils\" [91,40] .He attempted to build internal unity in the Dominion on the basis of isolationist attitudes that prevailed after the end of the war. At the same time, King understood the importance of the United States to Canada. Although he felt that Canadian society was superior and distinct from that of her neighbour to the South, he worked hard to maintain friendly relationships with the United States. In March, 1923, King established a historic precedent by signing the Pacific Halibut Fisheries Treaty with the United States without the co-signature of a representative of the British government. Signing of the Halibut Treaty secured recognition of Canada's international status with the United States [91]. The Imperial Conference that followed later in the year affirmed the right of the Dominions to sign treaties with foreign states, thereby transforming the British Empire into a looser Commonwealth that recognized the varied interests of its members [15]. At the next Imperial Conference held in 1926, a new definition of the Commonwealth emerged in the Balfour Report. This report declared that members of the British Commonwealth were: . . . . autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate to one another in any respect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown and freely associated as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations [91,49]. The Statute of New Westminster, which was enacted by the British Parliament in 1931, established as a legal fact Canada's new position of equality with Great Britain. It granted Canada control over its own merchant shipping and full powers of nationhood in the field of law. With the exceptions of British Parliament retaining the right to amend the Canadian constitution; of Britain, alone, passing laws for all of the Commonwealth; and of the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council remaining the highest court of appeal for deciding certain legal disputes; Canada had, in 1931, achieved nationhood [15]. Diplomatically, culturally, and economically, Canada increasingly pulled away from British influence and drew closer to the United States. King saw Canadian-American friendship as a key to future Anglo-American co-operation and was convinced that as Europe had caused the problems of the past, North America offered the solutions for the future [91]. NATIONALISM AND THE EMERGENT CANADIAN CULTURE Emerging Canadian nationalism created a desire among members of English Canada's intellectual community to express a uniquely Canadian culture. Led by artist Arthur Lismer, and his colleagues in the Group of Seven, an outpouring of art, prose, and poetry took place during the twenties and thirties. Serving as cultural consumers was a literate and leisured urban middle class represented by the growing number of university graduates. Canadian culture also received the backing of a number of organizations such as the Association of Canadian Clubs and the Native Sons of Canada. Wealthy patrons from Canada's leading financial institutions helped to create a cultural infrastructure of theaters and art galleries, while numerous publishing houses and periodicals, such as Maclean's Magazine, made Canadian content a priority. The Dominion Drama Festival was inaugurated in 1933, wherein regional competitors performed their short plays. The drama festival was a remarkable achievement in that it encompassed both the English and French-speaking language groups. In spite of mutual disinterest and mistrust, English and French-Canadian intellectuals shared the dilemma of protecting a fragile Canadian culture from the forces that seemed to draw Canada ever closer to the United States [91]. Of concern to the cultural nationalists was the membership of Canadian men in Canadian chapters of the four American service clubs - Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, and Gyro - which rapidly expanded into all the regions of Canada. Even more alarming was the wave of American mass culture exported North in the form of radio programs, spectator sports, magazines, and the motion pictures. During the Depression, Hollywood's \"dream factory\" became one of the most important buttresses of the status quo. Any attempts made by the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau, the B.C. Educational and Patriotic Film Service, and the Ontario Motion Picture Bureau, to educate Canadians via documentaries seem doomed to failure as moviegoers resented any substitute for pure entertainment [91]. Development of radio broadcasting in Canada moved much more slowly than in the United States. By 1929, approximately 300,000 radio sets were in use in Canada and it has been estimated that eighty percent of the programs listened to were American [91]. Canadian stations usually offered news, lectures or recorded music, while the American counterparts offered much more appealing comedy, live variety programs, and drama. In 1932, Ottawa's jurisdiction over broadcasting was established and shortly after, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission was created to ensure \" . . . complete Canadian control of broadcasting . . . so that national consciousness may be fostered . . . and national unity strengthened\" [91,256]. Limited in scope by its small budget, the Commission set the pattern for development of Canadian broadcasting as a mixed private and public venture. The influence of American periodicals and newspapers provoked additional unease. The Saturday Evening Post advertised itself as Canada's leading magazine. Many of the American \"pulps\" were fiction magazines with garish covers and names that were perceived by many Canadian parents to be a menace to Canadian ideals and to the moral development of their children. However, it was not until 1931 that American dominance of the magazine circulation was at least reduced by a protective tariff introduced by Bennett's Conservative government. Canada's daily newspapers became increasingly depersonalized and homogeneous. Most of the international news was gathered by American correspondents who worked for the Associated Press and United Press. Canadian editors often reprinted their stories with little or no editing or rewriting. Canadian dailies also adopted American newspaper formats with large photos, bold headlines, and various columns dealing with Hollywood gossip, hobbies, bridge, auto repairs, and the comics. Editorial bias and diatribes which had been common to newsheets before the Great War were less evident, as newspapers refrained from alienating any of their advertisers and consumers [91]. The new direction of Canadian journalism was evidenced in the sports pages. Larger-than-life American sports heroes such as Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey became Canada's heroes as well. As S. F. Wise and D. Fisher [101] noted, sports writers, who had been mesmerized by the big league glamour of baseball and spoon-fed by American wire services, gave major coverage to baseball at the expense of lacrosse. Despite the frequently-discussed \"invisible border\" between Canada and the United States, the period of the twenties and thirties can be portrayed as the cradle of Canadian consciousness. Canadians continued to adhere to a sense of moral superiority relative to the republic to the South, as American society was widely held to be violent, immoral, and materialistic [91]. What Canadians saw and heard, as evidenced in the mass culture exported from the United States, convinced Canadians that they wanted to retain a distinctive personality of their own. CHAPTER 5 THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT BETWEEN THE WARS WOMEN IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE Prior to the 1920s, as part of a Progressive Reform Movement, the boundaries of women's participation in public life in Canada had been extended by women's activism in the struggle for enfranchisement and for prohibition. Like their American counterparts, Canadian women joined numerous organizations, in order \" . . . to extend the boundaries of their own lives and to fill a need for social services that was everyday becoming more blatant\" [20,184]. A form of maternal feminism emerged in which women's political activism was explained in terms of female reformers' efforts to preserve the security of the home and familial life and to purify society. Advocates of maternal feminism, such as Nellie McClurg and Amelia Spencer, sought women's release from the social and economic injustices created by the increasing intrusion of public and economic institutions into private life. Female reformers argued that women's unique biological qualities and moral superiority as nurturers were too precious to restrict to the home. According to Strong-Boag [87,246], \"It was just the mother's love-redemptive, illuminative, understanding, backed by her protective instinct, that was needed in the problems that baffled mankind.\" While maternal feminism, with its emphasis on protecting the home and family, did not threaten male supremacy, it did challenge the exclusive nature of men's public power. It confronted the division of Canadian society into men's and women's spheres by eroding the boundaries between public and private activities [68]. Coupled with the emergence of maternal feminism was a wave of optimism that envisioned a new world order following the end of the Great War [20]. Reform-minded women deemed it necessary to win the franchise in order to purify society through an infusion of morality into politics. By focusing on the God-given nature of their maternal 40 role, women could bypass patriarchal authority. Winning the vote would allow them to relate directly as individuals to parliamentary institutions. This conservative and practical approach, espoused by the National Council of Women and, later on, by the more militant Canadian Women's Suffrage Association, appealed to a broad base of privileged and middle class women, thereby achieving legitimacy for the suffrage movement [20]. The first steps toward women's suffrage were taken in the Prairie Provinces, British Columbia, and Ontario, by an amendment to the Dominion Elections Act in July, 1920. All women were granted the right to vote and to become candidates in national elections. By 1922, when Prince Edward Island granted women's suffrage, all women in Canada had the provincial franchise, except for Quebec, where the provincial franchise was not granted until 1940, (Figure 3) [91]. In contrast to those reformers who espoused their faith in the moral superiority of womankind, other feminists were repudiating the idealism they associated with the unfulfilled expectations that followed the Great War. Sacrifice, maternal and otherwise, had not changed the world much. Having achieved suffrage, these women were committed to an ideology in which they equated themselves with men, in all their principal attributes. Conflicting interpretations of woman's nature emerged, coupled with fractionalism as to how social criticism could be translated into positive change. After the vote had been granted to all women, with the exception of those in Quebec, suffrage no longer was a shared goal. Prohibition also ceased to be a major issue, when many of the provinces introduced legislation that controlled liquor distribution and sales. Feminist leaders had no clear constituencies and the Progressive reform ideology seemed naive and inadequate. It appeared that, during the inter-war period, the Canadian women's movement derived its success from the diversity and strength of numerous women's organizations rather than from a single leader or a massive women's vote. 42 FIGURE 3 \u00E2\u0080\u00A2 R E F E R E N C E L I S T O F D A T E S F O R T H E A C H I E V E M E N T O F P O L I T I C A L E Q U A L I T Y Province Mani toba Saskatchewan Alber ta Bri t ish Columbia Ontario Nova Scotia Dominion of Canada New Brunswick Prince Edward Island Newfoundland Quebec Suffrage January 28, 1916. March 14, 1916. Apr i l 19, 1916. Apr i l 5, 1917. A p r i l 12, 1917. A p r i l 26, 1918. Relatives of members of armed forces\u00E2\u0080\u0094 September 20,1917. A l l women\u00E2\u0080\u0094May 24, 1918. A p r i l 17, 1919. M a y 3, 1922. A p r i l 13, 1925. A p r i l 25, 1940. Eligibility to Iwld office January 28, 1916. March 14, 1916. Apri l 19, 1916. Apr i l 5, 1917. Apr i l 24, 1919. Apr i l 26, 1918.* July 7, 1919. Reaffirmed and made permanent by the Dominion Elec-tions Act , 1920. March 9, 1934. M a y 3, 1922. Apr i l 13, 1925. Apr i l 25, 1940. ^Separate act. The dates given are those for the granting of Royal Assent. S o u r c e : C a t h e r i n e L. C l e v e r d o n , Woman S u f f r a g e Movement i n Canada Professional social work offered career opportunities for many former activists in the women's movement and gradually replaced voluntarism. Gains were made in the areas of child welfare and public health programs, with the establishment of the Federal Department of Health and Child Welfare Division in 1919 [68]. As women made advances \u00E2\u0080\u00A2, in fields such as medicine, law, teaching, social work, and journalism, professional organizations such as the Federation of Medical Women of Canada, the Canadian Women's Press Club, the Canadian Nurse's Association, and the Federation of Women Teacher's Associations of Ontario were organized in the early 1920s. Most members of these organizations were single women who worked to enhance their professional status and to improve their training and career opportunities. By 1937, the Business and Professional Women's Clubs had over 2,000 members across Canada. These clubs were committed to equality of the sexes and sought to improve the social and economic conditions of working women. Dedicated to promoting their own work, women in the arts tended to join men in founding organizations such as the Canadian Authors' Association in 1921, the Sculptors' Society of Canada in 1928, and the Canadian Group of Painters. Community organizations such as the Women's Art Association of Canada sponsored cultural activities that served to encourage women artists and to foster public interest in art. Women's auxiliaries promoted and funded many musical organizations, theatrical productions, art galleries, and art schools [68]. During the 1920s, the established national reform-minded organizations such as the National Council of Women and the Women's Christian Temperance Union declined in membership. The National Council of Women criticized women seeking successful careers and continued to focus on the protection of motherhood and home life as stabilizing factors in Canadian society. During the Depression, the Council argued that women should remain at home and not take away the few jobs that were available for men. Many young professional women and former members such as The Canadian Women's Press Club withdrew their support [68]. To its credit, the Council was concerned with the plight of unemployed women and so established domestic household training courses. Self-help groups were established where women could engage in various craft activities. The Council also worked for reform in divorce legislation, enhanced legal support for deserted wives, mother's allowance legislation, child welfare, the treatment of adultery as a criminal offense, an increase in the age for marital consent, and proposed amendments to the provincial dower acts. By the end of the 1930s, efforts of the National Council had achieved significant improvement in the quality of women's lives. The plight of the sick and elderly had improved, women were receiving mother's allowances, infant mortality rates had declined, new urban parks had been created, and in several schools, innovative education programs had been initiated [68]. Strong-Boag [91] has pointed out the irony of legislative gains based on the Council's maternalist ideology; women's dependence for support had shifted from dependence upon one man to dependence upon a male-dominated state. Like the society it wanted to reform, the women's movement was divided by region, religion, class, and race. French-speaking feminists in Quebec never co-operated closely with feminists in the wider women's movement. Religion, as well as language, acted as a barrier to their participation. The Roman Catholic Church with its doctrines relating to the separate, subordinate role of women in society, constrained women's organizations in Quebec [91]. Rural women in the Western provinces were disillusioned with the bourgeois and urban-based National Council of Women and turned to organizations that better-served their interests. The United Farm Women of Alberta and the Women's Institutes served as vehicles that promoted the self-realization of members and sought to improve rural health services and education. Under the leadership of Irene Parlby and Susan Gunn, the United Farm Women of Alberta established local libraries and organized lectures and study groups on health care, children's welfare, minimum wage for women, mothers' allowances, schooling, music, literature, and immigration. Elected as Alberta's Minister Without Portfolio, from 1921 to 1935, Parlby encouraged farm women to expand their horizons beyond the domestic sphere. During its tenure from 1921 to 1935, the United Farmers of Alberta government passed eighteen acts that had a positive effect on the welfare of women and children. Also concerned with the promotion of life-long education, the British Columbia Women's Institute sponsored business courses for young women and concerned itself with women's health care. In the late 1920s, the Institute was asked to assist in the establishment of provincial health care centers by the Department of Health [68]. Unlike rural feminists such as Parlby, who represented agrarian interests, Nellie McClung established broad appeal as an outstanding female activist on lecture platforms throughout Canada and the United States. Her membership in organizations such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Women's Canadian Club, the Canadian Author's Association, the Canadian Press Club, the Edmonton Equal Franchise League, and the Methodist Women's Missionary Society, provided her with a loyal network of friends, political disciples, and community organizers [87]. McClung's close friendship with Emily Murphy, Canada's first female police magistrate and National President of the Women's Institute, was also noteworthy. Murphy's outspoken efforts on behalf of women prepared a sympathetic audience for McClung. Sitting as a member of the Liberal Party in the Alberta legislature during the early 1920s, McClung believed that women's \". . . greatest contribution, in Parliament and out of it, will be independence of thought\" [87,247]. This willingness to deviate from formal party policy was attractive to reformers and westerners who were critical of the traditional party platforms. Through her tenure in the legislature and through her lectures and publications, McClung reiterated her commitment to feminism and social reform and her hostility to corruption and apathy. An ardent advocate of Prohibition, McClung's speeches credited abstinence with falling crime rates, increased savings, and prosperity. She argued for liberalized divorce laws, urged the Alberta government to alter the Married Women's Property Act, and in 1927, joined forces with Judge Emily Murphy and three other Alberta women - Irene Parlby, Henrietta Edwards, Louise McKinney - to petition the government on the issue of women's eligibility for membership in the Senate. They demanded an interpretation of a clause in the BNA Act which did not specify if \"qualified persons\", who could be appointed senators, referred to both sexes or solely to men. In April, 1928, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women were not \"qualified persons\" according to the law. An appeal to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council reversed the decision. In October, 1929, women in Canada legally became \"qualified persons\" and were eligible for Senate appointments [91]. This victory represented the highlight of McClung's career. Belief that the Senate could be used as a platform from which public policy would be influenced proved naive. Emily Murphy, the candidate nominated by women activists to become the first woman senator, was passed by; while Cairine Wilson, a wealthy Ottawa matron, who had founded the National Federation of Liberal Women, was selected by Prime Minister King as the first woman senator in 1930. The new senator involved herself in divorce legislation, immigration, and the League of Nations. A second woman, Iva Fallis, was not named to the Senate until 1935 [68]. The arguments of suffragists that women would vote as a block to reform society also proved naive as many women found it very difficult to cast their ballots. Most women had to overcome their husbands' opposition before they could use their vote. Political parties continued to choose male candidates so that in the federal election of 1921, the first one in which women twenty-one years old and older were eligible to vote, the only woman elected was Agnes Macphail. Macphail represented South-East Grey, a rural Ontario riding, for the United Farmers of Ontario, from 1921 to 1940 [68]. She did not identify herself with the maternal ideology and came to see herself as a feminist. She told reporters, \"I want absolute equality. After that is secured then men and women can take turns being angels\" [91,72]. She found her first session very trying and admitted, \"some members resented my intrusion, others jeered at me, while very few were genuinely glad to see a woman in the House. Most of the members made me painfully conscious of my sex . . . \"[68,280]. In spite of the adversity her presence created in the House, she worked for peace, for women's suffrage in Quebec, for social welfare legislation such as unemployment insurance, family allowances, pensions for the old, blind and disabled, and fought successfully for the Archambault Royal Commission on prison reform [68]. Only nine women, all from Western Canada, were elected to the provincial legislatures before 1940. Two women were cabinet ministers - Mary Ellen Smith, in the Liberal government of British Columbia, and Irene Parlby, of the United Farmers in Alberta [91]. Most of the members represented the newly-formed third parties that had emerged after World War I. Parties such as the United Farmers, the Communist Party of Canada, the National Progressive Party, and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation were anxious to recruit whatever membership they could and were less entrenched in the male dominance of politics. The third parties' philosophical orientations were more attuned to that of reform-minded women who were concerned about social issues such as class inequality, birth control, and labour legislation. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation sponsored a number of female candidates in elections held for the provincial legislatures. Dorothy Steeves and Laura Jamieson were elected to the British Columbia legislature during the 1930s. Jamieson, a Burnaby juvenile court judge, was active in a number of feminist groups and causes including the women's peace movement, suffrage, the British Columbia Parent-Teachers Association, the Business and Professional Women's Club, and the Women's School for Citizenship [68]. During the Depression, socialist and communist women co-operated in drawing attention to the desperate conditions of the unemployed. In 1935, women from the 48 Vancouver Communist Party, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the Local Council of Women, and the Women's Christian Temperance Union joined forces to form a Mothers' Council. The Mothers' Council participated in demonstrations supporting fair work and wages for relief camp workers and organized the distribution of food, clothing, and shelter for the destitute [68]. In British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, women's committees greeted the desperate \"On to Ottawa\" trek of unemployed workers with food and clothing at various stops along the way [91]. Women of minority groups tended to organize their own associations. Groups such as the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians and the National Council of Jewish Women sought to promote and maintain awareness of their unique cultures and to maintain contacts with members living outside Canada. They also engaged in fund raising activities in support of community projects such as the establishment of scholarship funds [68]. The desire of women to improve their lives and those of others extended to activism in the major Protestant churches. Sponsored by the Protestant churches and by the Young Women's Christian Association, Canadian Girls in Training was founded in 1917. Membership reached a high of 40,000, spread throughout 1,100 Canadian communities during the Depression. Meeting at weekly Sunday Schools, group leaders encouraged adolescent girls to participate in religious, physical, intellectual, and service activities. Progressive ideas were utilized wherein young girls were trained in decision-making and independence of thought [68]. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Student Christian Movement, an offspring of the Social Gospel Movement, met on university campuses throughout Canada. This co-educational reform movement organized study groups to address social problems and provided a training ground for many young women to develop their organizational and interpersonal skills. The applied Christianity learned in both the Canadian Girls in Training and The Student Christian Movement led some women, such as Marion Royce, first director of the federal Department of Labour Women's Bureau, into political activism [68]. Nellie McClung, the leading feminist and Methodist, sought reform within the church that would permit women to serve in the ministry. She also supported the creation of a United Church of Canada in 1925, which she hoped would rekindle the reform crusade for which she had so ardently worked [87]. Separate auxiliaries and charitable associations, within the various Protestant churches, served as the primary venues for much of women's social reform work. The promotion of international cooperation among women's missionary societies and eradication of racial prejudice were major goals espoused by various Canadian missionary societies. The United Church Women's Missionary Society created, supported, and administered a million-dollar budget during the 1920s and placed approximately 300 female missionaries in Canada and abroad. As these missionaries returned from abroad, they introduced new ideas about individual self-worth and cultural relativism that began to erode traditional beliefs about Christian superiority [68]. Within the Roman Catholic Church, clerical insistence on the maternal role for women left few alternatives and Catholic laywomen appeared for the main part, to accept their separate, subordinate role. Women with families and nuns in religious orders were assigned service roles in health and education. During the inter-war period, Quebec experienced a remarkable increase in the number of women entering convents, possibly because of the dire living conditions associated with the Depression [68]. Quebec feminists, such as Therese Cosgrain, were perceived as a threat to traditional authority and social values so that clerics and nationalists, such as Henri Bourassa, mounted campaigns to enhance the family role of women. In spite of such obstacles, various organizations, including the League for Women's Rights, the Montreal Local Council of Women, and the Federation Nationale Saint-Jean Baptiste, sought endorsement of the women's franchise and sought to lessen restrictions on married women by equalizing authority within the marital relationship. In response to demands made by these organizations, the Dorion Commission on the Civil Rights of Women was established by the Liberal government of Quebec in 1929. The primary demand made by Quebec women appearing before the Commission was that married women be legally entitled to control their own earnings.; Although faced by hostility from the church, the government, and the legal profession, the Dorion Commission did give women the right to control their salaries and any assets they brought into the marriage [68]. Involvement in the Great War and in missionary societies had highlighted the need for peace and international understanding. In 1921, Canadian men and women established the Canadian League of Nations Society to support the work of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. By the 1930s, the society became, in essence, a women's peace organization, led by Cairine Wilson. Both the Local Councils of Women and the National Council of Women attempted to promote international understanding by sponsoring lectures, study groups, and government lobbies. Women's peace organizations tried to elect their members as school trustees and sought to replace cadet training and the subsequent aggrandisement of the military and war in the schools with physical education classes. Peace proved an elusive goal. Pacifists in the peace organizations faced a dilemma, upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, when their commitment to non-violence conflicted with their commitment for social justice. Divisions within the peace movement were further intensified as facist dictators assumed control in Germany and Italy. While some women called for opposition to all war, others concluded that a war against Hitler was a \"regrettable necessity\" [68,285]. By the late 1930s, the optimism that had characterized the women's movement was shaken by the deteriorating world conditions. Reformers had over-estimated their potential to effect sweeping social-change, just as they had under-estimated the power of the vested interests they challenged [68]. In a letter to a friend, Nellie McClung concluded, \"there are still a few rivers to cross\" [91,75]. As a result of their participation in organized groups, throughout the inter-war period, many Canadian women learned valuable organizational and fund-raising skills that contributed to their participation in the public arena. Not to be discounted was a new sense of connectedness with other women and respect for their own abilities. This, in turn, fostered an emerging collective confidence and encouraged a growing assertiveness that challenged the private/female and public/male dichotomy[20]. WOMEN AT WORK World War I did not significantly alter patterns of female employment for Canadian women. The increased number of young, single, working women reflected a growing trend that had begun early in the twentieth century. New markets for female labour had been created by the general population shift from rural to urban areas and by the massive influx of impoverished immigrants, which facilitated the development of labour-intensive industry. As an industrialized, market economy developed in Canada, production increasingly took place outside the home so that the domestic labour of single daughters was no longer required inside the household. In order to purchase products, now made outside of the home, the young, single female's income from paid employment became essential. While motherhood remained the principal and most rewarding career for Canadian women, there was widespread acceptance of single women in the labour force. Throughout the 1920s, most female occupations were not viewed as rewarding careers in themselves. The training received by young women on the job was seen as good preparation for married life. Hard working, obedient workers would be good, obedient wives and mothers [1]. By 1921, seventeen percent of all Canadian women over the age of fifteen were engaged in paid labour. They comprised just over fifteen percent of the total paid workforce (Figure 4) [1,290]. A closer look at patterns of female employment indicates that over seventy percent of the female labour force was segmented into five occupations FIGURE 4 The Canadian Population and Labour Force 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 Total Population 4,306,118 4,801,071 5,318,606 7,179,650 8,775,853 Labour Force 1,377,585 1,606,369 1,782,832 2,723,634 3,164,348 Female Labour Force 195,990 237,949 364,821 489,058 Women as Percentage , of Labour Force 11.07 13.3 13.4 15.5 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 Total Population \"10,363,240 11,489,713 13,984,329 18,200,621 21,568,310 Labour Force 3,917,612 4,195,591 5,214,913 6,342,289 8,631,000 Female Labour Force 665,302 832,840 1,163,893 1,760,450 2,831,000 Women as Percentage of Labour Force 17.0 18.5 22.0 27.3 33.3 Sources: Census of Canada, 1921. Census of Canada, 1961. Women at Work in Canada. Department of Labour, 1964. Women in the Labour Force 1971: Facts and Figures. Women's Bureau, Labour Canada. that were almost exclusively filled by women (Figure 5) [91,348]. The ghettoization of women's work into suitable occupations such as domestic service, clerical work, textile and food production, teaching, and nursing, was characterized by poor working conditions and low wages [91]. In 1931, the average Canadian male worker earned $942; the average female, a meager $559 [91]. More that one-half of the total increase in the female labour force, between 1921 and 1931, occurred in the service sector where the female work force shifted towards the clerical or white-collar sector. These changes were due to the growth and rationalization of corporate and government bureaucracies required to service the rapidly-expanding economy. Women's preference for clerical work over domestic service resulted in significant increases in the number of women engaged as bank clerks, tellers, and stenographers, and a significant decrease in their participation rates as domestic servants. This shift demonstrated a recurring pattern in women's employment. When and what kind of employees were needed depended on which sector of the economy was expanding and on the availability of a cheap, labour supply [20]. Many women tolerated the circumstances of their employment, expecting that paid labour was but a transitory stage in their life cycle, which would end in marriage. Over ninety percent of the women living in Canada in 1931 were married at some time in their lives [91]. Societal attitudes continued to exclude married women from the work force. The paucity of jobs open to married women, the demands of housework and children, and the disapproval of their husbands and families, made paid employment very difficult. Homemaking continued to be upheld as the perfect female occupation and married women became part of an inactive reserve of labour to be called upon when the need arose. The differing attitudes toward single women workers and married women served to maintain the sexual division of labour within the workplace, as the time women spent in the labour force came to be viewed, by both sexes, as a preparation for married life rather than a satisfying, life-long career [1]. FIGURE 5 Distribution of the Male Labour Force, 1921-41 1921 1931 1941 Per Per Per Number* Cent Number* Cent Number* Cent Ail Occupations 2,675 100.0 3,256 100.0 3,363 100.0 Agriculture 1.C17 38.0 1,103 33.9 1,064 31.7 Fishing/Trapping 29 1.1 47 1.5 51 1.5 Logging 38 1.4 43 1.4 80 2.4 Mining 48 1.8 58 1.8 71 2.1 Manufacturing 317 11.9 394 ' 12.1 561 16.7 Construction 162 6.1 202 6.2 212 6.3 Transportation 184 6.9 271 8.3 294 8.8 Trade/Finance 245 9-2 295 9.1 296 8.8 Professional 78 2.9 103 3.2 120 3.6 Personal Service 73 2.7 128 3.9 144 4.3 Clerical 127 4.8 141 4.3 159 4.8 Labourers 305 11.4 425 13.1 251 7.5 * Thousands of workers Source.- Census of Canada, 1951. Distribution of the Female Labour Force, 1921-41 1921 1931 1941 Per Per Per Number* Cent Number\" Cent Number* Cent All Occupations 489 100.0 665 100.0 832 100.0 Agriculture 17 3.7 24 3.6 18 \u00E2\u0080\u00A22.3 Manufacturing 89 18.3 101 15.2 148 17.8 Transportation 14 3.0 17 2.7 16 2.0 Trade/Finance 47 9.8 56 8.5 74 8.9 Professional 92 19-0 118 17.6 127 15.3 Personal Service 132 27.1 227 34.3 288 34.7 Clerical 90 18.5 1 17 17.7 154 18.6 * Thousands of workers Source: Census of Canada, 1951. WOMEN IN THE PRIVATE SPHERE Following the disruption to family life wrought by World War I, Canadian women assumed traditional roles as wives and mothers, despite the expanded opportunities presented by increased educational and employment opportunities. Three-quarters of Canadian women had entered into the state of matrimony by the age of thirty-four and very few marriages ended in divorce [91]. Once married, women usually left the paid labour-force and aspired to traditional values associated with \". . . feminity, domesticity, and dependence\" [68]. Through newspapers, books, magazines such as Saturday Night, and through the educational system, women were channeled into appropriate \"female\" pursuits. Although more young women enrolled in high school and universities than in the pre-war period, women were encouraged to study home economics, nursing, and secretarial science. Secondary schools emphasized the development of domestic science programs and vocational skills designed to prepare women for marriage. In Quebec, academic courses such as science were frequently replaced by domestic science courses for girls in the secondary schools. In domestic science, girls learned to cook on electric stoves and iron with electric irons in spite of the fact that most rural homes did not have electricity. Advocates of domestic science programs maintained that without the school-based instruction, Canadian women would lack the necessary skills for homemaking. In spite of societal concern with the media image of the \"flapper\" - a young woman of questionable morals who drank, smoked, and partied - most young women of the 1920s lived at home and contributed most of their wages to their families. Women continued to be socialized from their childhood for their adult roles as wives and mothers and preferred the state of marriage to that of spinsterhood and a poorly-paid worker [68]. Significant changes were occurring in the Canadian household as industrial capitalism had transferred the production of household commodities outside the home. The housewife increasingly became a consumer rather than a producer of goods. Women's magazines defined housewives as new professionals. Household management and child care became careers guided by principles of business and science [68] . The homemaker increasingly became the object of manipulation of symbols and ideas perpetuated by the advertising and advice agencies. Intensified advertising in women's magazines praised the advantages of the latest labour-saving machinery and the efficient kitchen. No doubt, new appliances decreased the physical effort involved in housework, but did little to save time as standards of housekeeping improved. The extent of the introduction of the latest labour-saving devices should not be overestimated as the family incomes of most rural immigrant and working-class women did not allow the purchase of such devices. As of 1931, one in ten Canadian farms had electricity, one in fifty farms on the Prairies had running water, and even as late as 1948, fewer than one half of Canadian homes had a gas or electric stove, and less than a third had a refrigerator [91]. With the increased free time allegedly created by efficient household management, the idea of the wife as the husband's source of comfort and best friend became popular. Physical attractiveness and the retention of a youthful appearance, as advocated by the advertising industry, became important factors in determining the image of the successful wife and mother. Following World War I, short, loose dresses that de-emphasized the female figure were fashionable. The slim, boyish look was popular and women were advised to maintain a trim figure through diet and exercise. Upper and middle class women could spend their free time playing bridge, tennis, golf, or could be engaged in charitable work or cultural activities. Women's magazines frequently advised female readers to take up their husbands activities and to educate themselves in order to enhance their wifely role. The press constantly reminded women that it was their duty and privilege to preserve family stability for the well-being of the nation. Self-sacrifice and self-restraint continued to be the hallmarks of a good wife. \"For most working class, rural, or immigrant women, the ideal was impossible\" [68,255]. For the working wife, for the wife taking in boarders, or raising a large family, the time and resources necessary to achieve the ideal marriage or household simply was not available. The single most important change for the average Canadian family was its diminishing size. The birth rate, which fell from 29.3 per thousand in 1921 to 20.6 per thousand in 1939, became the focus of public concern. The distribution of information and the sale of birth control devices was illegal and birth control was attacked by prominent figures, such as Dr. Helen MacMurchy, as \"racial suicide.\" Concerns were expressed, by those of British origin, that the limited family size among those of Anglo-Saxon heritage would lead to racial suicide as they soon would be outnumbered by larger immigrant families. French-Canadian nationalists voiced similar concerns as they expressed fear for the decline of their culture should the francophone birthrate decline [68]. Despite these arguments, women throughout the interwar period sought contraceptive advice. Advocates for birth control such as the Americans, Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman, viewed birth control as an individual woman's right to control her own body. Support for limited family size came from socialist worker groups in Canada, who felt that large families simply provided a cheap source of labour for the capitalist free enterprise system. In 1924, a group of socialists from British Columbia founded the Canadian Birth Control League with the purpose of disseminating birth control literature among the working class. By 1929, the women's branch of the Saskatoon Section of the United Farmers of Canada called upon the federal government to allow distribution of birth control information, and requested the establishment of birth control clinics, staffed by medial doctors. A number of birth control clinics were established in British Columbia, Ontario, and Manitoba early in the 1930s. Authorities occasionally harassed birth control advocates. In 1936, Dorothea Palmer, of the Parents Information Bureau in Kitchener, Ontario, was arrested for distributing birth control information and devices to women in a working-class French- Canadian suburb of Ottawa. She was subsequently acquitted. Although the trial provided a platform for the proponents of birth control, the law regarding the distribution of contraceptive information and devices was not altered [68]. The reduced size of the average Canadian family implied a lightening of the burden of motherhood. But what happened was that mothers were expected to pay more individual attention to each child. Medical experts advocated scientific methods relative to childbirth and childcare which supplanted intuition, tradition, and informal advice. Childbirth, itself, increasingly took place in hospitals and was supervised by male physicians. Once the birth had occurred, experts from the fields of medicine, education, psychology, and social welfare prescribed correct techniques for parenting. As the ultimate responsibility for a child's success or failure was the mother's, she was expected to read relevant books and articles, to attend baby clinics, to participate in mother's clubs, parent-teacher associations, and youth groups. Women who failed at these new child-rearing and home-management tasks were bound to feel guilty about their failure. The scientific and industrial revolution in the home had served to heighten the emotional context of woman's work. As a result, the sense of a woman's self-worth became a function of her role as a homemaker and a mother, who cheerfully and skillfully set about making everyone in her family perfectly happy and healthy [68]. CHAPTER 6 PLAY LIKE GENTLEMEN: BEHAVE LIKE LADIES INTRODUCTION Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, ideas of femininity, of fundamental differences between the sexes, and of the \"cult of womanhood\" [20] persisted and were espoused by an upper and middle class that embraced the ideology of maternal feminism. Emphasis on femininity and preparation for motherhood influenced most rationales of women's sport during this period. Although Canadian women were proving their athletic competence in increasing numbers and in a wide variety of sports, definitions of femininity, stressing grace, dependence,and beauty, were slow to change [32]. The advent of the Great War did serve, in a subtle way, to advance the cause of women in sport. With the usual premium placed on sacrifice and industriousness during a national crisis, women's responsibility to develop their full physical potential was advocated. This goal was compatible with the views of maternal feminists, who were critical of females who lived frivolous, unproductive lives. In a 1917 article, written by Adelaide Plumptre, a leader in the Canadian Red Cross Society, evidence of this shift in the definition of femininity appeared: Co-education and open air holidays began to lessen the difference between boy and girl, the necessary emergence of women from the stuffy femininity of the drawing room into the human life of industry and business has been accelerated - though not initiated - by the demands of war, and has disposed forever of the theory that there is no place for a woman outside her home [48,217]. Somewhat conflicting images of women emerged. On the one hand, because of their moral superiority, women were lauded as ideal nurturers; on the other hand, partly because of the stamina women had demonstrated in the war effort, they came to be seen as endowed with capabilities similar to men. This contradiction between the maternal and masculine image of women was reflected in women's sport. In order to achieve social approval for their involvement in sport, women had to demonstrate that femininity and 59 60 more active participation in strenuous physical activity were not incompatible [32]. As stated by Donald Mrozek [58,289], \"the emphasis of how one engaged in public activities became the hallmark especially of women's sport in the first half of the twentieth century.\" WOMEN'S SPORT BETWEEN THE WARS The high regard for sport that existed in the 1920s affirmed societal acceptance of sport as a constructive activity. The benefit of exercise to health and beauty was one recognized value, but equally important was the contribution participation in athletics made to character development and good citizenship. Educators, reform leaders, business executives, politicians, and the clergy perceived the benefits of athletics as a counterbalance to the evils of society. Concerned about the increasing leisure time available to young, urban dwellers, and disturbed that traditional values were being discarded in favor of less substantial ones, leaders placed emphasis on involving youth in wholesome play [50]. For a society disillusioned by the war and drained by reform efforts, youth came to represent the promise of success and a brighter future. Several factors emerged in the United States that contributed to the pre-occupation with youth during the 1920s. In 1905, an American psychologist named, G. Stanley Hall, published a very influential book, Adolescence, which pointed out the tremendous significance of this period of life. Following the war, the American mass media began to glorify all that youth represented. Radio broadcasts, motion pictures, and magazines portrayed youth in very positive ways. Advertising campaigns encouraged the older segments of the population to avoid looking their age and acting it. Health, beauty, and the exhilaration of youth came to be associated with a product and frequently with a sport, as leading sport personalities were featured in product endorsements. Across America, young athletes were portrayed as the new heroes and heroines of the day. They were clean-living, loyal, and dutiful; while at the same time, they were attractive, virile, and competitive [50]. In Canada, women's magazines in the 1920s, contained numerous articles that stressed the relationship between health, beauty, and exercise. Columnist, Jane Addison, who wrote for the Canadian Magazine's women's section, \"urged women to view their bodies 'as very important machines which needed proper care and repair,' including adequate rest and exercise\" [48,220]. An emphasis on health and personal hygiene prevailed in most of the advertising directed towards young women and according to Lenskyj [48,222], \"... advertisers were probably correct in anticipating that the active woman image would help to sell their product.\" By the late 1920s, the Canadian press had accorded women's sport a higher profile. Several of the nation's major newspapers hired former well-known athletes such as Bobbie Rosenfeld and Alexandrine Gibb to write women's sports columns, and radio stations frequently broadcast women's sporting events live. Referring to women's baseball games in Toronto, one writer noted that, \"the spectators came to jeer but stayed to cheer\" [32,37]. Women's sport had become a very popular form of entertainment in which spectator attendance sometimes outnumbered the attendance at the men's games [32]. Additional factors contributed to the burgeoning growth of sport during the inter-war period and also to women's changing role from decorative spectators to active participants. Factors such as urbanization, industrialization and the accompanying standardization of the work week, improved communication and transportation, relaxation of enforcement of the Lord's Day Act, less formal and restrictive styles of dress, technological developments in sport facilities and equipment, improved access to higher levels of education, private patronage of talented athletes, and mass spectator support for women's baseball and basketball games contributed to the broadening of women's involvement in athletics [16]. Montreal and Toronto, with their large urban populations, became the focal point for women's sport during the inter-war period. Much of the interest in sport was restricted to those of English background where traditional cultural attitudes towards participation in acceptable physical activities was more favourable. French-Canadian women, restricted by the conventional attitudes of the Roman Catholic Church regarding women's place in the home, exhibited consistently low participation rates in organized sport [16]. Perhaps the greatest development was the expansion of women's sport and athletic clubs and the relative autonomy of the organizations governing women's sport. Churches, commercial interests, and organizations such as the Y.W.C.A. sponsored teams and leagues. Sunday school leagues experienced high participation rates throughout the country in sports such as basketball, softball, soccer, track and field, badminton, and tennis. The Y.W.C.A. provided instruction, facilities, and equipment for sports that included swimming, basketball, softball, canoeing, rowing, gymnastics, track and field, and soccer. These separate organizations also provided opportunities for women's participation as executive members, fund raisers, and coaches [57]. Sport thrived in the universities established in Toronto and Montreal, in spite of significant differences in the levels of support for men's and women's activities. Campus facilities for women generally remained pitifully inadequate or non-existent. When Hart House was constructed in 1919 at the University of Toronto for athletic and extra-curricular activities, female students were excluded [68]. This closed-door policy was one of the primary reasons women formed so many of their own sports clubs, leagues, and federations. Organizations such as the Ladies' Golf and Tennis Club, which was founded in 1924 by Ada Mackenzie, provided women with the facilities and opportunities to play golf and tennis. During a vacation to England in 1920, Mackenzie noticed that female golfers enjoyed equal access to the golf courses, in sharp contrast to the situation that existed in Canada. She stated, \"it occurred to me that a club would give our girls a better chance . . . . clubs for golf and tennis do not encourage women\" [101,268]. Upon Mackenzie's return to Canada, she found an appropriate site for a golf course just south of Toronto, organized a bond issue to raise the purchase price, issued membership shares, and officially opened the doors of the Ladies Golf and Tennis Club of Toronto. Ironically, rules of the new club allowed men to play during restricted times only. By 1928, Mackenzie had initiated the Ontario Junior Championship for women and continued to actively encourage young players throughout her fifty year career as one of Canada's outstanding golfers [101]. Prior to World War I, the Canadian Ladies' Golf Union, which was formed in 1913, was the only national sports organization controlled by women [43]. Following the war, sports organizations such as the Women's Intercollegiate League, established in 1920 by McGill, Toronto, and Queen's Universities; the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation, and various community-based clubs provided opportunities for women's sport to flourish [57]. Formation of the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation in 1925, under the leadership of Alexandrine Gibb and a small group of Torontonians, created a national sports governing body for women that was based on the male organizational model of the Amateur Athletic Union. Using the support of members of the AAU in an advisory capacity, the WAAF soon set about organizing provincial branches, and within a very short time span, had \". . . brought a uniform system of administration and health inspection to seven sports\" [43,4]. The WAAF governed women's track and field and established a uniform code of eligibility for all sports. It is of interest to note that one of the eligibility requirements was an annual medical certificate of good health required from each female athlete. A similar requirement was not required of the males. By the 1930s, national and provincial-level athletes, competing in basketball, softball and hockey, were required to have WAAF membership cards [43]. Regional disputes over leadership and representation in the WAAF emerged and damaged the organization's effectiveness throughout much of the 1930s. Having two-thirds of the membership, Ontario and Quebec felt they should have the most influence in the organization. Each regional branch could send three voting delegates to the annual meeting. However, because of the expense and long distances that some delegates had to travel, frequently only one delegate represented a regional branch [43]. Western interests were ably represented by Ann Clark, who held office as secretary and president of the WAAF for several successive terms. Clark was subject to considerable criticism in newspapers in Eastern Canada for her outspoken advocacy of Western Canada's point of view [18]. Ontario, meanwhile, was pushing for proportional representation at the annual meetings and eventually succeeded in winning approval for its proposal. Ann Clark withdrew her name from the race for presidency of the WAAF. The damage created by such internal dissention left its mark on the organization and made good copy for the press. As one anonymous track star divulged to columnist Andy Lytle [52]: There is too much envy, too much jealousy . . . You've no idea how they talk at their meetings. It's the cat's meow, Mr. Lytle. They accuse one another of pulling unfair strings to get trips . . . worse still, they do not know anything whatever about handling or caring for athletes. They accept official positions, take over coaching jobs, and they haven't the foggiest idea of what to do or even when to do it. It is difficult to assess whether this criticism represented a consensus of the other athletes' views, as Lytle had made it abundently clear that he was opposed to women's governance of their own sport and to Ann Clark's leadership of the WAAF [18]. In reviewing the historical development of the WAAF, Kidd [43] has credited the organization with the introduction of annual dominion track and field championships for women, with the introduction of major sports awards for women, with the selection of women's teams for international competitions, and with the development of policy and resolution of disputes. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the WAAF during the 1920s and 1930s was its support for women's right to compete aggressively in an expanding arena of sport. One of the greatest basketball teams of the century, the Edmonton Commercial Graduate Club, emerged from the McDougall Commercial High School in Edmonton in 1915. During the next quarter-century, the Grads played 522 games and won all but twenty of them. In exhibition appearances at four Olympic Games - in Paris in 1924, in Amsterdam in 1928, in Los Angeles in 1932, and in Berlin in 1936 - the girls won each of the twenty-seven games in which they competed. The Grads' outstanding achievements began when they won their first Canadian title in 1922. Having paid their own way, six team members made the trip to London, Ontario, to play the Eastern champion Shamrocks. Returning to Edmonton with that city's first of seventeen Dominion Championships, the Grads' victory in 1922 went almost unnoticed by the general public. The local newspaper, The Edmonton Journal, did take note of the team's exploits and wrote, \". . . the Edmonton girls brought the thousand spectators up with a start by staging a brand of basketball that was actually dazzling\" [39,545]. It was not until 1923 that the public image of the Grads was changed by sports promoter \"Deacon\" White, local businessmen, and the self-declared world champions, Cleveland Favourite Knits. Realizing the potential earnings to be gleaned from gate receipts from thousands of spectators, \"Deacon\" White and the Grads' coach, Percy Page, began planning a series of international and inter-regional competitions to be played on the new hardwood floors of the Edmonton Arena. A two-game series was inaugurated with the Cleveland Favorite Knits in competition for the Underwood Challenge Trophy. The Grads defeated the United States champions and successfully retained possession of the Underwood Challenge Trophy for the next seventeen years. Subsequent challenges from Toronto, Chicago, and Warren, Ohio, drew average crowds of five thousand spectators. Revenue generated by the gate receipts provided sufficient funds for the Gratis to move into the field of international competition. Their subsequent successes in the United States and Europe bestowed celebrity status upon them. Upon their return to Edmonton, they were greeted at the railway station by thousands of cheering supporters [39]. Several factors contributed to the Grads' outstanding success. A closely-monitored farm system was used by Mr. Page to recruit team members. Following an initial period as members of the Gradettes, the feeder team which Mr. Page either supervised or coached, outstanding players would be moved up to the senior team. According to Noel MacDonald Robertson, the great centre, who played on the basketball team from 1933 to 1939, this recruiting system contributed to team cohesion. She stated, \"on the floor we were not individuals, we were a team \" [101,72]. Much of the Grads* success could also be attributed to the coaching of Percy Page. The girls practised twice a week, and played a quick, short, passing game that demanded excellent physical conditioning. Many of the Grads' games were won by last minute surges, when their opponents were too tired to respond to the Grads pace. Mr. Page, however, attributed the team's success to the team members. He stated in 1923, \"they are champions, because they are the most whole-hearted, sport-loving girls that it would be possible to find; they have won because the spirit of the Prairie is born and bred in them\" [101,77] Another highly successful Canadian women's basketball team gained international recognition at the Third Women's World Games held in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1930. As the Grads were unable to attend the games, the University of British Columbia women's basketball team was granted permission to represent North America at the competition. On September 8, 1930, the final game for the World Basketball Championship featured France versus Canada and was played in front of approximately 10,000 spectators. In spite of such handicaps as having to use the French interpretation of the international rules, having to play on an unfamiliar court, having a referee who did not speak English, and having to use a smaller basketball for one-half of the game; the U.B.C. team managed to win by a narrow margin of 18 to 14. The team arrived back in Vancouver on September 26, 1930, and was met by one of the largest crowds ever to greet returning Canadian champions [39]. Canadian women also enjoyed considerable success at the international level of competition in sports other than basketball. Cecil Smith, a figure skater, made her debut as Canada's first female Olympic competitor at the 1924 Winter Games in Chamonix, France [101]. Swimmers emerged as outstanding athletes during the 1920s and 1930s: Phyllis Dewar, who dominated the 1934 British Empire Games by winning four individual events; Phillis Haslam, who set a world record in the 100 meter backstroke; and Margaret Seller, who was instrumental in gaining recognition for the sport of synchronized swimming at the national and international levels [101]. Beyond the opportunities for competition provided by amateur swimming, international competitions for marathon swimming were held at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, commencing in 1926. The prize money for winning a marathon swim was considerable - $10,000 by 1931 - and public interest in the events was high. Detailed, live coverage of the swims was carried by local radio stations. The endurance demonstrated by women swimmers, who rapidly narrowed the gap between men's and women's swimming records, served to cast doubt on existing assumptions regarding female frailty and male supremacy in athletics [32]. An astonishing career in competitive speedskating was established by Canadian, Lela Brooks. Encouraged by her parents, who were both competitive speedskaters, Brooks was the first female admitted to the Old Orchard Skating Club in Toronto. By 1926, Brooks had broken six world records and won three of her four races at the World Championships held in Saint John, New Brunswick. She continued to compete until her retirement in 1935, having won all the major women's speedskating titles. Jean Wilson followed closely on the blades of Brooks, when she won the North American Speedskating Championships in 1931. The next year, she competed in the Winter Olympics at Lake 68 Placid, New York, where speedskating competitions were staged as exhibition events. Jean won the 500 meter event in record time and placed a very close second on the 1,500 meter race [101]. Several women deserve mention, not only because of their outstanding achievements in an individual sport, but also because of their all-round athletic ability. Dorothy Walton emerged as one of the West's great athletes. During her years at university from 1926 to 1930, Walton played on fourteen intercollegiate teams that including tennis, diving, swimming, track and field, basketball and field hockey. She won provincial and Western Canadian tennis titles between 1924 and 1931, and was the first woman to win the Outstanding Athlete Award at the University of Saskatchewan. By 1934, badminton was Walton's premier sport, and in 1939, she won the All-England Women's Singles Title, which was considered equivalent to the world amateur championship [101]. Bobbie Rosenfeld was an outstanding performer in track and field and also competed in many of the other sporting activities that were available. In 1924, Rosenfeld won the Toronto Grass Court Tennis Championship and played on several Eastern Canadian championship basketball teams. By 1928, she had set Canadian records in the running broad jump, discus, and standing broad jump. The highlight of Rosenfeld's career occurred at the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928, the first Olympic Games in which women were allowed to compete in track and field. She won the silver medal in the 100 metre dash, the gold medal in the 4x100 metre relay, and finished fifth in the 800 metre competition, even though she had never trained for it [76]. Constance Hennesey, a founding member of the Toronto Ladies' Athletic Club, described Rosenfeld as, \". . . wiry and quick. Above all she was aggressive, very aggressive physically. She simply went after everything with full force . . . . She was as good as one could see in track and field, hockey, basketball and softball\" [101,79]. Stricken by arthritis shortly after the 1928 Games, Rosenfeld was forced to retire from active sport. She subsequently coached the women's track team in the 1932 British Empire Games and then worked as a sports columnist for the Toronto Globe [101]. No record of Canadian women's achievement in track and field would be complete without mention of the outstanding performances of Myrtle Cook, Bobbie Rosenfeld, Jane Bell, and Ethel Smith, who set a new world record when they won the 400 metre relay at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam [32]. Referring to the Canadian women's Olympic team, Schrodt has stated [76,279], \". . . no other single Canadian sports group approached the level reached by that team in the Olympic Games.\" The growing interest of women in international competition aroused resistance in the International Olympic Committee. Prior to 1928, women in the Olympic Games had officially competed in tennis, swimming, and ice-skating; however, in spite of strong pleas made by women in sport to incorporate women's track and field events in the Games of 1920 and 1924, the International Olympic Committee and the International Amateur Athletic Federation, the governing body for Olympic track and field, refused to concern themselves with women's track and field [46]. In response to the opposition from the International Olympic Committee, Alice Milliat, a Frenchwoman, decided to form an international organization for women which provided a regulatory sports body, the Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale (FSFI), and a forum for competition. During its fifteen-year history, from 1921 to 1936, the FSFI held four international competitions for women. The First Women's Olympic Games were held in Paris in 1922, where representatives from five nations took part in eleven events. [One of the events was the 1000 metre race, which was 200 metres longer than the 800 metre race that was subsequently discredited following the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam]. Use of the term Olympic by the FSFI raised the ire of the International Olympic Committee; thus the Second Women's Olympic Games, became the Second International Ladies' Games, held in Sweden in 1926. Despite the controversy created by the running of the 800 metre race for women at the 1928 Olympic 70 Games in Amsterdam, The Third Women's World Games were held in Prague in 1930. Over 15,000 spectators watched more that 200 athletes from seventeen countries participate in the three days of competition [46]. Meanwhile, the FSFI continued to lobby for the implementation of a full slate of track and field events for women in the Olympic Games of 1936. It indicated to the International Olympic Committee its willingness to give up the Women's World Games only i f a full program of events was granted for women in the Olympics and if women could have direct representation on the International Olympic Committee. Following lengthy negotiations between the FSFI and the International Amateur Athletic Federation, the IAAF decided that it would take complete control of women's track and field and that the Fifth Women's World Games in 1938 would be disallowed. Although records kept by the FSFI, for regulated championships, were recognized by the IAAF, no promise for a full Olympic women's program in track and field was forthcoming. Many women involved in the FSFI were embittered by their treatment by the IAAF and as a result, the FSFI never met again. The one international organization that had championed the cause for women's athletics ceased to exist. In retrospect, had it not been for the efforts of Alice Milliat and the FSFI, the acceptance of women's competition in a full slate of track and field events at the international level would probably have been considerably delayed [46], The 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam were noteworthy because of the controversy surrounding the 800 metre race. There were mixed reports of total exhaustion amongst the competitors who managed to cross the finish line. This degree of fatigue was considered unacceptable by officials from several countries, and was used as evidence of the damage that would befall women who participated in strenuous sport. Opponents of women's participation in track and field events at the Olympic Games already included the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron de Coubertin and Pope Puis XI [57]. Dr. A. S. Lamb, the manager of the 1928 Canadian team, was one of the most outspoken opponents of women's competition in strenuous sport and voted against women's right to compete in future Olympics. He argued that women were physically incapable and were too-highly strung to compete in such activities. A compromise was eventually reached wherein the 800 metre race was discontinued but women were allowed to participate in future Olympic Games [32]. In Canada, Dr. Lamb's comments were treated with skepticism by sportswriters who published photos of successful female athletes with their babies [32]. Bobbie Rosenfeld, who had finished fifth in the race, later wrote in a 1938 interview in Maclean's, \"any girl who accepts and practises correct methods of training is capable of running 800 meters or continuing any other unusual athletic pursuit\"[57,238]. It is interesting to note that in the 800 metre race in Amsterdam, Rosenfeld had deliberately stayed behind to encourage her faltering team mate, Jean Thompson, across the finish line ahead of herself [101]. It was also at the 1928 Olympic Games that Ethel Catherwood emerged as the world's premier high jumper, when she won the gold medal with a leap of 5 ' 2.7 \". Catherwood, who had grown up in Saskatchewan, was called the \"Saskatoon Lily.\" One Toronto sportswriter wrote: From the instant this tall slim graceful girl from the prairies tossed aside her long flowing cloak of purple and made her first leap, the fans fell for her. A flowerlike face of rare beauty above a long, slim body simply clad in pure white . . . she looked like a tall strange lily [101,231]. Following the Games, Catherwood remained in Toronto where she became a member of the Parkdale Ladies' Athletic Club. The club had been founded by Teddy Oke, who offered employment to female athletes in various sports and provided financial support for their coaching and competitive needs. Catherwood was employed in Oke's brokerage firm and was coached by Walter Knox, whom Oke had hired, until she moved to the United States in 1929 [101]. At the 1932 Olympic Games held in Los Angeles, an outstanding sprinter emerged in the form of Hilda Strike, who won silver medals for her performances in the 100 metre race and 400 metre relay. In the 100 meters, Strike and the current world record holder, Stella Walsh, both finished the race with identical times of 11.9 seconds; however, the gold medal was awarded to Walsh. In the 400 metre relay, Strike anchored the Canadian team which finished with the same official time as the American team, but once again the gold medal was awarded to the opponent. Following the 1932 Olympics, Strike and former Olympic gold-medal winner, Myrtle Cook, formed the Mercury Athletic Club in Montreal, where Strike continued to train. She competed in the 1934 British Empire Games in London, where she won silver medals in the 100 yard race and 440 yard relay, before retiring in 1935 [101]. Controversy marked the advent of the 1936 Olympics, which were held from August 1 to 16 in Berlin. Opposed to the staging of the Olympics in Berlin, a small team of Canadian athletes, which included Eva Dawes, the silver medalist in high jump at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games, chose to attend the People's Olympic Games, from July 19 to 26 in Barcelona. The People's Olympic Games were considered an alternative to, \"the Berlin Olympiad which stands for the fascinization of sport and the preparation of youth for war\" [42,21]. The campaign against the Olympics was part of the Communist Party of Canada's overall campaign against facism. Because of reported Nazi atrocities in sport, in particular the repression of \"non-Aryan\" athletes, it was recommended that the Olympics not be staged in Nazi Germany. The proposed boycott was widely discussed by sports columnist across the country, by the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada, and the Y.M.C.A.[42]. Various arguments were presented to justify sending the Canadian team to Berlin. In the end, the Canadian Olympic Committee supported the competition in Berlin, and with the exception of a few Jewish athletes and Eva Dawes, the boycott campaign had little effect on most of the Canadian competitors and coaches [42]. The Canadian women's team that did attend the 1936 Berlin Olympics did not match the 73 performances of its predecessors at the 1928 and 1932 Olympics. The 400 metre relay team won bronze medals, as did Betty Taylor in the 80 metre hurdles [76]. While the FSFI was struggling to gain improved access for women's sport at the international level of competition, a number of women's organizations in the United States, such as the Girl Scouts, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Playground and Recreation Association, the Women's Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation, and professional physical educators at the colleges and universities, advocated a modified, minimally competitive version of sport for women. They argued for separate programs, teachers, coaches, and officials for women's athletics in the hope that women's sport would develop as \"a more moral and democratic athletic philosophy than men's\" [32,35]. Physical educators in educational settings throughout the United States introduced the concept of the \"Play Day\" and modified girls rules, which were designed to maximize participation and good sportsmanship while avoiding the hazards of overly-aggressive play and competitiveness [57]. By 1933, these attitudes did have an influence on girl's and women's sport programs at McGill Univeristy and in the schools in the Toronto area. Intramurals were introduced to replace inter-school competitions, and modified girls' rules were implemented in order to make popular team sports such as basketball less competitive and aggressive [43]. According to Lenskyj [48], the underlying rationale was that women's sport should be protected from abuses such as commercialism, elitism, and competitiveness, that were evident in the male sports model. Meanwhile, many female athletes in the Western provinces and in rural settings in Ontario, continued to enjoy inter-school and league competition without the restrictions of modified girls' rules. Athletes who played in both systems began to question the need for modified girls' rules so that eventually, use of the girls' rules was abandoned several decades later in the school system in Ontario [57]. 74 Arguments about women's place in sport continued to prevail throughout the 1930s. The sports columns in newspapers offered varying opinions about the effects of athleticism on feminine appeal and morality, the commercialization of sport, and the effect of athletic competition on the female's ability to bear children at a later time. Athletes such as Canadian, Roxy Atkins, judged the most beautiful girl at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, frequently received more favourable press coverage because of their physical attractiveness. While the performance of successful women in sport was measured against male standards, the behavior, sexuality, appearance, and character of female athletes was measured against a feminine ideal, largely established by male journalists and sportsmen. When female sports' columnists, such as Alexandrine Gibb, defended female athletes against charges of lost femininity, they gave the issue unnecessary prominence. As a result, media coverage of women's sport that focused on increased participation and improved performance was limited [49]. The 1938 British Empire Games held in Sydney, Australia, was the last major international competition attended by Canadian athletes before the beginning of World War II. The outbreak of the war, in 1939, resulted in the suspension of the Olympic Games and other international competitions for the duration of the war. However, team sports such as softball and basketball continued to thrive, as women formed teams with industrial sponsors in the munitions and aircraft factories across the nation [48]. CHAPTER 7 FAIR AND FLYING: THE STORY OF MARGARET (BELL) GIBSON INTRODUCTION The data for this ethnography was collected over a period of time from November, 1989, to April, 1991, in a series of five informal interviews conducted with Margaret (Bell) Gibson* in her home in North Vancouver. The interviews were arranged for the purposes of collecting and describing information regarding Margaret's experience and cultural knowledge of sport. The foundation of each interview was based upon a relationship of rapport and trust established between Margaret and myself. Each interview began with a cup of coffee and an informal chat. Then Margaret would verbally indicate when she was ready for the recorded interview to begin. I believe this informal introduction facilitated the rapport established in the interview process. Validation of the interviews with Margaret proved to be critical in demonstrating my respect for Margaret's experience and interpretations. Throughout the research process, I found myself struggling with the temptation to recast Margaret's cultural experiences in my own terms; a tendency increased by my familiarity with the external features of the sports scene and by my application of a historical perspective that sought to reaffirm my feminist viewpoint. In order to maintain the position of a reflexive author while conducting the ethnography research, I attempted to strike a delicate balance between empathetic listener and objective researcher. Margaret's story begins with a chronological description of her formative years and proceeds with a descriptive account of the significant features of her experience as *The researcher recognizes that use of the informant's first name is not commonly used in a formal research document. However, in order to reflect the rapport established between the researcher and the informant, the informant shall be referred to by her first name throughout the next two chapters. 75 an athlete. The story ends with Margaret's premature retirement from competitive track and field, brought about by the onset of World War II. THE ROAD TO SUCCESS Margaret was born in 1917 in Medicine Hat, Alberta; the youngest of three children. Margaret's father, William Bell, was a construction foreman, who had emigrated to Canada where he married Mollie Bell. Following her marriage, Mollie remained at home where she raised her daughter and her two older sons, Bob and Lynn. At the age of eighteen months, Margaret and her family moved to Cranbrook, British Columbia, where William Bell was hired as a construction foreman for the large power plants that were under construction in the East Kootenays. During the next few years, the Bells moved to several locations throughout the Kootenays, depending on the location of the construction sites. Margaret recalled having attending grade one in Nelson, grades two through four in Lower Bonnington, grades five and six in South Slocan, and grade seven back in Nelson. Margaret began her sports career at the illustrious age of six when she won first place and a silver medal in a twenty-five yard race at the local Sports Day. At that time, most of the sport for young children was organized by local community groups such as Sunday Schools and public schools. Bob Bell, Margaret's older brother by two years, appeared to have had a significant influence on Margaret's initial interest and development as an athlete: Researcher: When you were growing up, you mentioned you grew up with your brothers and you did things naturally. If they were playing ball; you played ball and what not. Margaret: That's right. Well, the younger of the two boys. He is two years older than I am. Researcher: And he was a good athlete? Margaret: Yes, he played lacrosse and he played soccer and he was a junior something-or-other tennis champion here in Vancouver and played badminton and he skied. He did everything everybody else did. And 77 when we were younger, before we moved to Vancouver, I was the only girl my age (there were younger ones) but I always seemed to go with my brother and if they were playing scrub or whatever, if we were going swimming or what not, I always seemed to be going with them. Margaret continued to run in sprints during her years in elementary school and then began jumping at the age of eleven, when she joined her brothers in her family's backyard: The boys decided that they wanted to jump and we had an fence that had pickets on it. So they took one section of pickets out, all the way across. Took out the top bar and the bottom bar and left those two posts and drove nails in, spaced, and got a long piece of lath (or something like that) .. . that was stiff enough to hold fairly well. It had a wow in it, but it was fairly straight and they started jumping over it. Well, of course, I wasn't going to sit and watch them forever, so I tried it and that's the way I got started. Her first formal high jump competition was held in Cranbrook when at the age of thirteen, Margaret competed against older girls in the high school district meet. She won the event! When asked why she decided to continue jumping in her junior years, Margaret responded: No, my brother [Bob] wanted to do it with the high school and if he was going down there after school, I went with him. The Bell family relocated to Vancouver in 1930, where Margaret attended grades eight and nine at Templeton Junior High School. She continued with her sport endeavors and won the high jump event at the regional high school track meet. Margaret remembered [with excitement] her impressions of her first big meets: My brother was always in the high school meets. That was the beginning of the big things you know. Boy! All the Vancouver schools competing against one another. That was the first big thrill. High school was completed at Britannia Secondary School where Margaret participated in a number of sports including basketball and skiing during the winter months, track and field, swimming, and grass hockey during the summertime. For two years, while in high school, Margaret was competing on three different basketball teams: I was more interested in basketball because with that, I could play for the school and I could also play for a commercial team (for The Province) and then the Sunday school started one. So, for two years, I played on three teams and that got to be too much. Basketball kept Margaret in shape for the track and field season. Initially, track and field events were staged from late Spring until early Fall, as there were no indoor track facilities in Vancouver. Coaches in both basketball and track and field were generally volunteers. Margaret's high school track coach was Mr. Edwards, who taught mathematics at the school, and Mr. Clark, who coached the Sunday school's team and several other basketball teams on a voluntary basis. In 1934, while competing for Britannia High School, Margaret set a new Canadian Interscholastic High Jump Record of5'2 3/4\"[69]. . . . the Vancouver Athletic Club (which was actually a baseball club) . . . they invited met to join their club because they had a track team at the time. And of course, I nearly bust all my buttons because these were kids in high school and kids who were finished school and kids that were going to university because this was \"the\" track club in Vancouver. So, of course, I felt that it was an honour. The invitation to join the VAC had been extended by one of Margaret's high school teachers [who was possibly acting as a scout for the track club]. Margaret's coach in the VAC was usually one of the older boys who competed in the men's high jump. Earl McComber, who competed for the club in the high jump and hurdles, helped Margaret perfect her jumping technique and made recommendations about the intensity of her training schedule. About this time, Margaret and Bob's paths in sport separated, as Bob chose to pursue his interests in tennis, basketball, and soccer. He did not join the track club, leaving Margaret to strike out on her own. Close friendships were soon formed with members in the VAC. Margaret recalled: So anyway, when I came into the club, they treated me like everybody's baby sister. And . . . track meets, like in Penticton or Kelowna, or wherever, there was usually a dance afterwards and they would all gather me up and take me to the dance. See that I was well taken care of all the time. 79 Inspiration was provided by fellow teammates, Lillian Palmer and Mary Frizzell, who had competed in the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. Another team member [whom Margaret chose not to identify] was especially memorable: We had one girl and I just loved her, she was the nicest girl . . . She was a javelin thrower and she used to run on the relay team . . . But, she loved throwing the javelin . . . and the rest of us kids would do some work and then we'd sit down and rest awhile and she'd still be working. I never saw anybody put so much time into anything that they wanted to do. And . . . her style was beautiful; her distance was the best in B.C. She never made it on a world team. Margaret competed annually in the Dominion Track and Field Championships from 1932 until the war broke out in 1939 and ended competition. By 1934, Margaret was consistently clearing five feet in competition and was considered one of Canada's best female high jumpers. Her talent did not go unnoticed as she received offers from coaches, both in Montreal and Washington State, to continue her schooling under their sponsorship. Margaret declined, as her parents were not in favour of her being away from home for such an extended period of time. An invitation from the British Columbia Women's Amateur Athletic Federation to represent Canada in high the jump at the British Empire Games and the Women's World Games, which were held in the White City Stadium in London, England, in 1934, presented an exciting opportunity for Margaret to travel abroad and compete at a higher level. She recalled the first trip abroad as being the most exciting. The glamour of travel aboard The Duchess of York and of dinner parties, dances, and a garden party at Buckingham Palace was joyously remembered. Margaret rose to the occasion in both competitions as she placed third in both events, with a jump of 4' 11 1/2\", recorded at the British Empire Games, and a jump of 5', recorded at the Women's World Games [69]. Highlights of Margaret's athletic career also included a provincial basketball championship, but it was in the high jump that Margaret excelled. Although Margaret had jumped 5' 4\" during practices, it was not until July 1st, 1936, at the Thirtieth Police Sports, held in conjunction with the British Columbia Olympic Trials in Hastings Park, 80 that Margaret tied the Canadian Senior Women's High Jump record at 5' 3\" [69]. A goal she had set for herself years before - to equal or better the Canadian senior women's record - had been achieved. Following closely on the heels of that achievement, Margaret received an invitation from the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation to represent her country at the 1936 Berlin Olympics: Researcher: Do you remember how you felt when you found out you were going? Margaret: Yes. I was happy that I was going, but I was disappointed that I was the only track and field girl on the B.C. team. The journey to Berlin was lengthy as the Canadian team met in Montreal for two weeks of practice before embarking on the eight-day journey, by ship and train, that took them to the Olympics. Margaret was ranked fifth in the world in women's high jump, going into the Olympics. In spite of high expectations placed upon her by the Vancouver press to win a medal, Margaret did not perform particularly well in Berlin. She placed ninth with a jump of 4' 11\" [69]. Margaret briefly talked about the press coverage she had received: Researcher: Did people like yourself and Howie McPhee, for example, who had a lot of press coverage and . . . there was quite a bit of pressure on him to do well. Did you feel much pressure to bring back medals and all that sort of thing? Margaret: A fair amount and you have all these hopes that you will be one of the ones that they don't write about, because that's added stress, when you are pointed out as one whom they expect to be a great shining star. If you aren't.. . like I wasn't... that is a little discouraging. Following the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Margaret decided to change her jumping technique from the Scissors to the Eastern Cutoff, which she felt would give her more height. The 1938 British Empire Games were held in Sydney, Australia, and Margaret worked very hard to perfect the new technique for that competition. Once again, Margaret did not have a full-time coach at the VAC, although fellow competitors, Ed Burritt and Earl McComber, tried to assist her. At the British Empire Games, she recalled a South African high jumper, Eddie Thacker, who had successfully used the 81 Eastern Cutoff for a number of years, coming over and helping her out. Margaret placed fourth at the games in Sydney, with a jump of 5' 1 3/4\" [69]. She felt good about her performance using the new technique: Well, Bobbie Robinson, the team manager, said he'd never seen me jump better because I was jumping a new way and he thought it was just great Her success with the Eastern Cutoff at the British Empire Games was reinforced by her setting of a new record at an invitational meet held in Auckland, New Zealand, on the way home: . . . I jumped in Auckland and won the event. I also made a new New Zealand record which made me very happy. Margaret's sights were set on competing in the 1940 Olympics and then she planned on retiring, for as she said: Well, yes. I was looking forward to the 1940 Olympics and I thought after those, if I could make them, that would be the end of it because I was getting old for sports at that particular time . . . at that time you just didn't go on and on. With the outbreak of World War II in September, 1939, all international track and field competition ceased for the duration of the war. Margaret remembered competing in several local meets in 1939 and 1940 but after that, even local competition ceased with the hustle and bustle of the war effort. In 1940, Margaret went to work in the local Boeing plant where she played basketball throughout the war years. She stated: So, if the war ever did anything that was good, it made the transition from track and field easier, because I kept on playing basketball. That made it much easier than it would have been. Margaret married and raised a family after the war, but stayed involved in track and field for a number of years by helping to coach young adults and by holding office on the Executive of the B.C. Women's Amateur Athletic Federation. At present, Margaret resides with her daughter's family in North Vancouver. She had the pleasure of recently attending a reunion of the 1936 Canadian Summer Olympic Team and maintains her keen interest in sport. THE SPORTS SCENE By the conclusion of the interviews, a number of cultural domains and taxonomies emerged from Margaret's discourse. Each of these organizing frameworks, which included sport, types of competition, social network, rules, activities engaged in, jumping technique, and the concept of distance and space, gave meaning to Margaret's experience and should not be viewed as abstract entities. The main point here was not to attempt to describe a series of isolated taxonomies of cultural forms but to realize that these structures lay embedded dynamically within the complexity of Margaret's life. This involved searching for, \"the parts of a culture, the relationships among those parts, and the relationship of the parts to the whole,\" [84,189] as conceptualized by Margaret. THE STRUCTURE OF SPORT In Canada, much of what happens in sport is determined by the seasons of the year. What, where, and when Margaret played depended to a large extent on the weather and available facilities. Skiing required snow-covered slopes, grass hockey needed green playing fields, and so on. Track and field was the only major sport Margaret participated in on a year-round basis and that was dependent on the availability of an indoor track, located in Vancouver. While competition in the high jump and basketball were Margaret's favorite sporting activities, she enjoyed playing most of the sports she tried. She recalled: Because for me it was just part of growing up. It was just something that I really enjoyed. I did it because I did enjoy it. There were only two activities that Margaret remembered were not enjoyable. They were throwing the javelin, which Margaret felt was too hard on her arm, and playing grass hockey, which she felt was too hard on her shins. Fear of injury to her legs became a factor while skiing and she was subsequently discouraged from skiing by her coach at the VAC. Swimming was also discouraged by her coach on the basis that the musculature developed for swimming was counter-productive to that required for the high jump. However, Margaret maintained her fitness through the rainy winter months by playing basketball, which she said was played aggressively and at a high skill level: Researcher: Was the level of competition pretty good? Even then? Margaret: Yes. Researcher: It wasn't a matter of you couldn't get sweaty or things like that? You could really get out there and be aggressive and compete? Margaret: That's right. Margaret's conceptualization of her participation in various sports is represented by the following analysis of components (Figure 6). While Margaret's initial forays into athletics were often shared with her brother, in recreational activities or in community-sponsored events, she gradually began to compete in more highly-organized sport that was governed by a myriad of rules and sports organizations. School competitions were open to any students attending the schools represented in the competition. Rules for eligibility were not strictly adhered to. At the high school meet in Cranbrook, Margaret was invited to compete in the high jump event although she was still too young to attend high school. When asked if there were restrictions regarding the age at which young athletes could enter competition, Margaret replied: Researcher: So there were no age . . . were there age distinctions? Margaret: There were to start with . . . yes. Until sixteen you were a Junior. To eighteen you were an Intermediate Sport and over eighteen, you were a Senior . . . you had to be sixteen years old before you Could go on a world - any - like Empire Games or any of those. Researcher: Even if you had extraordinary ability at twelve or thirteen, you wouldn't have been able to compete? Margaret: There were dancing competitions at the Caledonian Games for all ages and stuff like that. Swimmers and divers could be any age. But not until later for track and field. You had to be at least sixteen years old. Researcher: So there was this sort of ethic about protecting children? Margaret: Yes . . . FIGURE 6 Componential A n a l y s i s of Sport Conceptual ized by Margaret ( B e l l ) Gibson Sport Played for fun Played for fitness Discouraged by coach Played occasionally Played a l l season Played Hlth brothers Played as an individual on a team Location Non -Competitive Skiing Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No Local ski slopes Competitive Indoor Track Meets Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Indoor arena ln Vancouver Basketball Ye3 Yes No No No No Yes School gyms Church halls SUMMER SPORTS Sport Played for fun Played for fitness Discouraged by coach Played occasionally Played a l l season Played with brothers Played as an individual on a team Location Non -Competitive Scrub (softball) Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Playing f ie ld Jumping Ye3 Ye3 No No Yes Yes No Backyard Swimming Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Lakes near Nelson, pool near Sunset Beach Competitive Grass Hockey Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Playing f ield Track & Field (running & high Jump) Yes Yes No \u00C2\u00BB No i Yes No Yes Tracks, stadiums * Running was later discouraged when Margaret wanted to specialize in jumping Beyond age restrictions, additional categories of eligibility defined who could compete in what. Any athlete in track and field who paid the required entry fee could participate in open competitions. Closed competitions required that athletes be affiliated with a recognized track and field club or team and usually were members of the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation. Competing in closed competitions frequently meant that athletes also had to meet a qualifying standard based on a pre-determined level of performance. For example, in order to qualify to attend the Canadian Track and Field Championships, Margaret would have had to qualify at the British Columbia Trials first. Frequently, it was the availability of funds that determined how many athletes, having met the qualifying standards, would be selected to participate on the team: Margaret: No . . . We had trials here in the city and there were standards that you had to meet to go Fast to compete. So if you met a standard, you were on a team, providing there was money. Funding for Margaret's entry fees, for transportation, for food, and for lodging, was usually provided by the VAC. According to Margaret, funds were also provided by private organizations such as, \"Spencers, Hudson's Bay, Woodward's, and The Daily Province, and The Sun, and a lot of private organizations like the Vancouver Police. They would donate funds and prizes.\" A blazer, dress, white shoes and hat, and \"sweats\" [fleece training suit] were also provided for Margaret whenever she represented Canada internationally. A large clothing manufacturer from Eastern Canada usually donated the uniforms. According to an undated newspaper article in Margaret's scrapbook, the provision of funds required to cover the Canadian teams' expenses, estimated at a minimum of $35,430, to attend the 1934 British Empire Games,was a haphazard affair. The article stated: Now some stern pruning is necessary for the Federal government grant has shrunk from $10,000 to $4,000, the Ontario grant of $5,000 promised by the Henry government has not yet come through, and neither has the promised Quebec government grant of $3,000. As a matter of fact only $13,000 has reached the Canadian British Empire Committee to date and of this amount, $6,250 is from the British Empire Committee of England, which is sponsoring the meet. , Another undated newspaper clipping from Margaret's scrapbook revealed that in order to raise funds for Vancouver athletes to attend the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, Vancouver Mayor, Gerry McGeer, appealed to \". . . 700 Vancouver citizens for contributions up to $25.\" When asked if the Depression had an effect on track and field, in terms of number of competitions held and levels of funding, Margaret replied: Margaret: No. It was really just getting better. Researcher: It didn't? You didn't feel it cut back because of the Depression? Margaret: No. I think locally, we had more meets here at the time than they do now. Although that sounds strange, but Vancouver was kind of the focal point and they would come from the Interior and the Island and from Washington and Oregon and this sort of thing. Only once in her athletic career did Margaret recall having to participate in raising funds at a \"tag day\" at a professional boxing match. This involved asking spectators at the match to make a monetary donation. Margaret's only financial obligation while competing was to provide her own spending money. As Margaret was not employed throughout her years in competitive sport, her parents always seemed able to give her some money to take along on the trips, in spite of the difficulties experienced during the Depression years. Researcher: Was that a problem for some of the kids on the teams, just getting enough spending money, given that it was the Thirties? In all these cases, was spending money ever a problem? Margaret: Yes, but things were so cheap at that time. Mind you, five dollars was a lot of money. Now in 1934 there were three of us girls and we had something like fifteen dollars each and we thought we had lots of money. Researcher: Did you ever feel that maybe your parents couldn't manage at that time, given that it was the Depression? Margaret: No, not really. Not that I know of, let's put it that way. Professional and amateur standings were also used to determine athletes' eligibility to compete in certain sports and events. While it was acceptable to receive prizes for having won an event, as soon as an athlete accepted a gift (that was not a prize for winning),that athlete was classified as a professional and was ineligible to compete in amateur athletics. Margaret stated that, \"The rules were very strict. No one was ever challenged about breaking amateur rules on the Canadian team while I competed.\" Perhaps the most significant set of rules operating in track and field were those declared by the sports governing bodies such as the International Olympic Committee, that severely restricted women's participation in endurance events. Competition in track and field was categorized by events. Margaret recalled that women were allowed to compete in: throwing the discus and the javelin, performing the 80m hurdles, the running high jump and broad jump, running the 100 yard and 200 yard dash, running the 220 yard, 440 yard, and 880 yard relays. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, women's competition was even more severely restricted to: running the 100m dash, the 80m hurdles, the 400m relay, the running high jump, and throwing the discus and javelin. At the same Olympic Games, according to the Official Guidebook for the 1936 Olympic Games, men were competing in no less than twenty-three track and field events compared to the women's schedule of six events. Margaret recalled: . . . The last year I was competing, they [women] were running the 880. But the officials would never think of letting the women run a marathon or anything of that kind. Researcher: Again, because they didn't think women had the physical strength to endure? Margaret: That's right. They didn't think they could stand it. Researcher: Did any women ask at that point to do these sorts of activities or did women just accept that? Margaret: Not that I am aware of. Nothing Margaret had said in the interviews indicated that she had questioned the restrictions placed upon women who had wanted to compete in endurance events. However, she did mention [in an informal chat] that her late husband had never discussed her career in high jump with her, because of his disapproval of her participation in such an \"unladylike\" sport. Rules not only governed who could compete in what, but how each event was conducted. The high jump consisted of using a running approach before attempting to jump over a bar, horizontally suspended between two standards. Each athlete was allowed of maximum of three attempts to clear the bar at the set height, without knocking the bar down. If unsuccessful at clearing the bar after three attempts, that competitor was disqualified. The bar was gradually raised during the competition until a winner, who cleared the bar at the highest height, emerged. In the event of a tie, the tied competitors competed in a \"jump-off.\" Or, the competitor who had missed the fewest jumps in the competition was usually declared the winner. Several rules also governed positioning of the body while clearing the bar. These were that the head could not clear the bar before the rest of the body and that the head could not be lower than the rest of the body when clearing the bar. Each competitor took turns with the other high jumpers, so that an average competition took about two-and-a-half hours. Margaret recalled that competition at the 1936 Berlin Olympics took at least twice as long and was very fatiguing. Since keeping the muscles warm during such a lengthy competition became an important consideration, most of the better jumpers would jump with their \"sweats\" on until near the end of the competition. Margaret recalled wearing her \"sweats\" at all her competitions until she was near the 4'10\" mark. Margaret initially began jumping using a technique called the Scissors with a modified approach from the left-hand side. However, most of the high-jumpers at the international levels of competition were using the more advanced jumping styles; the Western Roll and the Eastern Roll or Cut-off. Following the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Margaret began to change her style to the Eastern Roll or Cut-off, with the help of several male competitors, who were successfully using this jumping technique. She said: 89 No. When I went to Australia, I was just in transition because my coach felt I could jump higher with the lower center of gravity using the new technique. I was changing from the Scissors to the Eastern Roll, which is a Scissors with a lay-out. Now, you jump exactly the same way except, going over the bar in the Scissors you're in a sitting position . . . semi-sitting position. With the other you're leaning back which gives you more lift of the hips. It changes your center of gravity which gives you more height. Awareness of distance and timing were critical in the execution of the high jump. Margaret had learned by trial and error that, \"sixteen steps back from the bar\", was just the right distance for her approach. Height of the bar was another factor Margaret was very cognizant of. She stated: . . . And, usually in training, at the beginning of the year, if you jumped and were trying something higher than you would normally - you know -just to get used to the bar being up there. Lots of times I tried jumping 5'6\" just to get used to the bar being real high and I had to make a supreme effort. Researcher: Did it work sometimes? Margaret: Well, no . . . But it gives you a sense of sort of well-being to know that . . . that bar away up that far and that close to the top of my head doesn't scare me. That's the only reason that you do things like that. Awareness of the distance to the landing pit, which was usually filled with sand and dirt, was also a factor in jumping as Margaret had experienced bruised and sprained ankles that were the result of poor landings on several occasions. Space and distance were also factors on the long trips by train and ship to national and international competitions. It was impossible to do any sort of training on the four or five-day train trips to Eastern Canada and training aboard ship was usually restricted to exercises, swimming, deck tennis, and jogging. Practising the high jump was, of course, out of the question. Developing restricted mental focus, that permitted Margaret to concentrate only on the limited area immediate surrounding the high bar was another important element of space that had to be mastered. In terms of timing, Margaret referred to elements of the high jump such as knowing how fast she had to run in her approach, knowing just when to kick up with the leading leg, and when to bring her arms up for better height and balance. She would mentally practise the jump before making her attempt and felt this helped her concentrate on the task at hand. The taxonomy of the high jump (Figure 7) reflects Margaret's understanding of the jumping styles she was aware of while she was in competition. Competing at the various levels of competition was similar to climbing a pyramid. As Margaret's level of performance improved, the field of competitors she faced became more select and the competitions became increasingly challenging. A number of organizations (Figures 8-9) sponsored competitions at the local, provincial, national, and international levels. Selection of athletes to attend competitions at the national and international levels usually was performed by female representatives from the Women's Amateur Athletic Federation, in conjunction with their male counterparts from the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada. Whenever Margaret was notified of her selection as a provincial or national representative, she was telephoned by Ann Clark, an executive member of W A A F , several weeks prior to the departure date for the competition. Margaret recalled awareness of the regional dissension that existed at the organizational level in track and field, especially when it came to team selection: All the time that I was competing we were very aware that East was East and West was West. If there was something to be decided and it could only be one person, say, we always got the feeling that unless Ann Clark could really do some fast persuading, it would be the East who would get it. However, once selected to represent the national team, Margaret said regional rivalries were forgotten and, \". . . you were a Canadian ; you were very aware that you, . . . would be called ambassadors of our country.\" Margaret's drive to succeed in the high jump was directed toward qualifying for the Olympic Games. She recalled: Well, the Olympics is considered the elite competition. Yes! If you make the Olympics you're considered to be good. FIGURE 7 Taxonomy o f the High Jump Conceptual ized by Margaret ( B e l l ) Gibson STYLE OF JUMP POSITION DYNAMICS OF HIGH JUMP Semi-Seated Approach Measured 16 steps from the high bar - left red shoe on track as marker for take-off point; used rapid, running approach from the left-hand side; others used tape to measure their approach distance and approached from right-hand side Scissors Take-Off Plant right foot and kick up lef t leg over the bar, bring up tra i l ing leg real ly hard and swing arms up over head to create vert ical momentum Scissors Clearing the Bar Lean upper body forward over out-stretched legs; stretch arms out to sides for balance HIGH JUMP Approach Same approach as In Scissors Eastern R< Cut-Off Layout Clearing the Bar Lean upper body back with face looking up at sky; arms stretched out to side for balance Landing Try to land standing on both feet in sand and gravel pi t ; same concern for ankle injury when landing Western Roll Clearing the. Bar Head faces down when clearing the bar so that bar passes under the stomach Western Roll Landing Land on both hands and feet i n sand and gravel pit FIGURE 8 92 Taxonomy of the Structure of Sport Conceptualized by Margaret ( B e l l ) Gibson C l a s s o f Compet i t ion Name o f Compet i t ion L o c a t i o n When i t Took P lace Reward/ P r i z e s Sponsor J u n i o r , Senior High School Meets - L o c a l School S p r i n g Ribbons School Regional Schoo l Meets S e n i o r High S c h o o l Reg iona l Meets Urban Centres such as Cranbrook, Nelson, Vane. May Long Weekend Ribbons, O f f e r s to Attend Schoo l i n Montrea l 4 Washington Schools [ADIAN P o l i c e Games Vancouver J u l y 1st S i l v e r w a r e Press Recogni t ion Fur Neckpiece Vancouver P o l i c e 2 \u00E2\u0080\u0094 Nanaimo Labour Day Weekend Medals \u00E2\u0080\u0094 c M i s c . I n v i t a t i o n Meets Vancouver Kelowna Nelson Cranbrook Kamloops Pent ic ton Powell R. Summer Press Recogni t ion Medals Trophies S i lverware C C F . BC.WAAF S e a t t l e , WA P o r t l a n d , OR Summer -FIGURE 9 Taxonomy of the S truc ture o f Sport Conceptual ized by Margaret ( B e l l ) Gibson NAME OF COMPETITION LOCATION WHEN IT TOOK PLACE REWARD/ PRIZES SPONSOR British ( Columbia Track & Field Championships Major Urban Centres (often in Vancouver) Annually in Summer Medals received on a podium Press recognition B.C. Women's Amateur Athletic Federation J "Thesis/Dissertation"@en . "10.14288/1.0077191"@en . "eng"@en . "Physical Education"@en . "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en . "University of British Columbia"@en . "For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use."@en . "Graduate"@en . "A historical-ethnographic account of a Canadian woman in sport, 1920-1938 : the story of Margaret (Bell) Gibson"@en . "Text"@en . "http://hdl.handle.net/2429/30152"@en .